Having big league baseball in San Diego, always a gift, tasted a little sweeter on Wednesday.
Afternoon ball. Sunshine in the East Village. Thirty-six thousand fans on a school day, with San Diego gas at six bucks a gallon.
Best of all, the matchup: The Padres and Cubs have started fast, and with a few breaks might reprise their October duels of last fall and 1984.
The Cubs earned a 5-4 victory to take the three-game series and improve to 19-12.
The Padres slipped to 19-11 but again showed bench strength, getting home runs midgame from spot starters Miguel Andujar and Nick Castellanos that erased a 3-0 deficit.
“It was two good teams going against each other,” said Padres slugger Gavin Sheets. “A couple things here or there is the deciding factor in every game. That’s what we expect playing a team like that.”
The Padres can take solace that the defeat didn’t come in a winner-take-all playoff game.
Otherwise, the what-if blues would’ve stung a lot longer.
What if Michael Conforto’s fly ball had stuck in Jackson Merrill’s glove instead of bouncing off it for a double, after Merrill’s leaping try denied the Cubs’ lefty a probable homer?
The Cubs knew all too well that Merrill had gone higher to glove the ball this year. The night before, they’d exhaled when a blast by their own young center fielder, Pete Crow-Armstrong, 24, cleared Merrill, 23, for three runs in their series-tying win.
“You’ve seen him (steal home runs) a lot,” said Crow-Armstrong, who won a Gold Glove last year and also hit a two-run homer Sunday. “He’s a really good defender out there. I have all the respect in the world for him being a shortstop not too long ago, and doing a full 180. He’s a pretty premier center fielder.”
Conforto came around to score, but the other what-if was bigger.
Fernando Tatis Jr. got off a good swing on a hanging curveball with the bases loaded and the Padres down 5-3 in the eighth inning.
Would the soaring drive go for Tatis’ first home run of the season?
Not quite.
Highly lofted, Tatis’ bid went to Crow-Armstrong on the grass 367 feet away for a sacrifice fly.
Once again, the Cubs exhaled.
“If the pitch is a little bit lower, it’s a grand slam and we’re all pissed off,” said Chicago reliever Ben Brown, who threw the knuckle-curve belt-high. “That’s just baseball. Just keep on making pitches.”
Tatis received congratulations from teammates, but not before he clenched in frustration, knowing his fifth career grand slam had narrowly eluded him.
For the record, the sacrifice fly’s exit velocity was 102.8 mph. That and six bucks will get you a gallon of gas in San Diego County.
Tatis’ high ratio of drives hit 95-plus mph or more — the threshold for hard-hit status — hasn’t resulted in a good haul of doubles and home runs. Tatis was asked if he feels close to finding his power stroke. He said he has felt closer for a while.
“But, just — that’s a sacrifice fly,” said the 27-year-old.
Manny Machado of the San Diego Padres walks off after striking out in the fourth inning against the Chicago Cubs at Petco Park on April 29, 2026 in San Diego, CA. (K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The Cubs’ Brown, cashing the reprieve, got Manny Machado to bounce into an inning-ending double play.
Let’s go big picture, then return to the Cubs-Padres dynamic.
A boring reminder: it’s April. Grizzled seamheads wait 40-plus games before reading much into a proven player’s season.
While Tatis’ homer drought and .284 slug rate are concerning, as is Jake Cronenworth’s .478 OPS, Padres bench coach and Wednesday’s acting manager, Randy Knorr, made a pertinent point about sample size.
“I’m pretty excited, because at some point, you know, you look at the back of the baseball card, and they all hit the same at the end of the year,” he said. “So, I’m waiting for them to get hot, and once they get hot, we’re gonna roll off a bunch of wins again. It’s just a matter of time, waiting for them to get ready and feel comfortable again.”
Come late June, when the Cubs and Padres will meet in Wrigley Field, I’ll make a point of watching. The Dodgers remain the National League’s most talented team, by far. But Craig Counsell’s Cubs have overcome a majors-worst run of pitching injuries. And while the Padres have their own pitching health issues, Knorr said Wednesday that the Padres “have the best bench in baseball.”
“They’re kind of like us,” said Cubs veteran Jameson Taillon, who was Wednesday’s game MVP via seven innings pitched, of the Padres. “I feel they can win the game in a lot of ways. They can run the bases, they’ve got power, they can play some ‘D,’ the lineup’s pretty long, the bullpen’s really, really good. A series like this, it’s early, but it’s always a fun test.”
The Padres should be better for it, even if “Slam Diego” didn’t make a timely comeback when a knuckle-curve invited its return.