Good morning,

It might be expected. It might even have become routine.

But when you are inside a clubhouse where grown men are pouring beer and champagne all over each other while they dance and hug and laugh, it is a reminder that making the postseason is never taken for granted.

It is more than a celebration. It is an exhale.

“It’s a breath of fresh air,” Ty France said last night. “It is a long season riding the ups and downs of it. Being able to spray champagne at the end is pretty special.”

You can read in my game story (here) about the moments from last night’s 4-2 victory over the Dodgers and from the aftermath, along with quotes from the celebration.

The Padres were enjoying this one.

Every year has its challenges. There has never been a 162-game baseball season played over the course of 187 days in dozens of cities across four time zone that was not a grind.

But some are more grindy than others.

This was one such season for the Padres, who last night clinched a postseason berth for the third straight season and fifth time this decade.

That is half the franchise’s total playoff appearances since it was founded in 1969.

“This is special,” Jake Cronenworth said. “I think it’s the new standard we’ve set. This is where we want to get to, and obviously we want to get to the end and be the last team standing. But this is where it starts.”

While there were periods of uncertainty in each of the previous four playoff seasons during this window of contention that Ron Fowler and Peter Seidler promised would occur, none were like this.

Last night’s celebration came two games later than the past two seasons. The Padres also clinched with three games to go in 2022. They locked up their 2020 berth with six games remaining.

All of those had a feeling of inevitability for weeks. This one did not seem virtually certain until maybe last weekend.

“It’s a different situation,” Manny Machado said last night in the midst of the celebration. “Most of the years, we kind of closed through it. This year we struggled for a little bit, and a lot of people didn’t think we were going to be here. I give credit to this group of guys. They stuck through it. Everyone was positive when the offense was down and the bullpen was picking us up. Then it was flip-flopped, and everyone stayed positive the whole way. That’s a testament to the people that we have in here. You just gotta have confidence in baseball. Having confidence in baseball goes a long way.”

The Padres were 50-53 on July 23. They were 11th among 15 National League teams, five spots away from the playoff field.

It was less than three weeks ago, on Sept. 5, the day before they began what is now an MLB-best 15-2 run, that the Padres trailed the Phillies by six games and the Cubs by 6½ games and were a half-game behind the Diamondbacks.

Since then, the Padres finished off a series series win against the Yankees, swept the Nationals and Giants, won three of four against the Rockies, swept the Marlins and won a series at Dodger Stadium for the first time since April 2024.

Almost every player who spoke in the din of the visiting clubhouse at Dodger Stadium last night made sure to say some version of they were not finished.

“We still haven’t gotten anywhere,” said Michael King, who will start Game 1 of the National League Wild Card Series. “I think the first couple years we were excited just to get into the postseason. Now it’s like, ‘Let’s do some work.’”

Now the Padres are hoping for another month of games.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Machado said. “But this is why we play baseball — for those long roads ahead of us and the long grinds, the hurt, the ups and downs.”

So now what?

The Padres and Cubs are on track to play each other in a National League Wild Card Series that will begin Tuesday.

Where that series is will be determined this weekend.

The Padres hold a one-game lead over the Cubs in the race for the No.4 seed. So they will play at Petco Park next week if the Padres can merely match the Cubs’ number of victories the rest of the way. If the teams finish with identical records, the series will be at Wrigley Field because the Cubs hold the tiebreaker by virtue of having won the season series between the teams.

The site could be determined by today.

Because of the expected storms in the Northeast, the Cubs and Red Sox will play a doubleheader today. If the Cubs lose both games and the Padres beat the Diamondbacks, that’s it.

“Just trying to get a home playoff series at Petco,” Mason Miller said. “We know how special that place is.”

The Padres have won 21 of their past 29 games at Petco Park and are 49-29 there this season. They finished 40-41 on the road.

Since MLB expanded the playoffs in 2022 and began the best-of-three wild-card series, the Padres are 1-1 on the road in those series and 1-0 at home. Overall, visiting teams are 9-7 in the wild-card round.

The business side of the organization is clamoring to start at home. The team will realize upwards of $3 million if they host the first round and likely spend about $1 million on travel for sponsors and staff if they are on the road.

The Padres will certainly try to win their remaining games. But they also intend to make sure their pitchers are rested and will get Manny Machado and probably other position players at least one day off.

“It’s important,” Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said. “We love playing in front of our fans at Petco. We’re a very good team at home. We’ll talk about about it the next couple days. It’s the next to-do list for us.”

There is something else being played for at Petco Park for at least another day.

The Diamondbacks are two games behind the Phillies in the race for the final NL playoff spot.

If the Phillies win twice at home against the Rays, they are in. But the Diamondbacks hold the tiebreaker between the teams and can get in if they win two more games than the Phillies do this weekend.

Salas keeps rising

We learned before the game that Ethan Salas is not only the Padres catcher of the future but is their No.1 catcher of the present as well, as he was in the starting lineup for the second straight night.

By the time he was sipping apple cider and his teammates were showering him with harder stuff, he had essentially cemented his status.

Baby’s First Clinchmas 🥹 pic.twitter.com/RzZ1RCvS8L

— San Diego Padres (@Padres) September 25, 2026

“He’s been impressive under the situation, everything he has been put through,” Machado said. “I think the most impressive part has been what he’s been doing with the fingers. I mean, to catch a staff that you really haven’t had all year … I think it has showed what he has.”

The 20-year-old Salas, who made his major league debut on Sept. 2, not only seemed to be entirely in sync with starting pitcher Nick Pivetta last night, he got the Padres’ first hit and scored their first run in the sixth inning and drove in the second of their three fifth-inning runs.

Salas is without any question their best defensive catcher. And after going hitless in his first 15 big-league at-bats, he is 8-for-20 since.

“Pretty amazing,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “He’s ready for the show. He’s going to help us in a lot of ways.”

This does not mean Freddy Fermin or Luis Campusano won’t catch again this season or in the playoffs. Fermin is a plus defender and has playoff experience. All three are expected to be on the postseason roster.

Salas is entirely confident in his place on the team and at the same time could hardly believe he was at Dodger Stadium celebrating.

His 2025 season was mostly lost to a back injury. He began this season in Double-A and was promoted to Triple-A at the start of August.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” Salas said. “Thank God I got healthy and everything’s been going well. If you would have told me that I would have been here a year ago, I would have told you you’re lying.”

Moving forward

The man whose signing in 2019 signaled a new era of Padres baseball celebrated what he helped wrought again last night.

And that he is about to complete his worst season in more than a decade doesn’t matter now.

“I’m enjoying myself tonight, enjoying myself with this group of guys,” he said. “We’ve been doing it all year. This is what we do. This is how we play. This is who we are. We pick each other up. I haven’t had the best season, but everyone has picked me up. So now it’s time to finish the job.”

Different dude

Pivetta pitched like a man who knew how important the game was.

But only because that’s how he always feels.

“I didn’t actually know we were clinching tonight,” Pivetta said afterward. “I just kept my head down and focused knowing I was going to face a good lineup.”

Pivetta, in his fourth start back after nearly five months on the injured list with an elbow flexor strain, made it through 4⅔ innings without allowing any runs. He allowed four hits, walked one and struck out seven in the kind of start he will be asked to turn in next week.

“(Dodgers starter Tyler) Glasnow did a great job,” Pivettta said. “He did what he did. I wanted to match him and do the best I possibly could.”

Pivetta was only willing to reflect in passing on how much he worked to get back to help the Padres this season.

“It hasn’t been easy,” he said. “But it’s been interesting, and I’m just grateful to be here.”

Next up

King spent the previous couple days letting all the hitters know he was not interested in pitching again in the regular season.

“I told them I’d be really mad on Sunday if I had to pitch,” he said. “So it’s very fun to not have to gameplan for the Diamondbacks and plan for whoever we got.”

Casey Mize and Walker Buehler will start the first two games this weekend, and the Padres will piece together Sunday’s nine innings.

Padres manager Craig Stammen said earlier this week that King would only start Sunday if the Padres had to win to get in the postseason and that he would otherwise start Game 1 of the Wild Card Series.

Fourpeat

Austin Hays has over the past three weeks gone from probably only on the roster until Miguel Andujar returned to the reason Andujar is not back yet and might not be in the postseason.

For the second straight night, Hays drove in a run with a pinch-hit single, and he is now batting .380 against left-handed pitchers since joining the Padres on Aug. 9. That includes a run of nine hits in his past 14 at-bats against lefties.

Last night, Hays was part of his fourth consecutive clinching celebration after making the postseason with the Orioles in 2023, the Phillies in ‘24 and the Reds in ‘25.

“There’s nothing better than being at the end of the year and popping bottles,” Hays said. “… I suffered some rough years in Baltimore early on with the 100-loss season, so I do not take it for granted, the opportunity to be on a good team, no matter what the role is. If I get one at-bat and I’m done, and that’s it, I’m good with it. Whatever it takes to just be on a winning team and have a chance to play October baseball. I don’t take it for granted. … It’s been a blessing.”

Different perspective

Stammen got to experience two playoff runs as a reliever for the Padres.

He was along for the ride the past two years as a special assistant in baseball operations. Earlier this week, he recalled watching the games at Dodger Stadium from the stands and thinking it was “really cool.”

At no point until he took the job last November did he think he would be managing.

But there he was last night picking up pitching coach Ruben Niebla in a bear hug after the final out and a few minutes later kicking off the postgame celebration in the clubhouse.

“The best part is I feel like I’m able to do it with some of my best friends, guys on our coaching staff that we built great relationships with and some of the guys I used to sit in the clubhouse with and mess around and pop champagne with them,” Stammen said. “So I think that’s probably the most satisfying part.”

His brief speech touched on the tenets he laid out in spring training — showing up every day and doing their job, intentional togetherness and competing with joy.

And then he shook his champagne bottle and began spraying.

“That was awesome,” he said. “That was a lot of fun because, you know, these guys have respected me the whole year. They’ve shown me a lot of love, and I was able to articulate that back to them — how proud I am of them and how exciting this is. But we’ve got more work to do.”

Good start

Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano were in the visiting clubhouse celebrating with their newest employees.

“We’re not the story,” Feliciano said. “The story is the fanbase and the city have been waiting for a long time. We have now a winning team. You never know. We’re in the playoffs.”

Jones and Feliciano were at Dodger Stadium for all three games this week and were clearly reveling in what had been accomplished.

“A lot of people underestimated us,” Jones said. “A lot of people still do. But we just keep going. This is an example of being all in — everyone understanding what needs to be done and doing it.”

Jones and Felicano spoke after buying the team about believing they share something of an underdog mentality with San Diego and the Padres. And that was on their minds last night.

“All my life people have underestimated who I am and what we can do,’ said Feliciano, who was born in Puerto Rico and made his billions in private equity. “I empathize with this team, with this city. I think we can bring a pennant home and maybe a big ring.”

Tidbits

Luis Rengifo, Gavin Sheets and Andujar were at Dodger Stadium to take part in the celebration last night. You can read in Jeff Sanders’ pregame notebook (here) about Sheets’ imminent return from the injured list.
Tom Krasovic outlines in his column (here) why he’s buying the Padres as a dangerous playoff team.
Tatis was 2-for-3 with a walk last night and has put up a .434 on-base percentage while reaching base in 18 consecutive games. Last night was his 46th multi-hit game of the season, a new career high. Tatis also stole two bases last night and has pushed his career-high total to 38.
Yuki Matsui, who got the win after relieving Pivetta with two outs in the fifth inning and got through the first out in the sixth, lowered his ERA to 1.84, which would be the lowest ever by a Padres left-hander with at least 60 innings pitched. (Mark Davis had a 1.85 ERA in 1989, the year he won the NL Cy Young award.)
In his first game since returning from a stay of more than two months on the injured list, Jason Adam got three outs in five pitches last night.
Xander Bogaerts is batting .300 with a .417 OBP during a nine-game on base streak and .290 with an .815 OPS in September.

All right, that’s it for me.

Talk to you tomorrow.