MILWAUKEE — The Padres were not beaten by Jacob Misiorowski.
But they were beaten.
Especially in the postseason, that squandered opportunity hurt.
Because after a 3-2 loss to the Brewers in Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Saturday night, the Padres need to win three of the next four games against the team that finished the regular season with the major leagues’ best record.
It hurt also, because Ty France hit a ball that could reasonably be considered to have had a chance to be a go-ahead home run instead was caught after hitting a roof cable and falling into left fielder Jackson Chourio’s glove for the second out in the ninth inning.
“I guess the biggest question was, was it going to stay fair or foul?” France said afterward. “I thought I backspun it and it was going to stay fair. Knew it was going out. Yeah, it’s just unfortunate.”
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The ground rules at American Family Field state that if the ball was deemed to have been fair when it hit the cable and is then caught, it is an out. The Padres asked for a replay review that confirmed the initial call that the ball hit in fair territory.
While that was the main topic in the clubhouse afterward, the result hurt, too, because the Padres scored twice and got the world’s hardest-throwing pitcher off the mound after four innings, neutralizing what had been the Brewers’ biggest advantage and putting themselves in almost as favorable a position as could have been expected.
“We did our job,” Manny Machado said. “We got him out early, got to the bullpen. … I think we did a great job as a group. We put up two runs off of a great pitcher, off of the Cy Young (winner) for this year. We just came up short.”
It also hurt, because the Brewers’ bullpen outlasted the Padres’ bullpen.
And it was an extra kind of painful spanking because the Brewers, who hit fewer home runs than all but one team during the regular season, scored all of their runs on a pair of homers.
It was William Contreras’ blast off Adrian Morejón with two outs in the seventh inning that broke a 2-2 tie, providing a rather sudden turn after a string of scoreless innings, and ended up deciding the outcome.
Not that a playoff game is supposed to be as easy as taking a lead and holding it.
But the ending seemed a particularly precipitous fall from the high of going ahead 2-0 in the second inning against a pitcher who allowed more than one run in just 12 of his 30 starts.
The Padres lost their advantage an inning-and-a-half after getting it and managed five hits over the final seven innings.
“Anytime you score first in a playoff game you feel really good about it, especially the type of pitching staff we have,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “We just got beat by a couple home runs tonight.”
Robbie Ray of the San Diego Padres watches a two-run home run by Jackson Chourio in the third inning of Saturday’s NL Division Series loss to the Brewers in Milwaukee. (K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
There is no guarantee that Walker Buehler would have fared better had he been available to start rather than in San Diego attending the birth of his second child.
But his substitute, Robbie Ray, lost the lead the Padres gave him by surrendering a two-run homer to Chourio in the third inning.
And the Padres offense did better against the best pitcher in the NL and arguably in all of baseball than they did against the five pitchers that followed him on Saturday night.
“They still have a good ‘pen,” Xander Bogaerts said. “Same thing with us.”
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Statistically, the Brewers’ relief corps was actually more effective in most areas than the Padres’ bullpen was this season.
Still, there were myriad missed opportunities after the Padres made Misiorowski throw 25 pitches in the first inning and then took the while the powerful right-hander threw another 33 pitches in the second.
That quieted a crowd inside American Family Field that had been every bit as loud as Petco Park got earlier in the week.
So much so that when Machado came to bat with the bases loaded, they hardly booed him in the place he is booed even more vociferously than he is in Los Angeles.
Machado, who had doubled with two outs in the first, ended the second with a groundout.
“We had a situation there (where) I came up with bases loaded,” Machado said. “We kind of could have put a little dagger in it. We could have put some more runs up on the board, and we didn’t and kind of gave him a little bit more adrenaline to come out there. And he was kind of lights out after that.”
Brewers fans heckle Manny Machado of the San Diego Padres after he struck out during the ninth inning of Game 1 of the National League Division Series at American Family Field. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Misiorowski got through the top of the third inning in nine pitches.
And when Chourio’s two-run homer cleared the wall and landed in a canopy over the Brewers’ bullpen in the bottom of the third, the crowd was back and the game was tied.
Ray would be gone before the inning was over, departing with the bases loaded and two away.
Bradgley Rodriguez replaced Ray and got through the fourth inning before Yuki Matsui and Jason Adam worked an inning apiece.
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Morejón took over in the seventh and got the first two outs on two pitches before leaving a full-count sinker, at 100 mph, up and over the outer third of the plate that Contreras sent 406 feet to right-center field.
All that happened after the Padres, at least relatively speaking, took it to the pitcher who is virtually certain to win the NL Cy Young Award after a season in which he posted an MLB-best 1.80 ERA and struck out 252 batters in just 174⅔ innings.
Misiorowski’s first pitch Saturday was the fastest ever thrown in a postseason game — a 104.8 mph four-seam fastball down the middle that Fernando Tatis Jr. watched. It broke the record of 104.5 mph that Misiorowski and Padres closer Mason Miller both reached last season.
After Tatis struck out in four pitches, Dustin Harris fouled off three two-strike pitches before grounding out on the ninth pitch he saw, and Machado fouled off a pair of two-strike pitches before lining a slider the other way on the eighth pitch he saw for a double.
France struck out to end the first. But after Ray took just seven pitches in a 1-2-3 bottom of the first, the Padres strung together three one-out singles to begin their two-run second.
Bogaerts got the Padres started by sending a grounder to the hole at shortstop and beating out the throw from Cooper Pratt. Ethan Salas followed with a single lined to center field, and Luis Campusano drilled a grounder just inside the bag and down the right field line for a single that scored Bogaerts from second base and got Salas to third.
Salas scored the second run on a grounder by Jake Cronenworth that first baseman Jake Bauers bobbled, picked up and chose to throw home. Salas appeared to beat the throw, but it was moot because Contreras, the Brewers’ catcher, had the ball get away from him.
Tatis made the second out on a grounder back to Misiorowski before Harris walked to load the bases and bring up Machado, who hit the first pitch he saw to Pratt at shortstop.
That was just one of the two-out at-bats that the Padres did not convert, as they finished 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position.
The Padres got runners to second and third with two outs in the fifth, loaded the bases with two outs in the seventh and had runners on first and second with one out in the eighth.
Umpires discuss a call after Ty France hit a pop fly that hit the roof in the ninth inning against the Milwaukee Brewers during Game One of the National League Division Series at American Family Field on October 3, 2026 in Milwaukee, WI. (K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Brewers closer Trevor Megill came in to strike out Tatis, ending that threat, and then survived Harris’ leadoff single and the France hit that sailed about 200 feet into the air.
As unlikely as it was, France’s out was not the first time the Padres had a potential home run turn into an out after hitting part of a roof. On Aug. 28, Bogaerts launched a ball that hit the ring of catwalks above Tropicana Field that StatCast said would have traveled 386 feet
“Unfortunately, a bad break for us,” Stammen said after Saturday’s game. “Looked like it was a possible home run. Just didn’t go our way. Second time that has happened this year to the Padres. We should be able to bounce back just fine from it.”