It Was Always Going To End This Way For 2025 San Diego Padres

The San Diego Padres saw their season come to an end on Thursday at Wrigley Field with a result that has to feel eerily familiar to anyone associated with last year's group. Steady pitching can't overcome a complete absence of run production, no matter how loaded the bullpen might be. And after a 24-inning scoreless streak that saw their 2024 season come to a close, the Padres went again quietly in heading home for the winter here at the end of 2025.

It wasn't for lack of trying, though, at least from one area of the roster.

While the ultimate outcome would have remained the same, Game 3 against the Chicago Cubs could have been much worse for the Padres. Yu Darvish didn't have it from the jump. He completed only one inning before being lifted in the second with the bases loaded and no outs. His final line included four hits and the two runs that crossed the plate to which he was attached. From there, though, the bullpen continued to do what they did throughout the short series. 

Six pitchers — Jeremiah Estrada, Michael King, Wandy Peralta, Robert Suárez, Adrian Morejon, and David Morgan — combined to finish this one off. Only an exhausted Suárez — who had thrown 49 pitches in two games — surrendered an additional run. Prior to the homer allowed to Michael Busch, the Padres had run their scoreless inning streak up to 13. As a staff, they allowed just six runs in three games. For a team with the third-best staff ERA (3.64) in the sport and top mark among relievers (3.06), that portion of the outcome hardly reads as a surprise.

Unfortunately, the other half of the result doesn't either. 

The Padres scored just five runs in three games. They managed one in the second inning of Game 1, scratched across three in a Game 2 shutout win, and recorded one more on a solo home run from Jackson Merrill in the ninth inning of Game 3. And it's not as if they were without opportunity. 

In Game 1 against the Cubs, the Padres had only four hits and a walk. It's hard to produce with such a minimal on-base presence, but it's, nonetheless, still notable that the team stranded four runners and went 2-for-7 with runners in scoring position. Because in Game 2 (despite the win), they stranded another seven and went 1-for-11 with RISP. As the team faced elimination in Game 3, it was a complete zero in that regard, stranding eight and going 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position. And nobody was immune to the struggle. 

On-base wizard Jake Cronenworth was 0-for-11 without even a walk to his credit. Fernando Tatis Jr was 1-for-12. Manny Machado and Gavin Sheets, as memorable as the former's Game 2 homer might've been, combined for just two hits across 18 plate appearances. That's a key on-base piece, two of your stars, and one of your impact bats from 2025. Only three players — Xander Bogaerts (4), Freddy Fermin (4), and Jackson Merrill (3) — recorded more than a pair of hits across three games. 

It's a frustrating result for the Padres, but again, hardly a surprising one. This was a team that ranked just 18th in run production (702) during the regular season and sat only 16th in runs knocked in with runners in scoring position (489). Obviously, the caveat is that using RBI as a statistic indicative of anything, but it does speak to how little production the team got from hitters when runners were standing on second or third base. 

Ultimately, though, this is how things were always going to go for the 2025 San Diego Padres. The pitching was there. While they may not have had the depth in the starting staff, in volume or in efficiency, the bullpen ran deep enough to carry them for stretches (even if — and this is a separate discussion — Mike Shildt's aggression in deploying his relief arms might've neglected the fact that relievers still need rest, too). But the offense, both in production from the top of the order and in the depth supplementing them, was never going to be enough. 

And this is where things will get tricky for the Padres to navigate. Each of Tatis & Machado will, of course, be in San Diego next season. But they were also ghosts at the most crucial point in time. Merrill and Bogaerts each demonstrated that they can hack it in October, however. Even assuming that the struggles of the former two were a blip (hard to do, considering 2025 and the seasons prior), that's just four reliable bats in the order.

Jake Cronenworth is clearly not the bat we might've thought in 2021, but still has value when he's working the count. He didn't find his way to first base in this series. Luis Arráez is a free agent. Ryan O'Hearn is a free agent. Gavin Sheets is set to hit arbitration. Freddy Fermin is a glove-first catcher. The bench was coughing up names like Jose Iglesias and Bryce Johnson. Despite what they may have on the mound, this is not a lineup built to hang with their peers in the National League. Can the Padres work around their depleted farm system and seemingly limited budget to make additions? 

That leads to a host of questions set to be ignited. Because it was always going to end this way. The pitching staff held up its end of the bargain. The lineup did not. Any 3-5 day stretch in 2025 would've indicated as much. Now the questions really begin to manifest.