Padres Video
In a number of different ways, the San Diego Padres were a team entirely capable of managing against the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Division Series, even if the latter possessed the best record in Major League Baseball throughout the regular season. But there was one key way in which the Brewers were a bad matchup for the Padres, and, naturally, it was the one that manifested across the series' four games.
The 2026 Padres were not a pitching staff built to strike out opposing hitters. Overall, they ranked 20th in the league in strikeout rate (21.7 percent), with starting pitching specifically tamping that ranking down as the 28th-best rotation in that facet (18.9 percent). And while the bullpen sat up in fourth (24.7 percent), it's not as if the Padres were turning over arms in relief that mowed down opposing hitters.
Mason Miller's historically good 47.4 K% did a lot of the heavy lifting there, with Adrian Morejon finishing second among Padres relievers at 30.4 percent. After Jeremiah Estrada's 30.2 percent strikeout rate, it really dipped as one gets deeper into the list of bullpen arms. Bradgley Rodríguez was at 26.7 percent, while high-volume relief arms like Jason Adam and Wandy Peralta lingered around just 15%.
And, compounded with the lack of strikeouts in the rotation, that's where the Padres ran into trouble.
A key to managing a series win against Milwaukee was going to be in keeping them off base. That may seem like a particularly obvious element, but when you're talking about a team with a collective 78.1 percent contact rate that stole 162 bases (fifth) and led the league with a .276 average with runners on base, it becomes paramount. Despite ranking second in the league in runs scored, the Brewers weren't going to win with power, but rather by more of a death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach.
That's basically how things came to fruition in the NLDS for the Padres.
Padre pitchers struck out the Brewers at a rate of just 16.9 percent. At the same time, the Brewers reached base at a .360 clip and stole five bases. S, while they only hit .250 and ISO'd a mere .098 in four games, those elements that were always going to be a poor matchup for the Friars certainly manifested in the worst possible way. The Brewers created traffic and struck out only seven times against 16 hits with runners on. In a series that was so marginal in the separation between the two teams, the Padres' inability to generate key strikeouts from the mound proved to be part of their downfall.
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