The Padres Blanked the Cubs and Banked Their Bullpen

San Diego blanked Chicago 8-0 in Tuesday’s NL Wild Card opener and never used Mason Miller or Adrian Morejon.

Fernando Tatis Jr. hit the first pitch 405 feet. Michael King carried a no-hitter into the seventh. Joe Musgrove, idle at least 700 days after Tommy John surgery, closed a three-hit shutout at Petco Park while the Padres’ two hardest throwers sat in the pen.

Two Homers Before the Cubs Recorded an Out

Matthew Boyd’s first pitch of the night was a changeup. Tatis sent it over the center-field wall for the first leadoff homer in Padres postseason history. Two batters later, Manny Machado hit a 391-foot drive to left-center, the first time San Diego had gone deep twice in the first inning of a playoff game.

The Cubs never caught the inning. They never caught the night. Xander Bogaerts homered in the fourth. Jackson Merrill punched a two-out, two-run single in a three-run fifth. Tatis, Machado, Merrill and Bogaerts finished with eight hits, three home runs and five balls over 103 mph.

HOW THE PADRES SCORED

• First inning: Tatis homered on Boyd’s first pitch, and Machado followed with a homer of his own for a 2-0 lead.
• Third inning: Machado doubled to center and Tatis scored, making it 3-0.
• Fourth inning: Bogaerts homered off Boyd, stretching the lead to 4-0.
• Fifth inning: San Diego scored three, including Merrill’s two-run single, to go up 7-0.
• Seventh inning: Tatis singled, stole second, and scored when catcher Carson Kelly’s throw caromed into left-center for an 8-0 lead.

Tatis said the seventh-inning dash left him feeling as if he might pass out in the dugout, the crowd and the score pressing on him at once. He went 2-for-3 with three runs. The Padres piled up 13 hits and handed Chicago a three-hit night, the largest playoff shutout in franchise history.

The Bullpen San Diego Did Not Need

King threw 97 pitches and left with a no-hitter gone and the shutout intact. Yuki Matsui then retired the Cubs in order in the eighth. That sequence is what turns an 8-0 final into a series problem for Chicago, because Miller and Morejon never had to cover an out.

Miller closed the regular season 5-2 with a 1.67 ERA, 129 strikeouts, a 0.90 WHIP and 38 saves in 70 innings over 66 games. Morejon worked 86 innings with a 2.83 ERA and 107 strikeouts. They are the late-inning pair San Diego spent a year building, and Craig Stammen did not spend them on Tuesday.

WHO THREW, WHO SAT

Miller even got warm. He still did not enter. The 8-run lead made Musgrove’s rusty ninth a story instead of a crisis, and it left Stammen with both fireballers for Wednesday and, if needed, a Game 3 on Thursday. In a best-of-three, that is the out the box score does not show.

Chicago’s 850 Runs Did Not Travel

The Cubs scored 850 runs, first in the majors, allowed 703, and finished plus-147, a Pythagorean mark of 95-67. They went 89-73, second in the NL Central, 14 games behind Milwaukee, and still reached October as a No. 5 seed because the bats carried them.

Those bats produced three hits at Petco Park. Nico Hoerner’s dribbler down the third-base line in the seventh was the first, and it came right after a PitchCom delay. Machado slid, gloved it, and could not finish the throw. “I was pissed,” Machado said. “I knew what was on the line, so I wanted to make the play.”

CHICAGO’S STARS ON TUESDAY

• Pete Crow-Armstrong: 45 home runs, 41 stolen bases, 119 runs, a.943 OPS and a 10.6 FanGraphs WAR in the regular season; 0-for-3 with a walk and two strikeouts in Game 1.
• Alex Bregman: Back in the lineup after facial fractures on Sept. 20 and a return five days later, used at DH, and one of the two hitters King struck out five times between them.
• The July warning: These same clubs met on July 1, and Chicago won 23-3, proof the Cubs can still bury San Diego when the hits fall.

Crow-Armstrong, 24, became the seventh player and first Cub to join the 40-40 club. He also growled at crew chief Bill Miller over check-swing calls on Tuesday. The season that may win him the NL MVP did not show up in the box. Craig Counsell said the crowd was great and that Chicago “didn’t give them anything to be quiet about.”

King Threw 97.6 mph on the Third Pitch

The night’s first at-bat was the series in miniature. King, the Padres’ ace after 32 starts, a 3.21 ERA and 185 innings, opened against Crow-Armstrong, the Cubs’ centerpiece. Sinker, strike one. Sweeper, strike two. Then a 97.6 mph fastball at the top of the zone, the hardest pitch King had thrown in more than three years. Crow-Armstrong could not catch it.

Adrenaline is a crazy drug. And I’m looking forward to it for the next five weeks.

Michael King, Padres pitcher, after Game 1

He started with 98 mph heat, ditched his changeup for sweepers, and punched out eight, five of them against Crow-Armstrong and Bregman. The no-hit bid lived until Hoerner’s one-out roller in the seventh, the longest individual postseason no-hit try since Aníbal Sánchez went 7 2/3 innings for Washington in the 2019 NLCS. King walked three and still needed only 97 pitches to finish seven scoreless.

Stammen called it an overall dominating outing, with every pitch working and the fastball electric. King said he likes the pressure, and that the club’s trust in him to take these games feeds that. The Padres have lived with rotation questions all year. On the first October night, the ace was the answer, and the rest of the staff got to watch.

Musgrove Walked Into a Bases-Loaded Ninth

The last out of the night belonged to a pitcher who had not thrown a big-league pitch since Oct. 2, 2024, when he left a Wild Card start against Atlanta with the elbow injury that led to Tommy John surgery. He missed all of 2025. Setbacks ate 2026. The Padres still put the El Cajon native on the Wild Card roster as a reliever on Tuesday morning.

MUSGROVE’S ROAD BACK

1. Oct. 2, 2024: Leaves his Wild Card start against Atlanta with a right elbow injury.
2. October 2024: Undergoes Tommy John surgery and begins a recovery that wipes out the next regular season.
3. March 2026: Faces hitters in spring, then shuts down again after discomfort in a bullpen.
4. Aug. 27, 2026: Throws five innings of one-run ball at Triple-A El Paso, then struggles to recover.
5. Sept. 29, 2026: Enters a playoff game for the first time in at least 700 days and records the final two outs with the bases loaded.

Stammen had joked that October does not offer soft landings. An eight-run lead is as close as it gets. Musgrove struck out Michael Busch, then allowed singles to Seiya Suzuki and Hoerner and walked Ian Happ. Pedro Ramirez popped up. Pinch-hitter Michael Conforto looked at a curveball, strike three, and Petco Park chanted the hometown name.

“It was amazing, man,” Musgrove said. He has seen the return slow through multiple setbacks, and he said coming back in a playoff game at home, with that crowd, was perfect. The rust showed. The shutout held. The two arms San Diego actually built the late innings around never had to fix it.

What Game 2 Now Costs the Cubs

The Padres were 50-53 on July 23, then went 35-17 in August and September, 21-5 in that stretch at home, and 41-18 after that July date to finish 91-71. Machado said it had not been roses all year, and that the group learned from the downs. Game 1 looked like the version that won Petco 51 times in the regular season, not the one Chicago smashed 23-3 in July.

Nick Pivetta starts Game 2 on Wednesday, Sept. 30, at 10 p.m. ET, listed at 3-2 with a 2.86 ERA in 34.2 innings over eight games, his fifth outing back from a right elbow injury that cost him nearly five months. Kevin Gausman goes for the Cubs at 4-2 with a 4.83 ERA. Some of the loudest second-guessing after Tuesday was the original choice to give Boyd, 10-5 with a 3.91 ERA, a lineup that runs Tatis, Machado and Bogaerts at the top and has Merrill as the main left-handed threat.

In the history of the best-of-three Wild Card, the winner of Game 1 has taken 21 of 24 Wild Card openers, and no team has won Game 1 at home and failed to advance. Crow-Armstrong is 5-for-30 in his postseason career and 0-for-his-last-11. He is nine innings from a winter spent explaining a 40-40 season that ended in two quiet nights. Counsell can still flip Bregman to third and give Michael Conforto the DH, but the Cubs have to score on Pivetta first.

The winner of this series draws the Brewers, who finished 103-59. Tatis called Tuesday a beautiful baseball night for every San Diegan and said the club could not have scripted it better. The script that matters on Wednesday is simpler. Chicago has to hit, and San Diego still has Miller and Morejon if it does not.