Overwhelmed
You can't say they haven't been trying to warn us
The Cubs opening playoff game, and let's face it--their season--was over by Matt Boyd's fourth pitch last night.
After the Cubs were mowed down by Padres' starter Michael King in the first, with their delirious constantly screaming crowd in full throat, Boyd's first pitch was crushed to center field by Fernando Tatis Jr. for a homer that Petecrow Armstrong somehow got a glove on, to no avail. Boyd's second pitch was bunted for an out by Samad Taylor. And after Manny Machado actually took a pitch, he smoked the next one to left for a two run lead.
And you knew the Cubs were cooked. They did show one sign of life. In the top of the second, Seiya Suzuki reached on a throwing error by Padres' shortstop Xander Bogaerts and advanced to second when that throw bounced into the camera well next to the Padres' dugout. Ian Happ came up and did his normal Ian Happ thing.
Clayton Kershaw, the soon to be Hall of Fame troglodyte was serving as Peacock's weird dugout adjacent reporter for the game, and he said, "That's just a bad at bat there," as Happ popped meekly to the second baseman. Nico Hoerner, who came up to bat 194 times in the regular season with runners in scoring position and had six extra base hits, grounded out to second to advance Seiya to third, and Pedro Ramirez chopped one to Xander to end the inning.
That was it. The Padres kept pouring on runs on Boyd and Javier Assad and Ryan Rolison, Aaron Civale, and Jacob Webb, and the Cubs didn't bother to get a hit until the seventh, when it was already 7-0.
The game was so lopsided that the Padres found Joe Musgrove at a bar and asked him if he wanted to come back after two years of not pitching in the big leagues and pitch the ninth, and he did, and the Cubs still didn't score.
The Musgrove thing was weird, not because Padres fans went nuts when he came in, literally for his first big league appearance since an elbow injury after the 2024 season, but that Peacock didn't go to commercial to show it, like it was actually a big deal nationally. This wasn't Douglas MacArthur returning to The Philippines. It was a guy with 66 wins over nine big league seasons basically turning game one of the Wild Card Series into a minor league rehab assignment.
The Cubs will send Kevin Gausman and his achy non-throwing shoulder out there tonight against Nick Pivetta, another Padres pitcher who has barely pitched this year due to injury. The Cubs have a chance to even up the series and we can all laugh, and laugh, and laugh about the worst postseason game they've played since the Dodgers beat them 11-1 in game five of the NLCS in 2017.
(Actually, they've played plenty of shitty playoff games since then--like the Rockies wild card debacle in 2018, both of those hideous Marlins' losses in 2020 and game one against the Brewers last year was a real gem, but this was the most lopsided game since Kike Fucking Hernandez hit three homers off of them in that Dodgers loss.)
But to be honest, the worst part of last night's game is that this outcome felt predictable. The Cubs have played mostly bad baseball for six weeks now.
Nobody's hit other than Petecrow and Bregman. And they were terrible last night, combining to go 1-for-7 with a walk and six strikeouts. Pete basically tried to get thrown out of the game twice. He got rung up on bad check swing calls by third base umpire Bill Miller, but Bill was in full, "If I have to stay and watch this shit, so do you," mode.
They haven't pitched well, and that trend didn't change. This series was lost in an 18-game span from August 21 to September 9 which started with the first of Jacob Webb's four straight two out two run homer blown saves, three of which were walkoff losses, and included losing a series at home to the Reds, and losing five of seven games to the Brewers when they had the lead after the fifth in SIX of them.
They lost home field advantage in this round during that stretch, and had to go into panic mode in the final week to keep from blowing the playoffs altogether.
So, don't say they didn't warn us. We knew something like this was coming.
We just didn't know it would be so loud.
In a decision I now regret completely, I'm doing live RECRAPs after these games. Last night Oleg and I didn't even wait for the game to officially end, because it was over early on, to get started live streaming. We had some fun anyway. It's more than the Cubs could say.
Podcast: RECRAP - Three goddamn hits? - Sept. 29 and 30, 2026
