CHICAGO \u2014 The Padres took one more step toward the inevitable and one more step toward having to make some decisions.<\/p>\n
Their tiptoed march to the postseason continued on Saturday with a 7-3\u00a0 victory over the White Sox.<\/p>\n
It was the Padres\u2019 second victory in five games on the season\u2019s final road trip, which ends Sunday.<\/p>\n
They will return home having yet to clinch a playoff berth, because the Reds won Saturday.<\/p>\n
The Padres\u2019 magic number is down to one against the Diamondbacks and three against the Reds. That means they need a victory or a Diamondbacks loss to ensure Arizona cannot pass them and some combination of victories and Reds losses adding up to three to ensure the Reds cannot pass them.<\/p>\n
The Padres made it possible to clinch Monday by winning for just the 10th time in their past 25 games.<\/p>\n
Ryan O\u2019Hearn\u2019s bases-loaded double broke a 2-2 tie in the sixth inning. Jackson Merrill homered and doubled and scored three times.<\/p>\n
Yu Darvish allowed two runs over 4\u2154 innings, and the Padres\u2019 four high-leverage relievers finished off the game, which is likely about how it would look if Darvish were to get a postseason start.<\/p>\n
\u201cPut us in a good position with what we did to win a baseball game,\u201d Padres manager Mike Shildt said.<\/p>\n
It was with that possibility in mind that the men who make personnel decisions for the Padres observed Saturday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
It was the first of what were essentially two straight tests for their starting pitchers this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe next couple days will give us more clarity about where people are \u2013 physically and in performance,\u201d Shildt said before the game. \u201cThe next couple days will also tell us where we are at as a team. We\u2019ll take all those factors in and evaluate them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nick Pivetta, whose 2.81 ERA over 30 starts is fifth best in the National League, will almost certainly start the first game of the Padres\u2019 wild-card series.<\/p>\n
And it would follow that Michael King will be the Game 2 starter contingent on how his mechanics and his pitches look here Sunday. The right-hander is coming off a start \u2014 just his third in four months due to two stints on the injured list \u2013 in which he allowed the Mets a career-high eight runs in three innings.<\/p>\n
The Padres would love for Darvish to demonstrate he can be trusted in Game 3, considering that Dylan Cease on Friday again had trouble keeping a game in check as his ERA swelled to 4.64.<\/p>\n
Darvish, who made his season debut on July 7 after nursing an elbow issue through the season\u2019s three months, allowed six hits Saturday to a team that lost its 97th game and ranks 27th in batting average.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019m making a good progression,\u201d Darvish said. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a walk, and the quality of the pitches is coming along.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adrian Morej\u00f3n replaced him and worked through the sixth inning. Jeremiah Estrada, Mason Miller and Robert Suarez worked an inning apiece at the end, with Suarez allowing a two-out home run to Lenyn Sosa in the ninth.<\/p>\n
The game began in a far too familiar way for the Padres of late, as the White Sox took a lead in the first inning.<\/p>\n
With two outs, Colson Montgomery hit a groundball not particularly hard that got under the glove of O\u2019Hearn at first base and into right field for a single. That was followed by Miguel Vargas driving a ball to the gap in left-center field that brought Montgomery home.<\/p>\n
It was the 12th time in 33 games \u2014 and the fourth time in the past five games \u2014 the Padres have trailed after the first inning.<\/p>\n
This deficit did not last long.<\/p>\n
Merrill sent the second pitch of the second inning over the wall in right-center field for his sixth home run in his past 13 games.<\/p>\n
The Padres trailed again two innings later when Chase Meidroth lined a single into right field and Kyle Teel doubled to the opposite gap.<\/p>\n
White Sox starter Yoendrys G\u00f3mez surrendered just three other hits through five innings.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old right-hander,\u00a0who had not recorded an out in the sixth inning in any of his seven big-league starts, ended up doing so Saturday. But he also yielded a single to Fernando Tatis Jr. leading off the sixth, threw a pitch behind Luis Arraez that allowed Tatis to get to second, had Tatis easily steal third on ball G\u00f3mez bounced and gave up an RBI single to Manny Machado.<\/p>\n
That is when Fraser Ellard replaced G\u00f3mez, missed on his first four pitches to walk Merrill and walked Gavin Sheets to load the bases with two outs before O\u2019Hearn cleared the bases with his double that rolled to the wall in left-center.<\/p>\n
The Padres added a run in the eighth on a double by Merrill and single by Sheets and one more in the ninth when Tatis reached on a fielder\u2019s choice, stole second and scored on Arraez\u2019s single.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the scoreboard could have looked \u2014 we could have put a lot more runs up there,\u201d O\u2019Hearn said. \u201cThere were a lot of hard-hit balls, especially early on, that didn\u2019t land on grass. But I think guys are committed to figuring it out individually and then collectively. When it shows up on the field like that, it\u2019s fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally Published: September 20, 2025 at 7:05 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 The Padres took one more step toward the inevitable and one more step toward having to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":243018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1266,3549,1306,7264,62,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-243017","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-san-diego-padres","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115240265698835585","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}