Padres minor league affiliates went 0-1 on Sunday to close out the minor league season. 

Here is our daily recap of games played. 

El Paso Chihuahuas (Lost 12-6 vs Sugar Land) (81-68 on the season)

Francisco Acuna – 3-for-4, Three Singles, Two Runs Scored

Ripken Reyes – 1-for-5, Two-RBI Triple

Luis Gutierrez – 5 IP, 6 H, 4 R (3 ER), 0 BB, 6 K (77 pitches – 49 strikes)

El Paso closed out a winning season with its first winning record since 2022. Luis Gutierrez, who started the season at Single-A, made his Triple-A debut, pitching five innings and allowing three earned runs. Gutierrez allowed six hits, but matched the total with six punchouts. The left-hander induced 12 whiffs on 37 swings, with his slider generating whiffs on a monstrous 42.9% of swings against. Right-hander Andrew Moore was tagged for three runs in one inning, earning the loss. Jared Kollar and Jake Higginbotham threw the final two frames, combining to allow five runs on five hits and five walks.

At the dish, leadoff man Ripken Reyes got the team on the board with a second-inning two-run triple. Reyes triple scored Francisco Acuna and Cody Roberts, and Reyes came in to score on a single by Tirso Ornelas. Ornelas, who missed six weeks with injury earlier this season, closes out an up-and-down campaign with an .831 OPS in September. Trenton Brooks had two hits and a sacrifice fly in the loss, all while patrolling center field for the first time this season. Francisco Acuna finished with three hits and two runs scored on Sunday, and has likely earned himself a shot at the 2026 Chihuahuas’ Opening Day shortstop gig. Nate Mondou’s sixth-inning walk scored the final run of the Chihuahuas’ season. 

Writer’s Note to the Audience

To all our readers, if this is your first minor league report read or if you read up every day, thank you so much for following these young ballplayers’ journeys across the course of the season. None of what we do here would be possible without your support, from San Diego to El Paso, from Fort Wayne to San Antonio, from Lake Elsinore to Arizona and the Dominican Republic, to wherever you are. Thank you for choosing us as your source of minor league coverage, and we look forward to continuing to provide nothing but  our very best in coverage through the offseason and beyond.  

– The EVT Padres staff

Diego Garcia

A born and raised San Diegan, Diego Garcia is a lifetime Padres fan and self-proclaimed baseball nerd. Diego wrote about baseball on his own site between 2021-22 before joining the East Village Times team in 2024. He also posts baseball content on his YouTube channel “Stat Nerd Baseball”, creating content around trades, hypotheticals, player analyses, the San Diego Padres, and MLB as a whole.

A 2024 graduate of San Diego State, Diego aims to grow as a writer and content creator in the baseball community.