The Padres are now in offseason mode, as the Dodgers eliminated them last week. What happened?

When the postseason started, the San Diego Padres were a trendy pick from pundits to win the World Series. That was due to them being one of the hottest teams in Major League Baseball entering October. They also had one of the most complete rosters in baseball. The trade deadline acquisitions, especially in the bullpen, had people believing.

Then, they appeared to crash face-first into a brick wall. After winning Game 2 against the Dodgers in the NLDS, they seemed to catch fire. They won Game 3 after a six-run second inning against Walker Buehler to take a 2-1 series lead. Then, the Padres bats went colder than Antarctica in July. After that six-run second inning, the Padres never scored again. They went 24 straight innings without a single run as the Dodgers gave them a knockout punch into elimination.

That included going 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position over the final two games of the series. So what happened? How did this team go from the hot, trendy World Series pick to basically showing as much life at the plate as a cadaver lab?

It looks like the Padres simply ran out of gas. Could the drama with Manny Machado versus the Dodgers after Game 2, and the emotional win in Game 3 following it, have taken its toll late in the series? The Padres arrived at Petco Park in Game 3 very amped up to play after Dave Roberts called out Machado, and a scathing article by Ken Rosenthal basically villainized the entire Padres team. They won that game, but perhaps they were too amped up. In baseball, you have to temper your emotions and not get too high or low. The Padres might have gotten too high-energy for that Game 3 and what followed.

In seemingly a blink of an eye, the Padres went from odds-on World Series favorites to completely sucked of all signs of life. Baseball can be a cruel sport.

That low energy also might have been because San Diego basically had to be in playoff mode for over two weeks straight. Starting on September 24 against the Dodgers in L.A., the Padres had to play in attack mode with little time to rest. First, they were fighting for the division. After that first win of that series in L.A., the Padres clinched a playoff spot but not the division. They gunned for the division the final two games of the series. The Friars seemed to run out of gas following the celebration of clinching the postseason.

The Padres basically played 13 games over 17 days that were almost do-or-die, minus Sunday’s regular-season finale against Arizona. Up until the final weekend, the Padres were still playing for postseason seeding. Did the two-week-long push exhaust this team? Perhaps this year, a bye as a division champ would have paid huge dividends.

Dylan Cease pitched on three days’ rest for the first time in his career for Game 4 of the NLDS and looked, frankly, terrible. Joe Musgrove pushed himself to the point of an injury requiring Tommy John surgery.

Meanwhile, in the final two games of the series, the Padres’ top bats of Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Jurickson Profar, and Jackson Merrill went a combined 2-for-29 with seven strikeouts and one extra-base hit. That’s a recipe for disaster, which is what this series turned into after a promising start.

Did the fact that the Padres went hard and fast for over two weeks lead them to run out of gas at the end? Were the emotions following Game 2 against the Dodgers burning too hot?

However it happened, the Padres losing the series against the Dodgers after being up 2-1 with still one more game at Petco Park is one of, if not the most disappointing ends to a season in franchise history.

Nick Lee

Native of Escondido, CA. Lived in San Diego area for 20 years. Padres fan since childhood (mid-90s). I have been writing since 2014. I currently live near Seattle, WA and am married to a Seattle sports girl. I wore #19 on my high school baseball team for Tony Gwynn. I am a stats and sports history nerd. I attended BYU on the Idaho campus. I also love Star Wars.