Padres beat Dodgers to move one win away from postseason

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Sep 24, 2026

Published in Baseball

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LOS ANGELES — Win and they’re in.

It is that definitive for the Padres after they beat the Dodgers 5-1 on Wednesday night.

Still, there is so much yet to come into focus in the National League playoff picture.

The Padres took sole possession of the National League’s No. 4 playoff seed, which would get them a series at Petco Park in the wild-card round if they were to hold onto it.

But while the Cubs and Phillies have not run away from the Padres, the Diamondbacks have not gone away.

Before the Padres began their game Wednesday, the Phillies lost. While the game in Los Angeles was in the second inning, the Cubs lost.

Those three teams began the day in possession of the National League’s wild-card spots and with identical records. All of them could have clinched a playoff spot with a victory and a Diamondbacks loss.

The Diamondbacks, the only NL team on the outside of the playoff picture with a chance, won on Wednesday to stay alive no matter what the Padres did later.

The Diamondbacks can only do so much Thursday to affect their fate.

An Arizona loss Thursday afternoon at Coors Field means the Padres clinch a playoff spot before taking the field. The Diamondbacks winning in Denver would leave the Padres needing a win to secure their third consecutive playoff berth.

If they do not clinch here, the Padres would have to win once in the final series of the season, a three-game set against the Diamondbacks that begins Friday at Petco Park.

“I don’t think anyone wants it to get to this weekend,” Padres first baseman Ty France said Wednesday afternoon. “But, you know, at the same time, whenever it happens, it happens. We just need to keep worrying about our game and playing our game.”

They were having a tough time of it Wednesday against Yoshinobu Yamamoto until Manny Machado’s two-run homer in the fourth inning gave the Padres a 2-0 lead.

That was their second hit of the night, and it got them on the scoreboard for the first time in the two games here this week.

The Padres managed five hits in a 7-0 loss in Tuesday’s series opener, as the Dodgers did to them what they did in Game 4 of the National League Division Series, suppressing the Padres with eight members of their elite bullpen.

The task on Wednesday was to try to break through against Yamamoto, who brought the National League’s third-best ERA (2.51 ERA) and having turned in three quality starts against the Padres this season.

He held them to a run in seven innings in April and two runs in six innings in June at Petco Park and shutting them out for seven innings at Dodger Stadium in July. The Padres got a total of 11 hits against him in those 20 innings.

As he had on Tuesday, Fernando Tatis Jr. led off Wednesday’s game with a single.

But Yamamoto retired the next nine Padres batters before Dustin Harris had a fastball graze his jersey and reached base to start the fourth inning.

Machado, who entered the game with six hits in his previous 48 at-bats, hit the next pitch 409 feet and over the wall in center field.

France followed with a single, and Xander Bogaerts walked with one out. But both were stranded.

Padres starter Robbie Ray had allowed at least one baserunner each of the first three innings, and it took a dozen pitches and three singles in the fourth inning for his night to implode.

The first hit was Ray’s fault, because he was late getting off the mound to cover first base, rendering France’s magnificent stop of a hard grounder by Teoscar Hernández moot.

A flare into left-center field off the thin part of Kyle Tucker’s bat and another flare into center field by Andy Pages followed to load the bases before Ray got his final out of the night on a shallow fly ball to center by Max Muncy.

David Morgan entered the game, and Tommy Edman immediately lined a ball to left field that got Hernández home to make it 2-1.

Morgan walked Mookie Betts and appeared to have walked Shohei Ohtani to bring in the tying run. But catcher Ethan Salas successfully challenged the ball four call, and Morgan ended up striking out Ohtani to end the inning.

The Padres struck quickly and aggressively to add on in the fifth.

Salas led off the inning by hitting a grounder to the right side, where it went off a sliding Edman’s glove. Tatis then chopped a ball toward third base slowly enough that there was no attempt to throw him out.

Dustin Harris followed with a bunt fielded by Yamamoto, who turned and threw late and low to third base, and the ball bounced past Muncy and into foul territory as Salas ran home and Tatis got to third.

And on Machado’s fly ball to relatively shallow center field, Tatis tagged up and slid into home just ahead of the throw from Pages to make it 4-1.

Some more aggressiveness got them an insurance run in the ninth inning when Samad Taylor drew a one-out walk and then stole second and third on successive pitches before Freddy Fermin beat a ball into the ground in front of the plate that bounced over a drawn-in infield on the left side to bring in Taylor.

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