Home, sweet home: Padres out-punch D-backs, bring NL Wild Card Series back to Petco Park

Jeff Sanders, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Sep 27, 2026

Published in Baseball

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SAN DIEGO — Jogging up the first base line in the fourth inning, Manny Machado tracked the 99 mph ball off his bat as it arched toward the short porch in right field.

The 34-year-old veteran peered into his dugout after it cleared the wall, raising his right index finger toward a pink-and-navy Picasso sky as he reached first base.

Machado’s 30th home run was hardly the hardest ball hit Saturday night.

It was, however, the most impactful hit in a back-and-forth, 10-7 win that will allow the San Diego Padres to keep their suitcases in the closet a few days longer.

The NL Wild Card Series is returning to Petco Park.

“I think that’s a big, big opportunity for us,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said earlier in the week of the prospect of hosting playoff games for the first time since the 2024 NLDS.

Indeed.

After all, the Padres were 50-53 before their offense and incredible home record supercharged a turnaround that resulted in the team’s third straight 90-win season and the seventh overall in franchise history.

Instead of settling for an unprecedented third straight postseason berth and a plane ticket for a best-of-three series on the other side of the country, the Padres jumped seven teams to lead the NL’s wild-card contingent for the second time in three years.

On Tuesday, they’ll host the Chicago Cubs — who are locked into the No. 5 seed after the Philadelphia Phillies lost a fourth straight game Saturday — in a rematch of last year’s NL Wild Card Series at Wrigley Field.

The Padres lost that series in three games.

What a difference a sellout crowd like Saturday’s throng of 44,698 yellow-towel-twirling fans could make in a venue in which the team has won 50 of its 80 games so far this year.

Which has meant a lot has gone right this year in the Gaslamp district, as was the case a day after a clunker to open the series against a hair-on-fire Arizona Diamondbacks team that can still track down the Phillies on Sunday for the No. 6 seed.

Xander Bogaerts hit his 13th homer to continue a resurgent September (.847 OPS), the Padres scored in five of the first six innings and the Padres’ bullpen threw 42/3 scoreless innings after a shaky start from Walker Buehler (32/3 IP, 4 R, 3 ER).

In fact, the game turned in the top of the fifth inning when Bradgley Rodriguez got an inning-ending double play to make sure the Diamondbacks did not answer Machado’s blast in what had been a back-and-forth game to that point.

Ethan Salas’ throwing error on a back-pick erased the 1-0 lead afforded by Jackson Merrill’s first-inning single. Gabriel Moreno’s run-scoring single in the third gave Arizona a lead and James McCann’s two-run homer in the fourth answered the two runs the Padres scored in the third when a picturesque baseball sky gave Diamondbacks outfielders trouble with fly balls.

A half-inning later, reliever José Cabrera — one of seven arms thrown in Arizona’s bullpen game — could not cleanly glove a 100 mph comebacker. Fernando Tatis Jr. followed with a walk and Machado lifted a three-run homer over the wall in right for what proved to be the game-winner and a monumental homer for his resume.

The blast gave Machado at least 30 for the eighth time in his career. The only other active players that have done that are Kyle Schwarber and Nolan Arenado, while 20 of the 39 players to log at least eight 30-homer seasons are in the Hall of Fame.

Four of those seasons have come as a Padre, matching Adrian Gonzalez for the most in franchise history.

Tatis added an RBI groundout after Bogaerts home run in the fifth inning and Jake Cronenworth drove in two runs in the sixth with a single to open a 10-4 lead that was well protected even with Mason Miller coughing up three runs after entering with a six-run lead in a postseason tune-up.

Ildemaro Vargas struck out representing the tying run to end the game.