Cubs End Padres’ Season, Set Up High-Stakes Clash With Milwaukee. 

The Cubs just broke a seven-year postseason drought, and they did it in classic Wrigley style: gritty pitching, airtight defense, and just enough offense to keep the crowd of nearly 41,000 in full roar. Pete Crow-Armstrong, who had looked completely lost at the plate in the first two games, suddenly turned into the hero with three hits and a crucial RBI single. That’s baseball in a nutshell—yesterday’s goat becomes today’s spark plug.

The Padres, meanwhile, played like a team dragging a heavy October curse. Yu Darvish never looked comfortable, and their stars—Fernando Tatis Jr. especially—completely vanished when it mattered most. Tatis going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts is the kind of stat line that haunts a winter.

Craig Counsell’s fingerprints were all over this win. Pulling Taillon after four strong innings, rolling through five relievers, trusting his defense—that’s textbook October micromanagement. And the irony of Counsell now leading the Cubs into Milwaukee for a Division Series against the franchise he once defined? That’s baseball theater, the kind of rivalry twist the sport lives for. The boos in Milwaukee are going to shake Miller Lite cans off the shelves.

The Cubs-Brewers series is shaping up to be pure chaos. Chicago actually held its own against Milwaukee in the regular season, with only a razor-thin run differential (60-56). Both teams know each other inside out. Add in Counsell switching allegiances, and you’ve got one of the juiciest storylines October baseball can serve up.

The Padres’ early exit just adds to their mystique as the perpetual underachievers of this era—talent-heavy, payroll-heavy, but still lacking that killer edge when it counts.

What makes this especially fun: the Cubs aren’t just sneaking into October—they’re building a narrative. Young guys like Busch and Crow-Armstrong are feeding into the energy of veterans like Swanson. If they knock off Milwaukee, the whole “are the Cubs really back?” conversation turns from question mark to exclamation point.

The NL Central just became the center of the baseball universe for a week.