The San Diego Padres moved up in the wild card standings before they played, courtesy of the Boston Red Sox.
The San Diego Padres got a bunch of favors from the Boston Red Sox, Mother Nature and the MLB schedule makers as they moved up the NL wild-card standings, with the Chicago Cubs' doubleheader loss helping the Padres clinch no worse than the fifth seed in the wild scramble.
It was perhaps the ultimate bad day for the Cubs and their fans, although these two franchises have more or less cornered the market on that kind of thinking. The Cubs had to play both games in a miserable combination of wind and rain, and they'll travel to Tampa Bay for a neutral site game on Sunday to escape a Northeast storm in the season finale.
The first game of the Cubs’ very bad day was a 4-3 loss to Boston, as the Cubs blew a 3-0 lead they racked up with a run in the first, then two more in the second inning off Boston opener Alec Gamboa. But the Red Sox followed the same scoring sequence with a run in the third and two more in the fifth to tie the game at 3-3.
Boston broke the tie in the seventh via an RBI double from Connor Wong, and three Red Sox relievers combined to shut out Chicago on just three hits over the final seven frames to put the win in the books and send the Cubs to their first loss of the day.
The nightcap added insult to injury as Boston won again, this time in a pitchers duel that stayed scoreless until the eighth, with David Peterson and Brayan Bello putting up zeroes initially and relievers for both teams following up with more of the same.
The pitching goat horns for the Cubs belonged to relievers Javier Assad and Ryan Rolison. Assad started the Boston rally by walking one hitter, and Rolison compounded the problem with a free pass to another after he came on to pick up Assad.
Wilyer Abreu then doubled off the Green Monster to score two runs, and Jedixon Paez finished up the shutout for the Red Sox as he pitched five scoreless innings while giving up just three hits to make Chicago’s second loss of the day official.
The losses were a windfall for the Padres, who clinched the fifth seed in the wild-card standings before they took the field. The Philadelphia Phillies also lost to the Tampa Bay Rays, 2-0, which means a San Diego followup win over the Diamondbacks in the first game of that series would give them the fourth seed and allow them to stay home at Petco Park for the entire three-game series in the first round.
The Padres are definitely living right these days, and they are now in position to seal their playoff fate completely.
