It’s time for revenge. And it’s official: Tuesday, the Chicago Cubs will travel to San Diego to face the Padres in the first round of the 2026 MLB Playoffs. The actual time of this first game has not yet been set.
Cubs playoff opponent: Padres
The full playoff picture still has two spots to be determined (Astros or Rangers and Phillies or Diamondbacks), but the rest of the picture is set:
The Cubs ultimately finished two games behind the Padres (WC1) and one game ahead of the Phillies (WC3), who will travel to Atlanta to face the Braves if nothing else changes. And I think that might have been the easier path….
If the Cubs can beat the Padres in San Diego, they would advance to the NLDS, where they would have yet another 2025 postseason rematch with the Brewers, who would also have home-field advantage for three of the potential five-game series. Last year, the Cubs beat the Padres in three at Wrigley Field, before getting beaten by the Brewers in five.
In the end, it’s a pretty big disappointment.
Not only did the Cubs fail to achieve their goal of winning the NL Central this year, but they also won fewer games than last season, entering the playoffs as a lower seed with no home-field advantage in the first round. We can talk about all the injuries (and there have been A LOT), but they failed this year. And it stinks.
And now their path to the World Series is extremely difficult.
We’ll get into the details of the game later today/this week, but note that the Padres have been scorching in September (17-6) and are 50-30 at home (compared to 40-41 on the road…).
Plus, it’s usually not easy when the Cubs travel west under normal circumstances, but their recent travel schedule has been crazy: They just went from Chicago to Boston and then to Tampa Bay for Sunday’s meaningless regular-season finale against the Red Sox. And now they’ll have to travel across the country to San Diego for this series. Brutal.
But it’s the Cubs’ fault. By mid-August, they had a 6.5-game lead for first place in the World Championship. Hell, they were only 3.0 games behind the Brewers on August 14th. But since that day, they have gone 16-22, finishing with a final record of 88-73.
Dansby Swanson’s injury, Alex Bregman’s injury, the thousands of throwing injuries…all those factors, and I appreciate it. But we are where we are. And that’s not a good position. The battle from here on is extremely difficult and you don’t get any extra points given the difficulty of the battle.
That said, the Cubs were 5-1 against the Padres this season, including a 2-1 series win in San Diego in April. And the Padres are also worse this season against left-handed pitchers (98 wRC+), which could bode well for Matthew Boyd and David Peterson.
And that could be a factor if presumptive Cubs Game 1 starter Kevin Gausman is still dealing with (non-pitching) shoulder soreness after that diving play in his final start of the year. Indeed, even if Gausman pitches the first game, Peterson could step in for several “relief” innings.
That said, I guess Plan A it’s Kevin Gausman, Clay Holmes, Matthew Boyd.
We’ll know a lot more about this series soon. But that’s the bottom line: we’re heading west and it’s not going to be easy. Good luck, Cub Scouts. Good luck to all of us.
Gn sports
