Priests imagined bigger things, but bats remained silent: ‘It hurts a lot’

LOS ANGELES — Xander Bogaerts stood in a silent, empty clubhouse as he tried to give voice to a collective emotion. After a surprising conclusion, everyone had their own way of expressing regret. But only one teammate has reached the top of this sport. No one else had won multiple World Series.

For a long time, it seemed like the 2024 San Diego Padres had the pieces to change all that. Then came a torturous Friday night. Suddenly, it was the end.

“Roster-wise, man, we had it all,” Bogaerts said. “I mean, similar to the 2018 Red Sox. We were really good. I kind of felt a lot of similarities with this team and that team. But we didn’t finish the job.”

This one is going to hurt for a long time, much longer than the final 24 innings. Those flew by without a single Padres run. The final nine frames saw one of the game’s most resilient offenses emerge with a Bogaerts walk with two outs in the second, a single in a row in the third… and nothing else. The Los Angeles Dodgers, after a 2-0 loss in the National League Division Series, will continue playing. The Padres will spend at least the next few months thinking about what could have been.

Mainly because of who was there and who wasn’t.

As Bogaerts remained relatively silent, he reflected on the absences of Ha-Seong Kim and Joe Musgrove, two beloved teammates who were not present after undergoing surgery. Then, Bogaerts made reference to someone else. He still wore the team’s shirt, the one with the “PS” emblem in the heart.

“Obviously, even Peter (Seidler),” Bogaerts said of the late Padres owner. “He brought me here and we have something special. And it was at that point that it felt like everything that had happened and him being up there, you know, kind of looking down on us, guiding us – that it was going to be a special year. But that didn’t happen.

“In sports, you have to win and you have to lose. That’s the only bad thing I would say about it.”

Jake Cronenworth hits to end the eighth as part of a 24-inning scoreless streak for the Padres. (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

For a long time, the 2024 Padres have embodied the most fun parts of this sport. They were a .500 team the day after the All-Star break. They played nearly .900 baseball over the next three weeks. They finished the regular season with 93 wins, the second most in franchise history. They entered October as a popular choice to go all the way.

The stars seemed to align because of what they had on the field. And because of what they had far from it too.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been part of such a united team,” said Manny Machado.

“This is maybe the most fun I’ve ever had on a baseball field, you know, playing with these guys,” Kyle Higashioka said.

“I think I discovered a deeper love for baseball,” said Jackson Merrill, the Padres’ youngest player. “I guess I didn’t really know how electric it could be and how much of a family you could build over a whole summer.”

“Maybe the closest team I’ve ever been involved with,” said Yu Darvish, San Diego’s oldest player.

Nowhere have the Padres demonstrated that bond more often than on offense. They led the majors in hitting and batting average. They avoided focusing on home runs, but still ended up with a record at Petco Park. They recovered from deficit after deficit. Whenever they hit a double, they would look at the dugout and form a heart with their arms.

On Tuesday, they basked in the love of their teammates and an adoring home crowd en route to a six-run inning that was capped by a majestic Fernando Tatis Jr. home run.

Three days later, Darvish walked up to Dodger Stadium and touched the “PS” patch on his jersey. He began pitching mostly good innings, limiting the damage to two solo home runs. No one knew yet that those six runs on Tuesday would be the Padres’ last runs of 2024.

“It’s obviously very difficult how good we were as a team together,” Darvish said through interpreter Shingo Horie. “That really hurts.”

Disappointment manifests itself in many ways. On Friday night, several San Diego players credited a bevy of Dodger arms for shutting down one of the sport’s most resilient offenses in nearly three straight games. The Padres’ 24-inning scoreless streak didn’t just end the season. It was also the longest sequence of the season.

“Man, they were executing,” Tatis said. “Their pitchers did the job. Obviously, we made hard attempts, but ultimately, things didn’t go our way.”

Those were the two flyouts that Machado hit on the warning track. There was the top of the third when Higashioka and Luis Arraez hit back-to-back singles off Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a starting pitcher the Padres had beaten twice in the regular season. There was Tatis, until recently the hottest hitter on the planet, hitting into a subsequent double play.

There wasn’t much else.

“This was definitely a good opportunity,” Higashioka said. “But, I mean, Yamamoto is a good pitcher. We’ve caught him in the past and were very confident against him, but he came out on his ‘A’ game today and beat us. We couldn’t deliver that killing blow.”

Killer scams can also come in other forms. There was this, for example: The Dodgers came back from a 2-1 series deficit with almost no help from the most feared slugger on the planet. Shohei Ohtani finished the series 4 of 20 with 10 strikeouts. In Friday’s hitless exhibition, he struck out three times.

It could have been framed as a testament to a Padres team that had the pieces to win it all.

“(President of baseball operations) AJ (Preller) and his guys have put us in an extremely great position,” Bogaerts said. “What more could we have asked for, to be honest with you? We had the best bullpen and best batting average in the game. And the bullpen kind of showed up in this series, but the hitting maybe wasn’t the way we know it to be.

“Playoff baseball is a little different, too. But yeah, that was the only part that didn’t show up consistently.”

The timing couldn’t have been worse.

“We did a lot of unusual things,” Jurickson Profar said. “We also don’t want to give credit, you know, to your speech. We just didn’t pass.

“It’s very sad for this team. We had everything to go until the end. But, you know, it’s baseball. Baseball. They played better than us in the last two games. And let’s go home.”

Not everyone was ready to disperse. After the final game of the season, most of the Padres stood along the railing of the visitors’ dugout, watching in silence as the Dodgers celebrated on the field.

Merrill was the last to leave the cage. The rookie star later said he “1,000 percent” plans to be at Petco Park on Saturday. He still didn’t know what he would do there.

“Maybe just sit in my closet. I have to clean out my closet. And get ready to start developing and improving,” Merrill said. “I’m 21 years old. There is a lot of room to grow and a lot of room to improve. I just want to come back and help these guys compete. You know, I felt like I didn’t do the best I could. I’m sure many of us feel this way.”

It remains to be seen how many others will have a chance to help the 2025 Padres. Musgrove, the hometown hero, is expected to miss all of next season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. Kim is expected to decline the end of a mutual option. Profar, Higashioka, David Peralta, Donovan Solano and Tanner Scott — all key members of the 2024 team — are expected to join him in free agency the day after the World Series ends.

The day before will provide more reminders of a brutal 24-inning stretch.

“I think ‘awesome’ is appropriate,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said.

“It hurts a lot,” Arraez said, “because we did a lot of good things.”

They did. After last season’s turbulence and payroll reduction, they will remember that too.

“I’m proud of these guys, man,” Machado said. “All year since spring training, they’ve worked hard to get here, and a lot of guys wrote us off.”

“We have a strong core here and, man, the sky is the limit,” Tatis said. “I have no doubt we will be knocking on the door every year.”

“We compete with what we have and what we had is very good. What we have is very good. And we have a good basis to move forward,” Shildt said. “I don’t expect this to be an isolated case. I firmly hope this group comes back and is ready to compete in back-to-back playoffs for two, three, four years. This will be historic in the history of San Diego baseball.”

Maybe that will happen. But on Friday, someone had to lose. The visiting club’s headquarters opened to reporters nearly 30 minutes after the game. At this point, amid the hugs and handshakes, some players were still sitting, motionless, in front of their lockers – as if they had never left that bench railing.

After a season that for so long seemed magical, the Padres can’t help but remember what didn’t happen.

“Right now, I can’t think about the good times,” Profar said. “We just got out of the playoffs. So I have that memory in my mind now, it’s just that we didn’t make it.”

(Top photo by Jackson Merrill: Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)