San Diego got the October night it came to Petco Park expecting, and the Padres made sure the noise carried well past the final out. Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado hit first-inning homers, Michael King flirted with history, and the Cubs were buried 8-0 in Game 1 of the National League Wild Card Series.
The Padres now sit one win from moving on to Milwaukee for the National League Division Series. Chicago, which controlled last year’s Wild Card meeting between these clubs, has no margin left.
Quick facts
- Padres 8, Cubs 0 in NL Wild Card Series Game 1 at Petco Park.
- Fernando Tatis Jr. homered on the first pitch of San Diego’s first inning.
- Manny Machado followed with another first-inning homer against Cubs left-hander Matthew Boyd.
- Michael King took a no-hit bid into the seventh and permitted one hit across seven innings.
- Game 2 is Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET, 9 p.m. CT and 7 p.m. PT on Peacock and NBCSN.
King set the tone immediately. He struck out Pete Crow-Armstrong on his third pitch of the game, then needed only eight more deliveries to put away the Cubs in order in the opening frame.
San Diego answered with an even bigger burst. Tatis led off the bottom half by driving the first pitch he saw over the center-field fence. Machado went deep two batters later, and the Padres had turned the ballpark into a postseason roar before Boyd could settle in.
That early cushion only grew while King kept Chicago off the board and off the bases. The right-hander carried the no-hitter into the seventh, with the Padres already holding a 7-0 advantage.
Nico Hoerner finally ended it with one out in the inning, dropping a soft hit down the third-base line. It was the longest individual no-hit effort in the postseason since Aníbal Sánchez worked 7 2/3 hitless innings for Washington in the 2019 NLCS.
King’s final line was one hit allowed over seven innings. The outing arrived exactly 28 years after Kevin Brown struck out 16 Houston hitters in the 1998 NLDS, a performance long considered the standard for a single-game pitching gem in Padres postseason history.
Brown’s place in club lore is secure. But on a night when Tatis and Machado lit the fuse in the first inning, King gave San Diego a postseason performance worthy of standing close behind it.
