The Milwaukee Brewers have learned their opponent in the National League Division Series, and it’s the San Diego Padres, a red-hot squad that dispatched the Cubs in a wild-card round rematch from 2025.
Instead of bussing up I-94, the opponent will be flying in from Southern California for the start of the series Oct. 3-4 at American Family Field.
Here’s what to know about the Padres, a team the Brewers have never faced before in the playoffs.
The Padres are the hottest team in baseball, and it’s been that way for a while
San Diego finished the year having won 17 of its final 20 games, including two of three against the Dodgers and playoff-hopeful Diamondbacks. Not only that, but San Diego woke up just July 24 with a 50-53 record, then went 41-24 to end the year. That, of course, included a three-game sweep of the Brewers in San Diego.
The degree to which a team is “hot” doesn’t always correlate to postseason success, we know. If you need recent examples, you have the 2022 Dodgers (43-18 to close year, lost 3-1 in NLDS), 2023 Rays (finished season 34-19, lost in wild-card series, 2-0), 2024 Tigers (finished 31-13, swept wild-card round and then lost ALDS, 3-2) and 2025 Yankees (won 10 of 11 to finish year, scored nine runs over three games to barely sneak out of wild-card round and lost 3-1 in ALDS).
Or, uh, the 2023 Brewers, who went 35-20 over the final two months and lost 2-0 in the wild-card series to Arizona.
But the Padres are also a confident team that seems to be playing more to the talent on its roster than it was for most of the season’s first half.
Everybody knows the bullpen is San Diego’s strength
Nobody has a bullpen like the Padres. Their 3.53 ERA may only rank fifth for the season, but their Expected ERA (xERA, which factors in quality of contact and Statcast data) is best by a mile. The bullpen is elite at generating ground balls, doesn’t walk many runners and strikes out a ton.
The star power is there. Flamethrowing Mason Miller (1.67 ERA, league-best 38 saves, 129 strikeouts in 70 innings) is the obvious frontrunner for the first official Reliever of the Year award presented by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Left-hander Adrián Morejón can be equally as devastating, with a 2.83 ERA and 107 strikeouts in 86 innings. Bradgley Rodriguez (2.19 ERA and 81 strikeouts in 74 innings) gives the Padres a top option from the right side, and Yuki Matsui (1.83 ERA, 68 strikeouts in 64 innings) provides a weapon throwing from the left side.
That doesn’t even account for right-hander Jason Adam, who was missing with a shoulder strain for three months but is back and had a 2.62 ERA this year.
If the Padres have a late lead, it’s going to be exceptionally difficult for the Brewers to come back, although the Brewers have gotten baserunners against every one of the aforementioned relievers during their head-to-head matchups.
Oh look, Manny Machado is coming back for a playoff game
In 2018, the Brewers thought they were close to a trade-deadline move for Manny Machado, then with the Baltimore Orioles, but he went to the Dodgers instead; Machado wound up being part of the team that beat the Brewers in the National League Championship Series. There’s a potential element of unfortunate synergy there, given that the Brewers tried to land Tarik Skubal from the Tigers this year, and he could easily face the Brewers in the NLCS with the Dodgers in 2026.
Brewers fans remember well what Machado did in that series, and they let him hear about it every time he plays at American Family Field, with a lusty cascade of boos usually reserved for such luminaries as former manager Craig Counsell.
The grudge dates back to Machado’s seemingly purposeful maneuver to spike first baseman Jesús Aguilar on a play at first base, which led to a minor benches-clearing incident in Game 4 of that series. The Dodgers went on to win that game in the 13th inning in a series Los Angeles won in seven games, and Machado has been an enemy of the Milwaukee people ever since.
The starting pitching options are Michael King and … ?
As good as the bullpen has been, the starting rotation is devoid of many clear-cut options.
Michael King, who took a no-hitter into the seventh in Game 1 against the Cubs, has been excellent this year, with a 3.21 ERA and a 1.178 WHIP in 185 innings. He’s obviously their top guy.
After that? It gets dicey fast. Nick Pivetta, limited to just eight games this season, has been nails in his four starts since returning from injury in September, allowing three earned runs in in just shy of 19 innings before a nice outing in Game 2 of the wild-card series, though he was taken out of the game in the fourth.
This isn’t the same Walker Buehler (4.63 ERA) who was part of that Dodgers team in 2018. Randy Vásquez (3.90 ERA) has been pretty good since August began (.276 ERA) but doesn’t strike out many batters and has gotten a kind .207 batting average on balls in play over those final two months.
Casey Mize has been rough since he was acquired at the deadline and hasn’t been healthy; he was left off the wild-card roster and has an ankle injury. Fellow trade-deadline acquisition Robbie Ray has a 5.02 ERA in his 43 innings with the Padres.
The hitters struggled overall … but not in the second half
Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill, Ty France, Xander Bogaerts and Machado were all above-average hitters after the all-star break at minimum, and Tatis was a star, posting a .996 OPS after the all-star break with 20 homers and 15 steals. So don’t let that .828 OPS for the season fool you.
Sure, Machado just has a .711 OPS for the season, Bogaerts at .676, Jake Cronenworth at .629, Merrill at .743 and Gavin Sheets at .709. They don’t jump off the page, except for France, whose .865 OPS actually made the 31-year-old the team’s top player by Baseball Reference WAR this season.
But the lineup is extremely dangerous, even at catcher where Luis Campusano (.795 OPS in 71 games) and Ethan Salas (one of baseball’s top prospects and just 20 years old) could make an impact. Merrill had a .925 OPS in September, as well.
It’s been a success story for first-year manager Craig Stammen
Padres manager Craig Stammen, 42, a right-handed pitcher who won 55 games and posted a 3.66 ERA in his career, joined the Padres’ coaching staff before the 2024 season after he officially announced his retirement during the 2023 campaign. Two years later, he’s managing in the playoffs, having been hired before the season, taking over when Mike Shildt retired after the season.
One other managerial note: Pat Murphy was named Padres interim manager in 2015 after Bud Black was fired, marking Murphy’s only big-league managerial experience prior to arriving with the Brewers. San Diego announced Murphy would not be back in 2016 and hired Andy Green.
No, Luis Rengifo is not available
One of the Brewers’ late-spring additions, Luis Rengifo, didn’t work out when he posted a .534 OPS with zero homers in 57 games, and he was designated for assignment when Cooper Pratt was added to the active roster. Rengifo latched on with the Padres … where he posted a .794 OPS, reached base at a .375 clip and hit four homers, including a grand slam against Milwaukee.
But Rengifo suffered a torn ACL and MCL during an awkward play in the field Aug. 29, ending his season in a brutal way.
How did the Brewers do against the Padres this year?
It feels pretty safe to throw out regular-season results with the primary piece of recent evidence coming from the 2025 Brewers, who went 6-0 against the Dodgers and 0-4 in the NLCS against the same team. But in the interest of satisfying curiosity, here’s a look at the 2026 season series, which the Padres won, 4-2.
- May 12: Brewers 6, Padres 4. The Brewers rallied for five runs in the fourth inning, and Brandon Sproat emerged as the winning pitcher at American Family Field.
- May 13: Padres 3, Brewers 1. One of the biggest gut-punch losses of the year after Jacob Misiorowski struck out 10 batters over seven scoreless innings. The Brewers got within one strike of a 1-0 win before Gavin Sheets took Abner Uribe deep for a three-run homer with two outs in the ninth.
- May 14: Brewers 7, Padres 1. Kyle Harrison allowed no runs in five innings, and the Brewers scored three runs in both the first and second innings (with no home runs, either) en route to a relaxing victory.
- Aug. 10: Padres 3, Brewers 2. Logan Henderson allowed just one run until the seventh, where Jackson Merrill hit a go-ahead two-run homer. Christian Yelich’s two-run homer off Casey Mize accounted for Milwaukee’s only runs.
- Aug. 11: Padres 11, Brewers 2. An extremely ugly loss featuring a Luis Rengifo grand slam for the Padres (giving him more homers against the Brewers than for the Brewers, the team with which he began the year) and Kyle Harrison yielding eight runs (three earned) on 10 hits in 4 ⅔ innings.
- Aug. 12:Padres 4, Brewers 3 (11 innings). Dustin May carved up the Padres for the second time this year (once with St. Louis), but the Brewers lost the lead in the eighth on a two-out RBI single off Aaron Ashby after Chad Patrick walked back-to-back batters. The Brewers re-took the lead in the 11th but couldn’t score a runner from third base with nobody out, and the Padres scored twice against Antonio Senzatela in the 11th, capped with a Luis Campusano walk-off two-out single.
Five stats that might matter (or not)
- Dustin May has allowed three earned runs in 22 innings against the Padres this year, good for a 1.22 ERA, with 22 strikeouts and five walks.
- Miguel Andujar has 10 hits against Brewers pitchers this year in 33 at-bats (.303), with four doubles and a home run.
- Though the Padres feature more right-handed bats than lefties, they fared slightly better against righties (.401 slugging percentage) than lefties (.390 slugging) in 2026.
- San Diego has a wide spread between success on the road this season (40-41) and at home (51-30, plus 2-0 in the playoffs).
- With 164 stolen bases, San Diego is tied with Tampa Bay for the second most in Major League Baseball this season. The Padres are led by 38 from Fernando Tatis Jr.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Seven things to know about Brewers’ playoff opponent, San Diego Padres
