The San Diego Padres avoided elimination in the National League Division Series on Tuesday night, beating the Milwaukee Brewers 4-3 at Petco Park behind a tie-breaking home run from Jake Cronenworth and two scoreless innings of relief from Michael King, who pitched on one day of rest to record the biggest save of his season.
The win trims Milwaukee’s series lead to 2-1, with Game 4 set for Wednesday night, again at Petco Park. The Brewers, who carried the best regular-season record in baseball into October, had taken the first two games of the best-of-five series before Tuesday’s loss, their first anywhere this postseason.
Cronenworth breaks the tie
San Diego built an early 2-0 lead in the third inning on a run-scoring groundout by Fernando Tatis Jr. and a Manny Machado single that drove in Jackson Merrill. Milwaukee catcher William Contreras cut the deficit to 2-1 with a solo home run off Padres starter Nick Pivetta in the fourth, and the Brewers tied it 2-2 in the fifth on Jackson Chourio’s sacrifice fly to left, where Dustin Harris’s throw home wasn’t in time to catch Cooper Pratt.
Cronenworth answered in the bottom of the fifth, lining the first pitch he saw from Milwaukee reliever JoJo Romero over the right-field wall for a solo home run — his first of the postseason and just his second hit of the series — to put the Padres back in front 3-2. San Diego never trailed again, as shown in the inning-by-inning play log. Xander Bogaerts added a run in the sixth, scoring on a throwing error by Milwaukee shortstop Pratt, before Christian Yelich’s single drove in Contreras in the seventh to make it 4-3, the eventual final score.
King closes it out, short-handed
With closer Mason Miller unavailable after going on the paternity list roughly 45 minutes before first pitch, and top setup man Adrián Morejón sidelined by shoulder soreness, Padres manager Craig Stammen turned to King, who had thrown a five-inning start in Game 2 just two days earlier. King worked the eighth and ninth, retiring four of his first five batters before walking Contreras and Brice Turang. Yelich then hit a 107 mph line drive up the middle that shortstop Bogaerts fielded on a short hop, stepped on second to force a runner, and threw to first to complete a game-ending double play. It was King’s first save since 2023, and his first with the Padres.
I know that I have bullets in my arm that I don’t want to save. If you’re in an elimination game, you want everybody to be all in on it, and we have a bunch of dogs down there that are all in.
Michael King, Padres reliever
Stammen credited the full roster afterward. “It feels like we’ve played three straight games against the Brewers like that,” he said. “We finally were able to come out on the right end of things in this one. A lot of big effort from a lot of guys during the game to get us to the final score.” Each of the series’ first three games has been decided by a single run — the first time a postseason series has opened that way since the 2021 NL Championship Series, per the official box score.
Bogaerts, who also made a diving stop in the fifth to keep a Contreras single from reaching the outfield with two runners on, struck a similarly weary tone about the grind of the series. “Can’t do much about the first two games, but all three games have been really good baseball,” he said. “Once tomorrow comes, let’s go for it, but right now let’s enjoy this one, because this was a really good one.”
Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy pointed to his team’s execution rather than its effort. “We didn’t get the big hit at the big time, but do you fault Yelly for hitting one 107 there and Bogaerts making a great play?” Murphy said. “They’ve got a great team, and they played great defense tonight.” The loss was Milwaukee’s 12th consecutive postseason road defeat, a streak dating to the 2018 NL Championship Series, even as Chourio’s sacrifice fly gave the 22-year-old his fifth RBI of the series and tied him with Ryan Braun for the franchise’s postseason RBI record.
Walker Buehler, the former Dodgers right-hander enjoying a resurgent season in San Diego after making 32 starts, is set to start Game 4 for the Padres on Wednesday. Milwaukee had not named a starter as of Tuesday night, with Robert Gasser, Shane Drohan and Chad Patrick all available after combining to start 45 games in the regular season. A deciding Game 5, if necessary, would be played in Milwaukee on Friday.
