SAN DIEGO — The Braves’ best pitcher, NL Cy Young Award favorite Chris Sale, was back home in Atlanta with a back injury.
Max Fried, who started his career as a San Diego Padres farmhand and won the clinching game in the 2021 World Series for the Braves, was in the trainer’s room by the third inning.
Still, the Braves put a scare into the sellout crowd at Petco Park by whittling San Diego’s lead down to one run Wednesday night. But the Padres closed out a 5-4 win for a two-game sweep of their NL Wild Card Series that ended a most trying season for Atlanta.
The banged-up Braves were decimated by injuries all year and still managed to make their seventh straight playoff appearance — even though their six-year reign atop the NL East was halted.
“We won 89 games. I’m so proud of those guys,” manager Brian Snitker said. “I just told them that. It’s amazing what they did, I think, to put ourselves in contention. We had a chance here. We got in the tournament.
“Get a hit yesterday, hit today, who knows, we may be playing tomorrow,” Snitker said. “But we’re not. It’s the way this thing is. That’s how fragile this is and how hard it is. You just remember how hard it is in this long season for things to go right for you.”
Sale was scratched from the nightcap of a makeup doubleheader Monday against the New York Mets with back spasms — a game Atlanta needed to win to reach the postseason. He was left off the roster for the Wild Card Series.
And then the latest in a long line of injuries occurred just two batters into Fried’s outing Wednesday night. The left-hander was nailed on the left hip by Fernando Tatis Jr.’s comebacker, which caromed away, allowing the batter to reach on an infield single. Fried was checked by an athletic trainer and stayed in the game. He loaded the bases but got out of the jam.
He got the first two outs in the second inning before No. 9 batter Kyle Higashioka drove a home run into the left-field seats to tie it at 1. The Padres followed with five more hits and suddenly it was 5-1.
“It was a pretty good shot,” Snitker said. “I’m not going to take away anything from the Padres. They squared some balls up really good and got big hits. I think that when he got hit on the hip, as the inning wore on, it affected him, which, to no fault of his own, because when he started out, I was like, ‘Oh boy, this is going to be pretty good here.’ I think the longer he was out there, the worse it got.
“But, again, our bullpen did an unbelievable job — for the second night in a row. I’m so proud of those guys, too, and how they stepped up. And you know what? We got it within realistic numbers.”
The Braves overcame a staggering number of injuries to make it to October.
Spencer Strider, coming off a 20-win season in which he set a franchise record with 281 strikeouts, made only two starts before his season ended because of an elbow injury.
Ronald Acuña Jr., the unanimous NL MVP in 2023 when he became the first player in major league history with 40 homers and 70 stolen bases, went down in late May with the second season-ending knee injury of his career.
Slugging third baseman Austin Riley sustained a broken hand in mid-August and was ruled out for the playoffs. Key reliever A.J. Minter had season-ending hip surgery, and second baseman Ozzie Albies and center fielder Michael Harris II returned after missing significant time.
“Like I said before, everybody goes through stuff getting here. It’s hard to navigate seven months for every team, all 30 of us,” Snitker said. And it just shows you can do everything right and not — it’s part of why we keep coming back in this game, in this business.
“And that’s why it’s so hard to win a World Series. It’s hard to get to the playoffs. It’s hard to win a division. So, it’s just a lot of things have got to go right. You’ve got a lot of depth in the organization.”
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