NL WILD CARD SERIES: CUBS VS PADRES VS CUBS

September 30, 2026

Craig Stammen

Petco Park

San Diego Padres

Postgame Press Conference

Padres - 4, Cubs - 1

Q. First of all, congratulations on advancing to the NLDS. How does ending the series in two games affect your pitching decisions for that series? Game 1, do you have a starter yet?

CRAIG STAMMEN: It's nice to finish in two. Saves our bullpen a little bit, and we can decide who's going to start Game 1. We haven't decided that yet, but it definitely sets us up better with two days off. Get those guys fresh and ready to go for the Brewers.

Q. You've had success against the Milwaukee. How's the confidence in the clubhouse getting to a rival that's had more rest than you guys?

CRAIG STAMMEN: It's going to be a tough series. The regular season is out the window. As we saw, the Cubs kicked our butt in the regular season, and we were able to handle them for two games.

Anything can happen in a short series. They're going to be a tough opponent. Every game that we played with them was really close in the regular season. I anticipate something similar to that in this coming week.

Q. I might be getting a bit out of -- still a long road to go.

CRAIG STAMMEN: Ahead of yourself.

Q. But I think a lot of people are looking for that National League Championship Series against the rival upstate.

CRAIG STAMMEN: You're right, it is a long ways away. Milwaukee has been the best team all year. It's going to be a very tough series, five-game series against them. We're going to have to play our best, just like we did against the Cubs, to knock them out, and we'll see where we are after that.

Q. Tonight was kind of a microcosm, if you will, of how successful your bullpen has been all year, and you went to them really early on in that fourth inning. Talk about how tonight was really your secret weapon the whole time and how you were relying on Rodriguez, Morejon, Mason to get there, using them early on.

CRAIG STAMMEN: I think we felt after last night's game when we didn't have to use them, which we were thankful we didn't have to, that we could use them a bit more aggressively today. Especially with Nick, the way he was pitching, he was pitching really good. He had trouble the inning before, trouble again, gave up the RBI hit. We had Bradgley ready.

One of the great things about our bullpen is they can go multiple innings. Bradgley, Adrian both can pick up more than one inning, get out of a jam and get another inning. It's what makes them so good. Then you bring in a guy for Jason Adam, who's had so much experience and success in his Big League career to be able to pitch a sixth inning, and then we go to the best relief pitcher in all of baseball to finish the game.

We do have a strong bullpen, and even the guys we haven't used are very good pitchers also. That's going to be the strength of our team as we go through the postseason.

Q. Speaking of pitching, what are your options here for Games 1 and 2 in Milwaukee, and who could you turn to to start?

CRAIG STAMMEN: We could go with anybody literally on our pitching staff. Anybody on our pitching staff is available. We have two days off. So we could go any -- a ton of options. We'll figure that out here over the next day or two and hopefully name a starter for you guys when we get to Milwaukee.

Q. Could you talk about the impact of Ty France in the second half and big hit tonight, just the impact he's had on your team?

CRAIG STAMMEN: Ty's been a great player for us all season. Unsung hero, but has really had the best offensive season of anybody on our team. He continues to come up with big hits in big spots. He's really good against lefties and righties. He fits really good right behind Manny in the lineup and in front of Jackson. Without him, we wouldn't be here, there's no doubt about that.

Even the way he's played first base too has been pretty remarkable. He's definitely in my mind a Gold Glove first baseman. I know he won it last year. I feel like he should win it again this year. He's had a great season all year on both sides of the ball.

Q. PCA and Bregman have been so good all year for the Cubs. What were you able to do to really neutralize them in this series?

CRAIG STAMMEN: Those were the two guys we marked as we don't want those guys to beat us in this series. We tried our best to set up our pitching to handle them. In the first game, we were just lucky we got out to a bigger lead. It's a lot easier to pitch to those guys with a bigger lead or with a lead. It forces them to have to hit their way around a score to score some runs.

PCA's MVP season, what a season by him. And Bregman, what a second half by him. Unlucky with the foul ball off the eye.

Our pitchers stuck to the game plan that we had with them. They executed pitches. That's what it always comes down to is just executing what they have and not trying to do something out of what they have. They did a good job staying within themselves and being able to make pitches against those two guys.