NL DIVISION SERIES: PADRES VS BREWERS

October 7, 2026

Craig Stammen

Petco Park

San Diego Padres

Postgame 4 Press Conference

Brewers - 3, Padres - 1

Q. First, how do you process the end to your season?

CRAIG STAMMEN: Every baseball season ends very abruptly when you're in the playoffs, sooner than you want typically. Only one team gets to win it in the end. Unfortunately, this year it wasn't our chance.

Q. I know it's early, but how do you assess a 91-win season? You won a series and came here and fell short.

CRAIG STAMMEN: A lot to be proud of this year. A lot to go home and say, yeah, we did a pretty good job, but also we're not satisfied. We're not satisfied until we finally bring that championship to San Diego. But this year made us one step closer to that.

Q. How so do you think, one step closer? Just experience?

CRAIG STAMMEN: Yeah, I think every experience you go through helps you and helps you grow and get better as you go. Hopefully we use it to our advantage. We use this season to our advantage, the good and the bad from it.

There's a ton of good at the season. The way the team came together, the way they played down the stretch, became the hottest team in baseball down the stretch maybe right up next to the Brewers, the way they were playing too.

We saw what a series looks like when two hot teams go up against each other that are pretty evenly matched. They were able to get on the right end of the scoreboard a few more games than we were.

Q. In that evenly matched series, it felt like it was a game of inches literally tonight with the triple down the first base line and then Manny's home run. Is there a sense of maybe more frustration when it's just little things like that that maybe make the difference?

CRAIG STAMMEN: Yeah, it makes you realize how hard it is to win the whole thing and how much has to go your way for that to happen. In this series, those types of bounces didn't quite go our way. Could we have played a little bit better? Yeah, for sure we could play a little bit better in all areas of baseball. We played a pretty good series and just didn't end up on the right side of the scoreboard. We played to our standard. I felt good about how we pitched, how we played defense. Offensively we played pretty solid throughout the series. This game we didn't have as good of an offensive showing, but there was also chances that we had and we just didn't come through.

Q. There were a couple hits throughout the series that could have changed drastically for you and for them. Do you feel like it was a matter of luck for your team, especially in this series, for how good you have been playing throughout September?

CRAIG STAMMEN: Yeah, all the wins we had at the end, we had a lot of breaks go our way also. So we've got to look at it in that manner. Yeah, could there have been a few things that went our way in this series and would have changed the outcome? Yeah, there's no doubt about that. But you want to get to a point where you're not relying on a chance to help you win a series.

We've got to find a way to leave no doubt in these series. Even though we feel like we played good enough to win, we've got to play a little bit better against good teams like the Brewers.

Q. Obviously hard to process. I just want to get your thoughts on Manny Machado's almost home run that was really close, and in 19 out of 30 ballparks it would have been a home run.

CRAIG STAMMEN: We've played in Petco all year. We know that spot in the stadium the balls don't go out very easily and you've really got to pop one. He put a great swing on a tough pitch, one of his best swings of the season, honestly.

The way Manny played this last month of baseball was pretty remarkable. That's probably the best I've ever seen Manny Machado play, the way he was playing defense, running the bases, swinging the bat, he was on another level. He was trying to carry us. There's no doubt about it, and he did.

That ball fell short, but man, what a player and what a leader he was for us at the end.

Q. A lot of talk about your relationship with this team going back a number of years. You've been with them through this but obviously not in this role. How would you describe the experience of kind of ushering through this moment now in this position?

CRAIG STAMMEN: It stings the same, as it did all the years that we haven't made it and we've lost in the playoffs. I think in this new role, I've got to be the one that's thinking about the future and thinking about what's good about what's yet to come. I told those guys the best is yet to come for us.

We had a template of how things could work really well for us and how we could come together and be one of the best teams in baseball, and we just weren't able to finish it off this year, but we were close.

That's something that we can hang our hat on and try to improve on next year.

Q. You mentioned offensively, I think, those three hits tonight, only two opportunities with runners in scoring position when you had generated a bunch earlier in the series. What did you see from that standpoint?

CRAIG STAMMEN: That first inning we got the bases loaded and had a chance there, didn't cash in on that. Their pitching has been good all series. They kind of threw all their high-leverage arms at us, and we weren't able to get anything done.

Tati had the big home run. But Ashby shut us down for three innings. Uribe came in, we got the leadoff walk. We weren't able to do anything after that with our big boys, and then Miguel finished the job.

They got a great relief core just like we had our entire season, and I think that's a big reason for their success.

Q. This is the third consecutive postseason that sort of devolved because the offense couldn't get anything going in a decisive series. A lot of different guys but a lot of the same guys. What needs to get better? What needs to change?

CRAIG STAMMEN: Honestly, I think our offense played well in this series. We didn't have a great game today, but you look at the first three games, we had tons of scoring opportunities and we cashed through on a few but not always. You look at the Wild Card series, we definitely had a good offense in the first game and scored four more in the second.

I wouldn't jumble them all together. I think, when you get to the playoffs, you're going to face the best pitching staffs in the entire league. The way pitching is going now, you're not going to see a starter for more than four or five innings unless he's one of the dominant guys in our league. So you're just going to have to match up and face everybody's best three or four pitchers the entire game, which makes it tough for offense.

We did the same thing to them. They're the second highest run-scoring team in all of baseball, and I don't think they scored that many runs either. The margins are just very close in the playoffs. The narrative of us not hitting could have been in the past, I felt like. We took a lot of great at-bat ins this series.

Q. You used a certain amount of pitchers in this series and some guys you didn't use. How much was it a product of the lanes that were there and went offensively and it was so tight?

CRAIG STAMMEN: You're exactly right. David Morgan didn't pitch. He was the only one I think that didn't pitch on our staff. Today was kind of we used everybody that we had and we needed somebody that, if this game got tied up in the ninth, that we had somebody to kind of help us go.

He had a great end of the season and had some big outs against the Dodgers to help us clinch. Just didn't find that right lane for him in the series.

Q. Even when you were up, was there not a point for him, like when Ray came in, or what was the plan for him today?

CRAIG STAMMEN: He was available today and could have came in and could have been in that, where Jason Adam pitched and found some of the lefties. I probably could have used Mason a little earlier and possibly use him for more than one inning, and I thought Adrian could close the game out. So we needed to save him. We needed somebody back there to save the game, and the way we were going through the relievers, there wasn't a ton left. Everyone pretty much did their job. We gave up three runs in a nine-inning ballgame. That's not too shabby.

Q. Do you have any words for William Contreras' performance? He seemed to be the toughest out in the whole Brewers lineup.

CRAIG STAMMEN: Yeah, he was probably the MVP of the series. What he did behind the plate, being able to throw some runners out. What he did at the plate, every time was a tough at-bat. I don't know what he finished with his batting average, but it felt like he got a hit almost every time he was at the bat. He had the big home run in Game 1. He had a great series. He's a great player. Not surprised by that.

Going in we knew, that's why he's hitting 3 hole for them. We've got great players on our team too that had a good series, but probably he outperformed everybody.

Q. Do you have any words for all the San Diegans?

CRAIG STAMMEN: So much fun coming and playing here at home. The crowds were amazing. They were better -- they're the best fans in the league. The best stadium, the best atmosphere in the league, and they proved that over the four games we had in the playoffs, no doubt.