Padres continue September slog with 4-3 loss to White Sox

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Sep 19, 2025

Published in Baseball

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CHICAGO — The Padres came to Rate Field for the final series of 2023 and completed an empty sweep of the White Sox to end what was almost without question the most disappointing season in franchise history.

Almost two full years later, on the verge of making the postseason, the Padres returned to the ballpark that is home to one of baseball’s worst teams and continued to play like a team that seems bent on disappointing in its own spectacular way.

The Padres lost, 4-3, to the White Sox in a manner that has become familiar.

Their starting pitcher put them in a hole the offense could not get out of, as they lost for the 15th time in their past 24 games and the eighth time in their past 14 games against losing teams.

While the Padres are virtually guaranteed to make the playoffs, doing anything but exiting the postseason quickly will take them playing far better than they have for going on a month.

With eight games remaining in the regular season, they have a five-game cushion over any team that could knock them out of playoff position. And they could still clinch a postseason berth as soon as Sunday.

That will require not only help elsewhere but them winning the remaining two games in the series.

And winning has become an elusive quest.

The Padres have won two of their past seven series, both against the Rockies, who are the only team with a worse record than the White Sox.

This slide follows a stretch in which the Padres won seven of their eight series and got to a season-high 18 games above .500 and a game up on the Dodgers in the NL West.

Since then, they have been plagued at different times by a variety of issues, including different players slumping at the plate.

But their starting pitching has continually put them in a bad position.

Friday was the 11th time in the past 32 games the Padres trailed after the first inning. They are 1-10 in those games.

This time it was Miguel Vargas’ two-run homer off Dylan Cease that did the early damage.

It was the fourth game in a row the Padres’ starter has allowed at least one run in the first inning and the fourth consecutive game the starter allowed a home run in the first inning.

After White Sox starter Davis Martin got through the Padres’ first seven batters on 20 pitches, Jake Cronenworth lined a ball softly into center field with one out in the third inning, and Fernando Tatis Jr. and Luis Arraez singled with two outs to halve the lead.

The Padres tied the game in the fourth on Jackson Merrill’s double and Ryan O’Hearn’s single, though they also left runners at the corners who had reached those spots with one out.

The White Sox, who had lost six straight and scored more than two runs in one of those games, took the lead again with two runs in the bottom of the fourth when Cease hit two batters and surrendered two singles, all with two outs.

It would have been a pair of three-run innings had the White Sox not run into outs at third base in both of them.

Ramón Laureano’s one-out double and his steal of third base in the sixth was followed by a groundout by Gavin Sheets that got the Padres to 4-3 in the sixth inning. But they got one hit the rest of the way.