Cubs’ total playoff no-show let — and left — everybody down

SAN DIEGO — Over.

And out.

So much for a postseason run to remember for the 2026 Cubs. Instead, a 4-1 loss to the Padres in Game 2 of the wild-card round ended a one-sided, anticlimactic series in which the hands-down-better team easily kicked an overestimated opponent to the curb and all too quickly put Cubdom out of its misery.

They let you down in the end, these Cubs, did they not?

It was a total playoff no-show.

Nothing from Pete Crow-Armstrong, the National League’s sure-fire MVP.

“You can look at the scoreboard, you can look at the stat sheet — wherever you get your numbers from — and it is clear to see I didn’t contribute,” he said.

Nothing from Alex Bregman, a $35 million-a-year man and one of the major leagues’ most experienced and prolific postseason players.

“Just not good enough,” Bregman said. “We need to get better — in all areas.”

Nothing from Dansby Swanson, whose $177 million contract is the highest in total value on the team and ranks second in Cubs history.

“Things like this hurt,” Swanson said. “And it doesn’t get any easier. If it doesn’t end in a World Series, it hurts.”

And certainly nothing special from manager Craig Counsell, whose own history of falling short at payoff time continued. He’ll head into a fourth season on a five-year deal having neither won a division title with the Cubs nor guided them further than the divisional round.

“Look, you’ve got to take your losses,” Counsell said. “We lost. There’s a response to it that we get to choose, and we’ve got to improve. Everybody can point at themselves and say we’ve got to get a little better. Then we get to choose how we respond to it.”

Who says Chicago had two teams make it into baseball’s big dance? The Cubs didn’t even last until October. One could argue they shouldn’t have even bothered to make the trip here if all they were going to score was one run in two games — never really in the fight, never really needing to be taken seriously by the hottest team on the planet.

Elsewhere in playoff action on Wednesday, ex-Cubs of renown delivered mighty swings. Cody Bellinger homered and drove in four runs for the Yankees, Willson Contreras homered for the Red Sox and Kyle Schwarber went yard for the Phillies.

No one on the actual Cubs had so much as a moment to remember over two nights, unless you want to count Nico Hoerner’s single that drove in the team’s only postseason run and defied a confounding stretch of terrible at-bats the Cubs turned in during a struggle-filled finish as they fell out of the top wild-card position.

Crow-Armstrong and Bregman each went hitless and struck out four times in the series. At least PCA spiked his helmet into the ground after flying out in his final at-bat of the season, the only thing he did out there that was even recognizable.

“I’m just feeling pretty disappointed in myself,” he said, “but that’s for me to work on.”

Improvement is going to have to happen, especially amid what’s expected to be a significant amount of roster turnover. How do the Cubs get closer to the mountaintop?

“I would say to start, if I show up,” Crow-Armstrong said. “If I show up when it matters in these games, I think that would help us immediately. But that’s all I got right now.”

A talented team that nevertheless was too streaky and faced a million pitching-related questions just didn’t have its act together on the playoff stage. It’s an indictment of all involved.

“We’re going to have to wait to accomplish the thing we really want to accomplish,” Counsell said. “There’s steps to success, and you’re on a path to success. We didn’t finish it this year and hope that this has to be part of the journey to the ultimate prize.”

This was Counsell’s second playoff appearance with the Cubs and his seventh as a manager. He hasn’t gotten as far as the NLCS since 2018, the first of his go-rounds.

He’s running out of time to win a World Series with the Cubs to go with the two he won as a player.

“We can absolutely get there,” he said.

When Swanson arrived in free agency in 2023, he said he wanted the Cubs to be his team. But his troubles with the bat have mostly relegated him to a non-starring role.

In a rough Game 2, he had two huge chances to be a hero. In the third inning, with the Cubs down 2-0, he came up with two men on and nobody out and got ahead in the count 3-0. The at-bat ended with Swanson swinging and missing at back-to-back balls out of the zone, and the Cubs remained scoreless. An inning later, Swanson left the bases loaded.

And in the ninth, Carson Kelly’s groundout ended the game with Swanson standing in the on-deck circle. Had Kelly reached, Swanson would have represented the potential tying run.

“The things you dream of,” he said, “having a chance to do something special to get remembered forever. Those are moments that you want. I wanted it there.”

The way things went, it probably wouldn’t have ended well anyway.