A suggestion for the Cubs against the Padres in Game 3: Maybe try hitting the ball

A big star met the big moment in Game 2 of this Cubs-Padres wild-card series, which now has one, winner-take-all game to go after the visitors won 3-0 Wednesday at Wrigley Field.

With one swing, Padres slugger Manny Machado took his place among the big dogs of baseball’s October. Cubs lefty Shota Imanaga did him a solid by leaving the ball over the heart of the plate in the fifth inning, and Machado took care of the rest. Ball, meet the top of the left-field bleachers. Padres, meet all the sudden momentum a talented team could hope for. Cubs, meet the brink of postseason elimination, otherwise known as postseason failure.

One swing. Sometimes, that’s all it takes. It can be enough to change the course of a series and enough to say a player — even Machado, who has only one hit through two games — came through for his team when it counted mightily.

But it could have been the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong instead just a half-inning earlier. Should have been. Oh, if only it would have been.

With the Cubs down 1-0 in the fourth and Seiya Suzuki on after a two-out double, Padres manager Mike Shildt had starter Dylan Cease walk Carson Kelly, then brought in Adrian Morejon for a lefty-on-lefty confrontation against Crow-Armstrong. Sensing the audacity of the move — the magnetic Crow-Armstrong is a 30-30 man, an All-Star, in the running for the next Mr. Cub — the Wrigley crowd got loud, chanting, “P-C-A! P-C-A!”

Yeah, well, so much for that. Crow-Armstrong grounded out, the only time in six at-bats in this series he has done anything other than strike out. Hey, at least he could still whip his batting helmet into the ground in yet another show of frustration, and did.

If PCA isn’t careful, he’s going to quickly run out of postseason without having done a thing at the plate. Is he feeling pressure going into Game 3?

“Zero,” he said.

And how is his confidence holding up?

“The confidence is in the same exact place it’s been all year,” he said.

But players don’t dream merely about playing in October, or even merely about their team outscoring the dudes in the other jerseys in October. They dream about being stars — big dogs — in October. Come on, of course they do. Human nature is undefeated.

“I feel no pressure about making my individual mark,” Crow-Armstrong insisted, “only because my goal is to play as long into October, and then, hopefully, early November, as I can.”

There’s no reason to pick on PCA, who’s not alone in his punchlessness thus far. Four-time All-Star and World Series champion Kyle Tucker, reputedly the Cubs’ best hitter, had a too-little-too-late base hit in the ninth inning of Game 2, before which he was 0-for-6 with two strikeouts in the series. And Ian Happ, the longest-tenured Cub, has given fans nothing whatsoever to remember him by, going 0-for-8 with five strikeouts and a double-play groundout. Happ and/or Tucker could have made an imprint on the very same fourth inning, but they struck out back-to-back to get it started. More like not started, right?

“We’ve all had two back-to-back bad days,” Happ said. “That’s the beauty of playing a long time — you understand you’re only one swing from getting right back into it.”

That’s true. But the Cubs have struck out 24 times in two games, kind of a lot. And as Happ would know, having been around since 2017, the Cubs haven’t exactly torn the cover off the ball in recent postseason opportunities at Wrigley Field.

In 2018 and 2020 combined, the Cubs scored two runs in three wild-card games, all losses, at Wrigley. Back in 2017, they scored all of seven runs over five playoff games against the Nationals and the Dodgers at Wrigley. Dare we throw in the 2016 World Series? We dare: In three home games in that series, the Cubs pushed across only five runs.

So: Since the greatest night ever at this ballpark — Game 6 of the 2016 National League Championship Series, when a 5-0 victory clinched the pennant — the Cubs have hosted 13 postseason games and managed to cross home plate a scant 20 times. What are they swinging up there, broomsticks? Swimming-pool noodles?

Much is being made of the Padres’ elite bullpen, which deserves the praise. Mason Miller is from another planet. Robert Suarez is the NL leader in saves.

But the Cubs have to figure out how to string together a few hits regardless, or else they’ll be “poof” in the night by sundown on Thursday.

Seems like a lot of pressure.

“I think we’re made for that,” manager Craig Counsell said in regard to Game 3.

Forty-year-old Cub Justin Turner knows a thing or two about October baseball. He sees Crow-Armstrong’s helmet bouncing around after unsuccessful at-bats like the rest of us.

“It’s just frustration,” Turner said. “He just wants it.”

They all want it.

“That’s why you play,” Happ said. “You play for these opportunities.”

For all of them, there might be only one crack left at getting it right.