The Latest Breaking News from Padres

The 42-year-old is in his final Major League season and is hoping to join three baseball legends in reaching 700 home runs. Only Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds have done it. Pujols has 698.

When a ballclub plows a quarter of a billion dollars into the player payroll, as Padres leaders have this year, it's the same as shouting out a request.

PHOENIX — The Padres worked and worked before it ultimately worked for them.

We are three weeks away from the start of the playoffs, with the first game of all four wild-card series scheduled back-to-back-to-back. You can be sure that MLB will market the event as baseball’s version of the first day of March Madness. (Fall Frenzy, anyone?) But regardless of how well…

PHOENIX — Sean Manaea was back and better.

SEATTLE — What is the best way to bounce back from being held scoreless for the first time in 72 games?

LOS ANGELES — Among the salty pearls of wisdom bequeathed to us by the late, great Tommy Lasorda: "This [bleeping] job is not that [bleeping] easy."

Yu Darvish did all he could to make the pittance the Padres' hitters managed stand up.

SEATTLE — Yu Darvish turned 36 a month ago, and if not for the cake the Padres gave him before a game in Miami, we might have missed it.