The San Diego Padres' season came to an end following a 12-3 loss Thursday as the juggernaut Los Angeles Dodgers swept the club in the National League Division Series.
Even though the 2020 campaign was a successful one for San Diego, it left a sour taste in the mouths of its young squad - a feeling they intend to use as future motivation.
"I'm going to remember this feeling, what it's about," Fernando Tatis Jr. said after the Game 3 loss, according to MLB.com's AJ Cassavell. "Trust me, I don't like it."
The Padres were far and away baseball's most improved team during the regular season, moving from NL West basement dweller in 2019 to owning MLB's third-best record in 2020.
The team became one of the sports' most entertaining to watch and MLB's purveyors of fun - earning the "Slam Diego" nickname because of their affinity for hitting grand slams - while Tatis and Manny Machado hurled baseball's book of unwritten rules as far as one of their signature bat flips.
"We took a huge step this year in the right direction to really give ourselves the title of a winning organization," said outfielder Wil Myers, who had a career year for the Padres.
"We know how to win now. We're expecting to win."
And win is exactly what San Diego did in 2020 when the team authored a .617 winning percentage en route to their first postseason appearance since 2006.
The Padres' first winning campaign in 10 years included the continued rise of Tatis into superstardom, an MVP-worthy season from Machado, a sensational rookie year from Jake Cronenworth, and the emergence of Dinelson Lamet as a bona fide ace.
Thanks to this burgeoning core and one of MLB's top farm systems, the future remains bright in San Diego - a sentiment Tatis agreed with.
"We're just getting started," he said.
