PCA, Cubs meekly exit playoffs after offense disappears in 2-game Wild Card sweep by Padres

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Chicago team that didn't have the pope on its side is heading meekly into the offseason.

Pete Crow-Armstrong and the Chicago Cubs came out to sunny San Diego and wilted like a tourist without enough sunscreen, swept out of the National League Wild Card Series by a San Diego Padres team eager for redemption and perhaps primed for a deep postseason run.

The Cubs lost 4-1 in Game 2 on Wednesday night at Petco Park to exit the postseason. They came in with the highest-scoring offense in the majors and head home having scored only one run on eight hits.

They were ushered out by the Reaper himself, San Diego’s All-Star fireballing closer Mason Miller who allowed Nico Hoerner's one-out double — the Cubs' only extra-base hit in the two games — before getting Carson Kelly to ground out to shortstop to end it. The No. 4-seeded Padres move on to face the NL Central champion and top-seeded Milwaukee Brewers in an NL Division Series.

The loss by the fifth-seeded Cubs came several hours after the Chicago White Sox, who received a letter of support from lifelong fan Pope Leo XIV, swept the Houston Astros in Game two of an AL Wild Card Series.

The Cubs beat the Padres 2-1 in a Wild Card Series last fall at Wrigley Field.

Several Cubs players lingered along the dugout rail watching the Padres and their yellow towel-waving fans celebrate on a 69-degree night.

Players hugged inside the quiet clubhouse.

Crow-Armstrong, the frontrunner for NL MVP after becoming the first Cubs player to post a 40-40 season, struggled to find perspective while placing blame on himself.

“None of it feels good,” Crow-Armstrong said. “That’s it. So I’m just feeling pretty disappointed in myself, but that’s for me to work on.”

Crow-Armstrong and Alex Bregman, the Cubs’ 1-2 hitters, combined to go 0 for 15 with one walk and eight strikeouts. Crow-Armstrong had the walk in Game 1. Each of them struck out three times in Game 1 while Crow-Armstrong had a walk.

Asked how he'd process his performance, Crow-Armstrong said: “That’s not really for me to answer right now. I mean, yeah, 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 that I didn’t contribute. So, that's not for me to feel about right now. I wouldn't process that well if I was.”

The Southern California native, who had 45 homers and 41 stolen bases, said the Cubs “showed a lot of heart and a lot of fight through all the challenge. But I mean, I would say to start, like, I show up. I show up when it matters in these games, you know? I think that would help us immediately, but that's all I got right now.”

The Cubs dominated the season series 5-1. The teams hadn’t seen each other since July 1, when the Cubs handed the Padres their worst loss ever, 23-3 at Wrigley Field as they hit eight home runs.

“The San Diego group, they threw the ball really well,” Dansby Swanson said. “They didn’t miss spots often, and if they did miss, it was in good locations. It’s a really talented staff. They game-planned for us really well and we weren’t able to get traction. We gave ourselves a couple of chances here and there, but, we weren’t able to capitalize and keep anything going.”

Said manager Craig Counsell: “You've just got to go play well and win games. In the end, we’re walking away unfulfilled and disappointed.”

See AP’s full MLB coverage here

Chicago Cubs Seiya Suzuki is greeted by first base coach Jose Javier, left, after his single against the San Diego Padres in the fourth inning of Game 2 of the National League Wild Card baseball playoff series Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Chicago Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner hits a double against the San Diego Padres in the 9th inning of Game 2 of the National League Wild Card baseball playoff series Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell, right, reacts in the dugout in the eighth inning of Game 2 of the National League Wild Card baseball playoff series against the San Diego Padres Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Chicago Cubs Tyrone Taylor singles against the San Diego Padres in the eighth inning of Game 2 of the National League Wild Card baseball playoff series Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

The Chicago Cubs dugout watches in the seventh inning against the San Diego Padres in Game 2 of the National League Wild Card baseball playoff series Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death Wednesday for a 1995 murder after administering two doses of a lethal drug. A death penalty expert said it was an unprecedented failure, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee halted the one remaining execution for the rest of the year.

Pike, 50, was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and taken by ambulance from the prison, her attorneys said. She was being treated at a hospital, but they said they hadn’t been told about her condition.

She had been scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. Wednesday for the killing she committed at age 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. An appeals court stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start and hours later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay.

Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in court filings late Wednesday.

Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement that he has ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and that the remaining scheduled execution will not take place this year.

“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” he said.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that it “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”

The state's execution protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set. It does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced is “singular and unparalleled.”

Seven other people have survived medical problems due to an execution team's failure to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one has stayed alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions, she said.

Media witnesses observing from a separate room said officials raised curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., showing Pike strapped to a gurney.

“I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,” she said in her “last” words. She described herself as at peace.

But Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was not clear what she was referencing.

By 8:26 p.m., execution witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.

Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.

Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in “unnecessary agony” and it was violating her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit court and a district court.

It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution: In May state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case garnered widespread attention in part because of a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body, and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.

Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death in the morning, and witnesses had gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.

The attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.

Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike’s claims deserved a closer look.

Pike did not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.

As the execution date drew near, debate renewed over the death penalty for young offenders.

Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.

After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike said in a statement.

Slemmer’s mother had traveled to Nashville in the hopes of witnessing the execution of her daughter’s killer. She told The Associated Press on Saturday that she had waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.

Martinez could not be immediately reached by telephone for comment after the execution was halted.

The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.

Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.

Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was switching from a three-drug series for lethal injections to the single drug pentobarbital. That came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith and acknowledged that it had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were tested properly.

This story has been updated to correct that Pike had been scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. local time, not 11 a.m. and that the lawyers filed an emergency motion to the Tennessee Supreme Court, not U.S.

Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed.

Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after the execution of Christa Pike was halted Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

May Martinez, left, mother of murder victim Colleen Slemmer, walks out of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution during a stay of the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Leslie Brown, right, stands with others in the area reserved for people in favor to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Kathleen Walter prays in the area reserved for people opposed to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Abraham Bonowitz speaks during a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Alonzo Hughes participates in a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

In this image from video provided by WBIR-TV, Christa Pike cries after being sentenced to death on March 30, 1996 in Knoxville, Tenn. (WBIR-TV via AP)

This photo provided by the Tennessee Department of Correction shows Christa Pike on Jan. 12, 2023. (TDOC via AP)