Padres beat Yankees 3-2 in a regular-season meeting at the start of September.
The scoreline tells you only half the story though. Games like this rarely stay level for long stretches. And here's the thing about the twenty-minute mark — that's when everything shifted.
Neither side had dominated early on, but then the Padres found their rhythm. By then the Yankees were chasing rather than dictating. It's always the middle period that separates the comfortable from the frantic.
To be fair, the Yankees came in with decent momentum. They'd knocked past the Angels in two of their last three outings before this one. The Padres had been more inconsistent though, dropping games to the Reds and Rays in between.
Our forecast had backed New York at 56 per cent confidence. We were wrong, and the match turned on three or four decisive moments rather than sustained pressure. The Padres took control when it mattered and never let go.