The San Diego Padres take on the Chicago Cubs for the NL Wild Card starting Tuesday night. If San Diego wants to advance past a team led by the likely MVP Pete Crow-Armstrong, this one X-factor will be a major reason why.

The Padres have bigger names than the Big Eiffel, Ty France. Fernando Tatis Jr. brings the electricity, Manny Machado anchors the lineup, and Jackson Merrill looks like a superstar for years to come. But if the question is who gave San Diego the most valuable season in 2026, France has the strongest case.

The Friars didn’t even guarantee him a major league job when they signed him to a minor league deal before spring training. France began the year as a bench option, getting occasional starts at first base while Gavin Sheets and Miguel Andujar occupied more prominent roles. By July, he was San Diego’s everyday first baseman and cleanup hitter. He didn’t inherit that spot. He earned it with his bat and defended well enough to make it his.

Padres rumors: Will San Diego trade this infielder before deadline?
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France finished with a .295 average, an .865 OPS, 21 home runs, and 72 RBIs. His WAR reached 4.5. The OPS was the best among the Padres’ regular hitters, and his 21 homers marked a career high. Even those numbers undersell his value because he spent the early part of the season fighting for plate appearances rather than collecting them in the heart of the order.

The defense matters just as much. France entered the season with a Gold Glove on his résumé (there is a chance he wins another Gold Glove in 2026), but he still had to show the Padres they could trust him at first every day. He did. When Sheets and Andujar missed time, France supplied the steady glove and consistent bat San Diego needed instead of leaving another hole for the club to patch.

That outcome seemed far from certain in March. France told MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell that he entered spring training wondering whether this might be his last chance. “I went into Spring Training with the thought, ‘There’s a chance this could be it. If I don’t make a team out of camp, I don’t know if I want to go to Triple-A.' It was just a sink or swim kind of thing,” he said.

Had he failed to make the team, he wasn’t sure he wanted to return to Triple-A. Six months later, the player who considered walking away had become indispensable to a playoff team.

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There is something fitting about France’s resurgence happening in San Diego. The former San Diego State Aztec played for Tony Gwynn, was drafted by the Padres, and made his major league debut with them in 2019. After the club traded him to Seattle in 2020, his career took him through several other organizations before he returned on a deal that offered no promise of a roster spot.

The Padres finished 91-71 after sitting three games below .500 in late July. France did not carry them there alone; their second-half surge required contributions throughout the roster. But his production gave the lineup a dependable middle-order bat, and his defense made it easier to keep that bat on the field. When he hit his 21st homer during a crucial September win over Miami, it was another reminder that his season was about more than a feel-good comeback.

France may still receive less national attention than the stars around him, but San Diego knows what it got from a player who arrived on a minor league contract: an everyday first baseman, a cleanup hitter, and the Padres’ 2026 MVP.

France will make or break the Padres' chances this series against Chicago. If he performs well, they could be heading to Milwaukee this weekend for the NLDS.