Well-balanced Padres would be tough out in playoffs

Greg Maddux has helped the Padres move into position for a third straight division title. Robert Beck/SI

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The premier pitching-first team in the National League plays its home games in a bully of a ballpark that beats up batters and laughs at them on their way back to the dugout. The team's whole division, in fact, is filled with pitcher-friendly parks that play more like Yellowstone than your average big-league stadium.

Contrary to the prevailing thought around baseball, though, the Padres can hit. They are, in fact, pretty good at it. Especially when they get away from Petco Park.

So if you're looking for a nicely balanced NL team that actually has a chance against the American League this postseason -- and the Mets, whom I mentioned earlier this week, don't do any more for you than they do for me -- look at the Padres. They are, in my book, the best team in the league.

Now, if they can just get to the postseason.

Really, what's not to like about the Padres? Other than the fact that they may not make the playoffs, that is. The pitching, as is often the case, is phenomenal, with Jake Peavy (a candidate for his first Cy Young Award), Chris Young (who will be up there in the Cy voting, too) and Greg Maddux (who has four of them) topping the best rotation in the league. Trevor Hoffman is still among the most reliable closers around, the stopper for the best bullpen in the NL. The defense is good. The bench, revamped on the fly by general manager Kevin Towers earlier this season, is improved.

And if they can keep swinging the bats the way that they have been, if they can inch past the pesky Diamondbacks and hold off the Dodgers (and let's not forget about the Rockies), the Padres will claim their third straight NL West title.

"That'd be nice. That'd be a nice accomplishment. I don't think that's been done in the West since '91 to '93, with the Braves," said Towers, correctly, the other day. "But last year was a dogfight, right to the end. I don't think this year is going to be any different."

The West is a knock-down division again, and after the Diamondbacks beat Peavy on Wednesday night, the Padres find themselves a game down in the standings. Still, the Padres are in great shape. They are three games ahead in the wild-card race, and they still have more than three weeks to go to try to recapture the NL West lead. Last year, on Sept. 6, the Padres were a game behind in the NL West standings, too. They ended up the season 88-74, with the same record as the Dodgers, winning the West by virtue of a better head-to-head record.

The Padres, if they make the postseason, are exactly the kind of team that could shut down a hot offense and go deep into October. Peavy, Maddux and Young would be deadly in a five- or seven-game series. Even if any of them faltered (as Young has in his last three starts), the Padres' bullpen (Heath Bell, Cla Meredith, Doug Brocail, Kevin Cameron, Hoffman and others) has a 3.09 ERA, best in the league (and second only to Boston's 3.06).

The knock on the Padres, at least for the last few years, has been that inability to generate runs. The Nationals, who play in a park almost as bad on hitters as Petco, are the only NL team that scores fewer runs at home.

The problem with those raw numbers, though, is that Petco Park skews everything. On the road, the Padres are better than most. This year, they are fourth in the league in runs scored away from home. They're sixth in home runs, and they're tied for second in extra-base hits (behind only the Braves), giving them the third-best road slugging percentage in the league (behind Philadelphia and Atlanta).

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