SAN DIEGO — The Padres have risen in rank, from Robins to Batmen.
Minors for so long, they suddenly are acting their age, at the adults table.
Now it's a matter of digesting their Michelin 3-star meal.
When I attempt to visualize the 2021 baseball season, one again promising to be COVID-annoyed, it's similar to looking through a snow globe shaken by a maraca player on amphetamines.
But two things, although not totally clear, stick out, redwoods among the dandelions. Dodgers and Padres.
From a competitive standpoint — from any standpoint, really — the two clubs rarely are lumped into the same sentence. The Dodgers have been the Haves, Padres the Nots. Or Not Enoughs.
But that is about to change.
Think Fernando Tatis Jr., 14 years, $340 million. The Padres?
And it's all being done to compete in the NL West with the money bags from up north.
The Padres-Dodgers rivalry always has been one-sided. As my old boss Jess Kearney might say: "We're a bug on their windshield" — a quick drive for a weekend out of the smog.
The Dodgers have had so much more to spend, and have been a better organization that has scouted, developed, and spent its dough wisely. Hate to say it, because I've despised them from my first taste of pablum, but they aren't what they are simply because of bank; they're damn good at what they do.
Alas, change, long moving like a zephyr of worthless talk and no action, has gained sufficient speed — to the point where the Pads, while not at the level of the defending World Series champions, have them worried — to the point where L.A. is spending money on what it doesn't need.
Following a flurry of offseason moves by Padres GM A.J. Preller that certainly seems to make them better than the good they were in abbreviated 2020, the Dodgers, already pitching-rich, went out and threw $102 million at Trevor Bauer, defending NL Cy Young winner.
A desperate act for a franchise in no need of desperation. Bauer has had one terrific season, and it wasn't even half of a regular one.
As Andrew Friedman, L.A.'s director of player ops, said last week: "Yeah, we've noticed."
San Diego is spending money as it never has ($180 million payroll?), and organizationally, it has caught up, to the point of becoming one of the best and more efficient franchises in the sport.
Preller has built an orchard so plentiful he's been able to add proven starters and relievers to his pitching staff while keeping the great majority of his best minor league fruit on the trees.
The Dodgers clearly are running a baseball diamond-and-one zone in the NL West, manning-up on the Pads, their only divisional threat.
"What other teams do doesn't matter to me," Padres owner Peter Seidler says. "I find it interesting with the Dodgers; we don't talk about them much. We are a threat to them and they are a threat to us. That's it. We have aspirations now to win the World Series this year, next year and the year after that.
"We have a fierce group of pitchers coming in; we have a World Series pitching staff and bullpen. I don't see value in talking. I see value in actions."
Seidler is the grandson of famous Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley. He grew up bleeding Dodger blue.
Now he says: "I don't have a drop of Dodger blue left in my veins."
But remember this: When they built baseball, "absolute" was not among the materials.
