Ignore the Dodgers

The Padres got swept by the Dodgers. It didn't mean nearly as much as some people may think.

Sometime around the start of the season, I made it a point to say that no San Diego Padres fan should compare the team to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Not in any way, shape, or form. It was a simple losing proposition.

I still tend to think in these terms. The goal is not to beat the Dodgers, it’s to win the World Series. Who cares what the Dodgers are doing? And why would you compare your team to the team that has had the most success in recent history, and one with the most money and the best farm system?

What the Dodgers have done, over the course of the last 12 months, is kick the absolute shit out of the Padres. Which is funny, considering it was just a few weeks before that when the Padres went to Dodgers stadium and swept their foe to the north. But these things have a way of working themselves out when the teams meet each other in the playoffs, and regular season doesn’t really matter once you get that far.

I remain undisturbed by the Padres being swept by the Dodgers this weekend. Those that say that the trades for Josh Hader and Juan Soto and Josh Bell and Brandon Drury were all for nothing because the team couldn’t beat the Dodgers in a road series in August don’t have the patience necessary to root for a baseball team over the course of a season.

These things happen. The Padres are still just as talented as we all thought they were last week. They will be fine. At least, that’s my opinion.

The next time the Padres play a team that is over .500 is probably going to be August 23rd, when they take on the (currently 56-52) Cleveland Guardians. They play a lot of bad baseball teams between now and when they go back to Dodger Stadium about a month from now, for another series that probably won’t mean much of anything.

These Padres have mostly done a good job of beating the teams they’re supposed to, with the main exception being the Colorado Rockies team that they just took 4-of-5 from last week. The next month should look a lot better than this past weekend.