The second-best NL West team has won a wild-card spot in each of the last six years.
Xander Bogaerts #2, Fernando Tatis Jr. #23, Jackson Merrill #3, and Bryce Johnson #29 of the San Diego Padres celebrate after defeating the Detroit Tigers at Petco Park on Saturday, March 28, 2026 in San Diego, California.
But the right-hander has spent his career looking down from the mountaintop. Buehler’s two World Series rings have dozens of sapphires arranged in an interlocking “LA” on beds of diamonds. The only time his Dodgers didn’t run away with the NL West during his time in Chavez Ravine was in 2021, when the Giants shocked everyone with a 107-win season. The Padres haven’t won an NL West title in two decades, but their 2022 knocked the Dodgers off their perch — and out of the playoffs. “I remember being on the other side of it and how big of a threat San Diego has been,” Buehler said. “Being in this uniform, hoping to kind of add to that. had a ton of success and have done a lot of things really well, but I’m excited about what we have here as well. Looking forward to a good year.”The Dodgers have won the last two World Series and chose to give Kyle Tucker $240 million over four years and closer Edwin Díaz $69 million over three years, pushing this year’s projected payroll to just under $400 million. That total is almost what the Padres and Giants will pay their players combined, according to Fangraphs.com. The Dodgers have won every NL West title since 2013 save for the Giants’ 2021 ambush and have twice set the franchise record for wins in that window.The rest of the NL West certainly will not punt the division. But beating up on each other frequently — beginning with the Giants’ visit to Petco Park on Monday — very well could be the likeliest path to a postseason spot. Consider: the second-best NL West team has won a wild-card spot in each of the last six years, with the 2023 Diamondbacks riding an 84-win season all the way to the World Series . Arizona won even more games the next year , but still finished four games behind the Padres and missed the postseason. As for the Giants? They haven’t won more than 81 games since their 2021 uprising, have just two postseason appearances since their 2014 World Series title and this year are asking rookie manager Tony Vitello to become the rare coach to translate collegiate success to the majors. Both teams have stars — Corbin Carroll, Ketel Marte and Geraldo Perdomo in Arizona and Rafael Devers, Matt Chapman and Willy Adames in San Francisco — that rival the Padres’ nucleus of Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, Jackson Merrill and Xander Bogaerts. It’s why projection models at Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus have all three clubs winning between 79 and 82 games. “The Diamondbacks are always sneaky, no matter who they throw out there,” Merrill said when asked about the lay of the NL West beyond the Dodgers. “They’re a sneaky team. They compete. Torey does a great job over there, too. It’s insane to watch him manage the way he does. … I think the Diamondbacks are a sleeper always and the Giants are always there. It’s just whether they finish the job. It’s the same with us.The gulf between the NL West’s middling trio and the Dodgers boils down to one thing: Money. The discrepancy of the payrolls is one thing — the Dodgers rank first in the majors, the Padres rank ninth, the Giants rank 11th and the D-backs rank 13th — but the cable money that each team reels in really separates the haves from the have-nots. The Dodgers receive $330 million a year from their local cable deal, nearly four times as much as the $90 million or so in TV money that the Giants pull in. The Padres and Diamondbacks make a fraction of what the Giants do; Major League Baseball owns the clubs’ streaming rights. Television revenue is one battle line being drawn as owners prepare to push for a salary cap during collective bargaining negotiations after the season. Count Machado among the players who see the real problem to be the teams that don’t spend, not the teams that do. Forget that Tucker is the highest annual earner in major-league history, that Ohtani agreed to defer $680 million of his salary and that the Dodgers are paying nearly $30 million to their eighth- and ninth-inning pitchers this season. “I love it,” Machado said. “I mean, honestly, I think every team should be doing it. … I think every team has the ability to do it. So, I hope all 30 teams could learn from that. … We started it a few years ago with Peter , you know. So everyone could do it. It’s just a matter if they want to or not.”But the Dodgers setting the bar high has served the Padres well. San Diego has made the postseason four times in the last six years. “I think it’s good to have teams that are elite, that are kind of setting the pace and having a lot of other teams that can go ahead and play at that level,” Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said. “We look at it in the NL West: you’ve got to be really good to come out of there. It’s made us better over the last few years, and it makes the league better, honestly. … “It’s a good challenge for us. It’s something that we’re looking forward to seeing if we can get to that level.”Trying again: Environmental groups want a rehearing on California rooftop solar rulesSan Diego loses population as immigration nosedives. What are the consequences?32 years after a man was found dead on a Pacific Beach porch, San Diego police have a suspectExcess load on transmission line may have caused SDG&E power outage to 103,000 customers Its schools are falling apart, and voters won’t pass a bond. Could a little-used tactic help this district?
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