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Padres ready for wild 2020 ride, hoping for ‘big cake’ at the end

Manny Machado, left, Fernando Tatis Jr., center, and Eric Hosmer wear the Padres' new brown uniforms at an unveiling event.
Manny Machado, left, Fernando Tatis Jr., center, and Eric Hosmer wear the Padres’ new brown uniforms at an unveiling event at Petco Park in November.
(Union-Tribune)

Unique, coronavirus-shortened season begins Friday with Padres expecting to be vastly improved over recent seasons

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There will be cardboard cutouts behind home plate featuring pictures of people important to Padres players — family and coaches and teachers. Later in the season, television viewers might catch a cardboard Taylor Swift and local doctors and nurses down in the front row.

Each dugout has a hand sanitizer dispenser on the wall and bottles spread throughout the dugout. There are six-foot stretches of tape affixed to the benches that read “Please do not sit here” and “Por favor no se siente aqui.” Between them is a circle containing the MLB logo where it is permitted for a player or coach to sit during games.

Players who aren’t in the lineup will be located in the stands, in sections near the dugouts that have been covered by fancy tarps with a sponsor’s name affixed.

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Only the several dozen people allowed inside Petco Park will bear personal witness to the glorious unveiling of the Padres’ new brown uniforms.

The faces of coaches and umpires, at least their mouths and noses, will be covered. Baseballs will be taken out of play after they have been handled by players beyond the catcher and pitcher.

Artificial crowd noise will play over ballpark speakers, giving players and the television audience a semblance of atmosphere since there will be no fans in the seats. When the Padres win, blink-182’s “San Diego” will blare, but there will be no celebratory pyrotechnics, because that would require having more people in the ballpark. Same with the flames that used to accompany closer Kirby Yates out of the bullpen.

Other than all that, everything will be normal.

“Definitely going to be different,” Padres first baseman Eric Hosmer said at the start of summer camp a few weeks ago, which seems like only yesterday, especially since it seems like a year ago that spring training was suspended due to the spread of COVID-19.

It was actually just four long months.

So it’s baseball they will be playing starting at 6:10 Friday night at Petco Park against Arizona. For that, they are glad.

“The guys are all ready to go,” Greg Garcia said last week, his voice pitching high as it does when he is excited.

He’s not alone.

Players have embraced this 60-game season, which is just more than one-third of the 162 MLB teams normally play.

“Every game matters,” Yates said. “Not to say that in 162 games that every game (doesn’t) matter, but people don’t start paying attention to wins closely until you get … into August. People are going to be paying attention from game one to 60, because every game is going to dictate.”

No team stays hot for an entire season. The 2001 Seattle Mariners hold the major league record with 116 wins. That means they still lost nearly 30 percent of their games. Since 2000, just 26 teams have won at least 100 games in a season.

No one stays hot for six months.

But two? Entirely possible.

“Most team have good months and have bad months,” Yates said. “If you have two good months, you should be set pretty good. Before, you have two good months (then) two bad months it doesn’t really make a difference.”

This is no six-month grind. It’s a two-month churn, a season with leagues blended and thrown in a microwave.

“It is opening day and everybody is tied with 60 to go,” manager Jayce Tingler said. “I think that’s the mentality and (how) we’re looking at it. It’s opening day. But it’s also two months left.”

Tingler, in fact, said Wednesday he expects his team to be “in midseason form” come Friday. That may have been a bit of coach speak, but it also speaks to what will be necessary.

“Every game is going to be like a playoff game,” said pitcher Chris Paddack, who starts Friday’s opener. “We’re going to be mentally exhausted when we leave the stadium.”

The Padres, who have not been to the postseason since 2006, are widely considered contenders, including from within.

“I think that’s 100 percent fully our expectation,” Tingler said.

One of the league’s worst offenses for six years running must prove it can get on base consistently. The bullpen has to stay healthy and perform up to expectations. The starting rotation, too.

But the Padres have added Tommy Pham and Trent Grisham in the outfield, as well as four veteran relievers. Fernando Tatis Jr. and Paddack bring the experience of their rookie seasons. Starting pitcher Garrett Richards is healthy.

“We’re aiming for the big cake, man,” Tatis said Thursday. “We’re aiming for everything. I think the boys are ready. I think we have a very good team out here. … We’re going to aim for the big cake. Why not? Let’s go win a World Series.”

Executive Chairman Ron Fowler said earlier this month he and General Partner Peter Seidler expect a winning record.

Even a 31-29 mark would seemingly put them in contention.

“That’s the goal for us going into the year,” Padres General Manager A.J. Preller said. “We feel like we’re an improved team. We’re a more competitive group. The guys in that clubhouse, there’s a belief we’re going into this thing with a team that can play into October.

“We’ve definitely been gearing toward 2020 as the start of something for the organization. The last four years has been building up the talent base to where we felt we had a chance to start moving up the standings for real this year. The season is going to be different, but the goal of trying to win, the goal of putting a competitive team on the field, the goal of seeing players play really good baseball, that’s all the same. … I don’t think anything has really changed from an organizational standpoint about looking to win, looking to move up the standings, looking to play postseason baseball this year. Nothing has changed on that front.”

Fangraphs has all but one division champion winning at least 34 games. The analytics site projects the Padres will finish 32-28, good for second in the NL West behind the Dodgers and with a playoff spot under the new one-year-only format in which eight teams (three more than usual) from each league will make the postseason.

The general consensus seems to be that this year will be a Wild West of sorts. Almost certainly, there will be some interesting pennant races.

Over the past 10 seasons, at least 30 teams (depending on tiebreakers, it could have been more) that didn’t make the playoffs would have done so if those seasons lasted just 60 games. Fangraphs projects five of the six divisions will be decided by no more than one game. (The analytics site has the Dodgers winning the NL West by six games.)

Whatever zaniness we anticipate, the favorites in a 162-game season are still expected to do well. The Yankees, Dodgers, Astros and others were thought of highly because of their star power, their depth and/or their pitching. Those things will still be important — and perhaps more so considering the unforgiving nature of a 60-game season.

Key players could contract COVID-19 or have to miss time while awaiting tests after having been in contact with someone who tested positive or even had symptoms. Injuries that require a 10-day IL stay and would have been considered a minor nuisance in a normal season will wipe out almost 20 percent of the season (at a minimum) this year.

Looking at past 60-game marks can be misleading, because this season will be approached differently.

“A lot of those teams know toward the end they have gas,” Tingler said.

“The feel in a 162-game season is you’re always a run away — good month, month and a half —from getting back into things,” Hosmer said. “It feels like there’s always time.”

In 2020, Padres’ catcher Austin Hedges’ assessment that, “You lose Game 1 now, it’s like, ‘Dang, we’re not in first place anymore,’ ” doesn’t seem like that great a degree of hyperbole.

There can be no denying this is strange.

Players and others in attendance noted after the two exhibition games the Padres played against the Angels this week both the excitement of actually playing another team and the surreal sadness of an empty stadium.

“It’s obviously going to be very different,” Preller said. “Even the past couple games … the appreciation for the fan. It’s as important as anything in sports. That’s what makes the sport so great is going into that atmosphere and feeling that. But that’s what it’s going to be this year. I think like anything, you get used to what normal is.”

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