Padres in first place in the right place

Reporting from San Diego — 

The Lakers have won. The baseball season has come, at least to those casual sports fans who pay attention to Kobe first, everything else second.

The National League West standings have not been printed upside down. The San Diego Padres are in first place, and closer Heath Bell figures he can put your thoughts into six words: “What, they’ve still got a team?”

The Padres were supposed to be eliminated by Memorial Day. Adrian Gonzalez had been fitted for a Boston Red Sox uniform. The few remaining fans would have to satisfy themselves with an Everth Cabrera bobblehead doll.

Gonzalez told us this could happen, but we were too busy trying to guess the date he would be traded. He told us in April the Padres could win the division, and we held our laughter out of respect.

“Pitching, defense, timely hitting,” Gonzalez said. “You guys are seeing what we saw.”

It’s a long way to September, but this is no fluke. The Padres finished last season 37-25, and they started this season 37-25.

This could be the poster team for the post-steroid era, or the dead ball era. They can’t hit, but they can win. It’s hard to believe the Padres can sustain a championship summer on pitching alone, not that they sit around and debate the issue.

“We’re not trying to sustain it for a whole season,” Gonzalez said. “We’re trying to win a game every night.”

The Padres have scored fewer runs than any NL club except the dreadful Houston Astros and even more dreadful Pittsburgh Pirates. In the 16-team league, San Diego ranks 15th in doubles, 14th in home runs, 14th in batting average and 14th in on-base percentage, through Friday.

Gonzalez has 15 home runs, one fewer than the entire outfield. He has driven in 46 runs, twice as many as any teammate.

That’s virtually a one-man show, with amazing results. Of the Padres’ 39 victories, 14 have come in games in which they have scored three runs or fewer.

You can’t ride to September on 2-1 victories, can you?

“Yes, you can,” second baseman David Eckstein said, “in this ballpark.”

Said Manager Bud Black: “That’s how the park plays. Our guys are used to the mental side of playing in close games.”

Ah, the park. The Padres finally have embraced Petco Park, with the spacious dimensions and cool marine air that drives opposing hitters batty, but their arms play anywhere.

The Padres have given up the fewest runs in the majors. They lead the NL in earned-run average on the road, but not at home. They have given up 12 unearned runs; the Dodgers have given up 32.

“When we get beat, we get beat,” Black said. “We don’t give games away.”

Let the Padres replace anyone on their pitching staff with someone from the Dodgers’ staff, and the Padres might stop after Clayton Kershaw and Jonathan Broxton.

The Padres’ would-be ace, Chris Young, started one game before hitting the disabled list. San Diego has used the same five starters in all but one game since then, featuring Clayton Richard (2.71 ERA), Wade LeBlanc (2.88), Jon Garland (3.07) and Mat Latos (3.19).

Bell, a worthy successor to Trevor Hoffman, has a 2.22 ERA. In what might be the deepest bullpen in baseball, that is nothing special.

Luke Gregerson has two walks and 42 strikeouts, Edward Mujica four walks and 35 strikeouts, Joe Thatcher three walks and 19 strikeouts, Mike Adams 10 walks and 35 strikeouts. And what are opposing hitters doing with all those strikes? They’re batting .120 off Gregerson, .136 off Thatcher, .167 off Adams, .206 off Mujica.

Those bullpen riches lead to inevitable trade rumors, and not just on the Internet. The Padres surely need a big bat, and Bell believes he could be the bait.

“If we’re going to be buyers, we’re going to have to trade somebody,” Bell said. “I don’t think we’re going to trade Adrian for a bat.”

That might not be so simple. The Padres are not one bat away, not if the rest of the offense doesn’t improve to, say, below average.

“It can’t only come from outside,” General Manager Jed Hoyer said.

And, because the Padres win with pitching, they’re not sure whether weakening their staff would help them win.

“I think that’s a slippery slope,” Hoyer said. “Pitching depth evaporates in a hurry.”

So does a narrow division lead, and so we won’t pencil the Padres in for October just yet. However, we do find it amusing that Dodgers fans complain about the interleague scheduling.

Perhaps it is not fair to Dodgers fans that their team plays the Angels, Red Sox and New York Yankees, while the Padres play the Baltimore Orioles, Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays. But perhaps it is not fair to Dodgers fans that their team did not leverage its major-market advantage to buy the one or two more pitchers that might have buried the Padres.

San Diego is not sold on the Padres, not just yet. The Padres finished 20 games out of first place last year, 21 games out the previous year.

They sold 3 million tickets in 2004. They sold 1.9 million last year, with this year’s numbers down slightly.

“We don’t have anybody that’s very recognizable, other than Adrian, so no one cares,” Eckstein said. “That’s a great thing.”

Why?

“Let us keep going about our business,” he said. “We don’t need to believe the hype.”

We’ll let you know when we find some.

bill.shaikin@latimes.com