Padres Are About to Test Belief System

Be it parity or parody, the National League West is gearing up to be a five-team donnybrook--a test of balance amid the unbalanced schedule.

In what has become a season of industry-wide repudiation to the lament of competitive disparity, only three games separated top to bottom beginning the weekend.

The logjam even included the San Diego Padres, whose $37-million payroll is by far the lowest in a division of big spenders and who were panned by pundits and unanimously picked to finish last in preseason polls.

In fact, a 16-6 record in May and a six-game winning streak through Thursday thrust the Padres into the division lead after a 7-14 start. However, it is too soon for boasts and claims.

The Padres know they can play with the $110-million Dodgers and their wealthier rivals in the West--”We have to step up and continue this momentum and not give any credit away,” closer Trevor Hoffman said--but they also know that they still have some proving to do.

“Coming into the season we weren’t going to use our payroll or where people picked us as an excuse,” General Manager Kevin Towers said. “We wanted to go out, play good baseball and hopefully gain credibility by what we did on the field.

“I think through 50 or so games that’s what we’ve done. If we can continue to do it over the next two months, maybe then people will consider us a contender.

“I still think the [San Francisco] Giants are the team to beat because they’re solid and won last year, but I don’t see anybody jumping out and running away with the division.”

Things change, of course. The West no longer has a sheriff, and the Padres aren’t the same team that was picked to finish last.

* The addition of Rickey Henderson and Mark Kotsay to the top of the batting order has solidified the lineup.

* Ryan Klesko is feeding off the table setters and enjoying his most productive start.

* Catcher Ben Davis has earned the respect of his pitchers and matured into a solid hitter.

* A comparatively anonymous rotation of Adam Eaton, Woody Williams, Kevin Jarvis, Brian Tollberg, Wascar Serrano and Bobby J. Jones may not light up speed guns but has helped keep the Padres competitive by throwing strikes. Only three NL teams have issued fewer walks.

“My philosophy has changed a lot from when I was coming up through the amateur scouting ranks,” Towers said. “I never went anywhere without my [speed] gun. A lot of the time I took for granted a guy’s ability to throw strikes and command the strike zone with two or three pitches. Now I realize that there’s only a handful of guys like Kevin Brown, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. You’re fortunate if you have one guy with a power arm who can throw strikes consistently.

“Of course, if you have the kind of staff that’s going to put the ball in play, you need to be able to catch it, and that’s been a little bit of a thorn. Fortunately, our offense has scored enough to overcome it, but if we’re going to seriously contend in August and September, we have to improve defensively.”

The Padres led the league in errors last year and are doing it again. Two of their most vulnerable gloves, first baseman Klesko and third baseman Phil Nevin, are their two biggest run producers and have to stay in the lineup. They are trying to survive at shortstop with Donaldo Mendez, 22, a Rule V selection who has never played above Class A, and no satisfactory insurance behind second baseman Damian Jackson, who is on the disabled list and has never been a full-time player.

A compensating offense, however, has found Henderson’s selectivity to be contagious. The Padres lead the league in walks and are second in runs and on-base percentage.

“When Rickey is playing like he has, he can change the offense by himself,” Manager Bruce Bochy said. “Now, with Kotsay, we have two table setters who have made a big difference in our club.”

The Padres were 18-11 with Henderson batting leadoff through Thursday and 18-9 with Kotsay in the lineup. In a recent three-game sweep of the Astros in Houston, Klesko drove in 11 runs to join league leaders with 12 homers and 44 runs batted in.

Towers cited Tony Gwynn’s imminent return from another leg injury and the potential grouping of Gwynn, Nevin, Klesko, Davis and Bubba Trammell behind the table setters, and said: “There are very few weak links now. We’re not waiting for the No. 3 and No. 4 hitters to come up every two or three innings. We have a chance to score early and often.”

Most of the rebuilding the Padres have done since their 1998 pennant has been aimed at the 2003 opening of their new downtown ballpark, still in legal limbo. The $20-million cut from their 2000 payroll led to all of those last-place projections.

In March, however, Bochy delivered his “best Knute Rockne speech,” said Gwynn, reminding the team of biblical upsets, “and we used the spring as a rallying point,” suggesting an “us-against-them mentality.”

“The underdog role has been good for us in the past,” Gwynn said. “We’ve set a foundation, and now we can’t get caught up in the standings or all of the sudden hype and expectation. We have to keep going about our business. The unbalanced schedule is great. We’re beginning [a second series of home and away games with teams in our division] and we can’t hide, we’ve got to beat ‘em.”

In the West, of course, everyone is invited to the table that the Padres have begun to set so nicely.