An October Open to Anyone

The dugouts, the pitchers’ mounds, the bullpens, the trainers’ tables, the disabled lists. Look across baseball and see opportunity.

If you are the Dodgers, if you are the Padres, if you are visibly imperfect but slightly less imperfect than the next guy, then this drives you through the most significant series in baseball this weekend, and the only two weeks that matter this regular season:

Pedro Martinez, discouraged, limping in New York.

Jason Isringhausen, hurting, probably done in St. Louis.

Mariano Rivera, strained, recovering in New York.

Rich Harden, disabled, absent in Oakland.

Joel Zumaya, weakened, resting in Detroit.

Francisco Liriano, examined, done in Minnesota.

Mark Buehrle, imprecise, hittable in Chicago.

Bartolo Colon, torn, invisible in Anaheim.

Andy Pettitte, aching, scratched in Houston.

If October baseball will have you, then October baseball can be yours. When they begin in two weeks and two days, the playoffs will be waiting on a hot team, a healthy pitching staff and a lucky streak.

“If you look at the league, with the exception of the New York Mets, there’s so much parity in the game, particularly in the National League, I think clubs do feel like that,” Padres Manager Bruce Bochy said Saturday afternoon. “Not selling St. Louis short, but they’ve had to deal with key injuries. So I think clubs are going to go in with a little more confidence. Whoever gets in is going to feel that way.”

The National League has had a 100-game winner every year since 2001, but maybe not this one, when there is but one runaway division leader (the Mets eased up a few weeks ago, and it shows) and no other sure things. The American League had five 100-game winners in four seasons, but, in turning competitive well beyond the Yankees, is working on its second in a row without one.

The National League West, derided for its 82-win champions from 2005, winner of two playoff games in the last three years, home of more recent do-over rebuilds than the Big Dig, as it stands would send two teams into the same postseason for the first time since 2002.

From there, in a system that has produced wild-card World Series champions three times in four years, it is anyone’s guess, which is exactly the point.

The Padres -- and their starting rotation of Jake Peavy, David Wells, Chris Young and Woody Williams -- set up better than the Mets, whose ace, Martinez, was uninspiring Friday night in his first three innings since early August. And they’d follow him with Tom Glavine, whose post-All-Star-break ERA is more than 5.00, then Steve Trachsel and/or Orlando Hernandez.

The Dodgers, depending on which way Derek Lowe, Brad Penny and Greg Maddux are leaning that week, might also have the pitching advantage, certainly for the first five or six innings.

The Cardinals, after Chris Carpenter, are unpredictable, and are closing games with Braden Looper. In the Bronx, Rivera hasn’t thrown a pitch since August. The A’s are expected to start Harden on Thursday, and could be set up better than anyone in the American League now that Liriano is done for the season in Minnesota, Tigers pitching is showing the strains of this season and White Sox pitching is showing the strains of last season.

“I just know this,” Dodgers Manager Grady Little said, “it’s all about timing. It’ll be about who’s playing the right way at the right time, whether it’s because of injuries or being hot.”

And so the Dodgers and Padres spend a very long weekend measuring against and angling for each other, the slightest missteps potentially costing plenty.

Wells turned his ankle running the bases on Sept. 3, and Rafael Furcal pushed a bunt to the first-base side in the first inning Friday night, bringing more pain, followed by Wells’ inability to command his curveball, a 3-1 loss and the Padres’ temporary 1 1/2 -game deficit.

It helped less that Maddux had pushed Wells off the plate with an inside fastball in an early at-bat, which brought from Wells an awkward leap backward, a chuckle and a lingering expression of confusion.

“I don’t know what he was doing,” Wells said, grinning. “I gave him a look, too, like, ‘What the heck?’ You know what that is? That’s just pure respect. He knows how much pop I have. I don’t blame him. Smart pitcher. Then he gets a lucky call on a sinker that came back in.”

He joked, and then he returned to San Diego to have that ankle looked at again. Bochy said he was sure Wells would make his next scheduled start, Wednesday against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

But these are the small things that alter a division race, that would alter the Padres’ going to the playoffs or not, and then what happens if they arrive there.

It could in New York, in St. Louis, in Minnesota. It does every year, it seems, when, as Jeff Kent pointed out, “It’s always wide open, considering the team with the $200-million payroll doesn’t always win.”

And maybe these four games will create the difference.

It is an interesting way to run a rivalry, the Padres and Dodgers finishing within three games of each other only once in the last nine seasons, though it has the appearance of a rivalry.

Since 1996, 111 games separate them, one direction or the other, and in those 10 years it is the Padres who have won three division titles, to the Dodgers’ one. So it’s just about today, and then tomorrow, and then who knows about October?

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tim.brown@latimes.com