San Diego Padres: How the West Will Be Won in 2020

Now that we know exactly what the San Diego Padres schedule will look like in 2020 we break down what it will take to win the NL West.

While a lot of people are already conceding the NL West to the Los Angeles Dodgers, in this weird season anyone can truly win — so why no the San Diego Padres?

Ryan gave his in-depth breakdown of the schedule on Monday when it was released, but I wanted to dig even deeper to see just how many wins the Padres would need to take the NL West.

Last year the Dodgers were 41-19 through the first 60 games of the season and were nine games ahead of the Colorado Rockies.

The year before that the Arizona Diamondbacks were 32-28 — just a game ahead of the Colorado Rockies.

In 2017 the Rockies were two games ahead of the Diamondbacks with a 37-23 record, and in 2016 the San Francisco Giants led the division with a 35-25 record, which is the same record the Dodgers had through 60 games in 2015 when they were atop the division.

I went back 10 years and the Padres haven’t been leading the division through the first 60 games of the season in any of those years.

But this is a different team and very different set of circumstances.

Teams cannot afford to get out to slow starts, and it will all be about the group of players who are hungry enough to win in a season where a lot of teams aren’t taking things seriously.

That’s why I wrote the other day about how encouraging it was to see the youthful optimism and excitement from the players in summer camp.

And they’ll need to keep that through the entire 60-game stretch to find those 35-38 wins that it will take to win the NL West in 2020.