Padres are NL West’s best bet to end Dave Roberts and the Dodgers’ “ruin baseball” tour

There’s a certain kind of October that gets stuck in your teeth. The San Diego Padres are chewing on it now, another postseason spent on the couch while their most loathed neighbor steamrolls the bracket like it’s a civic duty. 

It’s not just that the Dodgers keep winning; it’s the way they’re doing it. Clean, clinical, inevitable. And when inevitability starts to feel like policy, rivals either accept the order of things or change it. That’s the fork in the road for San Diego. Don’t think of this as jealousy. Think of it as a call sheet for disruption.

Because the Dodgers aren’t just winning; they’re now workshopping a persona. 

Padres need to turn villain heat back on Dave Roberts and the Dodgers

Dave Roberts leaned all the way into it after their NLCS sweep over the Milwaukee Brewers, grinning ear to ear on live television:

“Before the season started, they said the Dodgers are ruining baseball, let’s get four more wins, and really ruin baseball.” 

That’s not an offhand line, it’s a manifesto. In wrestling entertainment terms, think John Cena’s “ruin wrestling” bit flipped for October. Roberts is running full-on heel, staring down the hard camera and daring the rest of the league to swing first. If you’re the Padres, you don’t clutch pearls at the monologue. You book the rematch, you rewrite the ending, and you make sure the villain hears the boos in your building.

Let’s be fair: Los Angeles backs its bravado with infrastructure. They don’t just spend; they invest — into Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Rōki Sasaki, and a player-development machine that turns role players into leverage answers. You can hate the payroll and still admit the model is efficient. None of that changes the solution in San Diego: the only way to smother a “ruin baseball” tour is to shorten their October. Beat them. Knock them off script. Rip the chorus out of the song so it can’t get stuck in anybody’s head again.

So where do the Padres start? With an identity that travels. San Diego’s path back to the top of the NL West, and through L.A., runs through run prevention first, thunder second. That means stacking swing-and-miss at the front of the rotation and matching it with elite carrying tools on defense. Petco already suppresses damage; lean into that with a staff designed to miss barrels (ride and sweep over pitch-to-contact) and an up-the-middle core that converts contact into outs. You want a version of the Padres that wins 2–1 on Tuesday and can win 8–6 on Friday, because the Dodgers force you to pass both tests in a single series.

Next, mirror L.A.’s most annoying habit: relentless depth. Not just “we have a bench,” but six to eight position players with 110+ OPS+ potential and platoon flexibility, plus a bullpen that doesn’t blink when the phone rings in the fifth. The Dodgers bury you with fresh looks, velocity bands, handedness flips, release points. San Diego needs its own carousel: a three-inning bridge monster for the middle (the inning that beats L.A. is often the sixth), a lefty who can get Freeman/Ohtani to the ground in big spots. Depth is not luxury in this division; it’s the price of admission.

Offensively, the brief is simple: add bats that punish mistakes and pitchers who pay for nibbling. The Dodgers win count leverage; they weaponize 1–0 and 2–1. Think: one more thumper who lifts the ball to the pull side, one more on-base bully who drags the lineup back to the top, and a bench bat who specifically hammers elite velocity. You’re not trying to out-Dodger the Dodgers; you’re trying to make their preferred game feel uncomfortable.

There’s also a psychological component that matters more than people admit. Roberts’ quote was theater, yes, but it was also a challenge. The Padres need their own tone-setters who treat Dodger Stadium like a neutral site and October like a solvable equation. That’s leadership in the clubhouse, continuity in the dugout, and an organizational message that doesn’t wobble if April starts 10–12. The teams that finally slay juggernauts don’t out-talk them; they outlast their style until it cracks. San Diego must decide now that every series with L.A. is a rehearsal for October. Not an event, a study guide.

And if you’re still hung up on the ethics of “ruining baseball,” here’s the truth: the Dodgers aren’t ruining anything. They’re exploiting every inch of the sport’s current incentives. You don’t fix that with discourse; you fix it with wins. The Padres are the NL West’s best bet to stop the parade at its source, not because they hate the Dodgers more than anyone else, but because they’re built to pivot fast. 

The Padres, with whoever will be managing them, should make 2026 the season “ruin baseball” ran into something louder, the club deciding how the story ends.