Craig Stammen knows the Padres are better, even if they are worse.

His eyes have seen it, his mind has grasped it, his arm has had to deal with it.

“The amount of games we have a chance to win is significantly higher,” Stammen said recently.

That means something — not in the way of close being a consolation but close meaning they might be closing in on contending.


Stammen measures progress primarily by workload. He and Kirby Yates are the back-end bullpen guys manager Andy Green saves for close games.

“We’ve had to get loose more, be prepared to pitch in a lot more games than last year,” Stammen said. “There were so many games last year where (in the) fifth inning we knew we weren’t pitching that day unless there was a miracle.”

The Padres finished 71-91 in 2017 with a run differential of minus-1.31 runs per game. They lost 36 games by five or more runs.

They are 57-88 this season with a differential of minus-0.96 runs a game. They have lost 23 by five or more.


That is while having rookie pitchers start 57 games and with a rookie throwing at least an inning of relief in 108 games and with letting Franmil Reyes and Franchy Cordero and Manuel Margot and Wil Myers navigate their various learning curves. And much more.

So it is with that perspective and the knowledge of what this season has been about that Padres players contend they don’t care how 2018 ends up.

“It’s not important at all,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said. “It’s a losing season. We’re not going to be happier if we lose 99 versus 100 games.”

His answer was to a question asked of several players over the past couple weeks about whether it was important to avoid the ignominious distinction of being 100-game losers.


Because in terms of tangible achievements, that’s all that is left.

After enduring the awfulness of April and the brief tease of late May and early June, the discovery of what Hunter Renfroe and Austin Hedges actually are and what Joey Lucchesi and Eric Lauer might be, we are left with one absolutely answerable question.

Will the Padres lose 100 games?

They must win at least six times in their final 17 games to avoid their slice of infamy, a level of ineptitude to which they have not sunk since 1993 (or before 10 of the 29 players on their active roster were born).


Losing 100 games is a level of low that practically requires a special font to write about and a squinty face to talk about.

When referring to such a team, people use a tone of voice reserved for a shocked variety of pity — such as when a hipster looks down on anyone who is not a hipster or a sommelier can hardly believe someone would confuse a 2017 Montoya with a 2014 Lancaster.

For those who deal in the language of tweets and texts, it is basically a “smh” situation. Yeah, so bad it essentially requires condescension.

“That team lost 100 games.” One could use an exclamation point, except it is simply not worth wasting the good punctuation marks on such a dismal deed.


From 2008 through last season, 11 teams finished with 100 or more losses. That means for all the disparity between MLB’s haves and have-nots, fewer than four percent of teams were so bad that they couldn’t even win 63 games in a season. In three of the past four seasons, no team lost 100 games.

At least two will this year. The Orioles already have 102 losses, and the Royals are five away from 100 with 20 games to play. The White Sox (87 losses with 19 games to play) and Marlins (86 with 20) join the Padres with a realistic shot.

Dividing the first 136 games into 17-game segments, the Padres won at least six games in six of the eight segments. (They are 4-5 in the past nine games to get to the total of 145 games.)

But whatever.


When you’ve been the ones losing this much and know what it means, that column on the right side of the standings is just a number.

“The difference between two or three wins isn’t really anything,” Myers said. “I realize there is a triple digit in one and a double digit in the other. But at the end of the day, there are 10 teams that make the playoffs and 20 that go home. If you’re not one of those 10 teams, you’re part of the 20 that don’t make the playoffs.”

They won’t be happy to lose 100. They haven’t been happy getting to within two losses of 90 so far.

They do acknowledge without hesitation the mark carries a stigma of a particular kind of stink.


“There’s losing teams,” outfielder Travis Jankowski said. “And then there are 100-loss teams. So I understand that.”

He couldn’t stop himself from pondering the reality “100 losses sucks; that’s terrible” more than once in a brief conversation.

But then again, the player who talks about winning as much as anyone in the clubhouse, a guy who has basically sat at the knee of manager Andy Green and coach Skip Schumaker all season and absorbed their teachings on what a winning player does as if the words were from on high, thinks about the big picture and shrugs.

“If we lose 100 games or we lose 75, if we don’t make the playoffs come Oct. 1, we’re sitting on the couch watching,” Jankowski said. “So another way to look at it is there are losing teams and playoff teams.”


The Padres see what has happened and what is happening.

There is a clear sense they believe they can be better sooner than they dared imagine even two months ago.

This has been a pretty realistic group all along. No delusions here.

Practically speaking, players could acknowledge by July that this season was definitely not about winning so much as growing. That growth has begun to show up for real.


In Renfroe’s .841 OPS since May 30. In Hedges’ .836 OPS since June 25. In Reyes’ 1.022 OPS in the 32 games since his most recent call-up on Aug. 5. In Jose Castillo allowing one of 13 inherited runners to score and striking out 40 batters in 32 innings.

“We’re doing a nice job right now of getting where we need to be,” Hedges said. “I’ve been very impressed with our guys right now. I think that’s what we can expect the rest of September and going into next year.”

Again, this is not about how much they have won recently (they are a mere 15-20 since the start of August) nor how much they might win over the season’s final 2 1/2 weeks.

Improvement and learning has been the aim of the first 145 games, and it is only more so now.


“Yeah,” Jankowski said. “There is a way to measure losing. But at the end of the day if you lose, you lose. I get the 100 losses; it sucks. But if your goal is not to lose 100 games, we’ve got bigger issues than what’s seen. … We look at it as we’re going to go out there and iron out some kinks. Rather than having a rough April, a rough May, we get it figured out now.”

There is a price for that focus. Always has been.

“A hundred looks bad,” Stammen said. “I guess there is some pride in not losing 100 games. But honestly, what’s the difference between losing 98 and 100? With what our goal is right now … it is about growth in the young guys. Losses are going to be part of that.”

kevin.acee@sduniontribune.com