New general manager A.J. Preller continued his stunning makeover of the San Diego Padres when he signed veteran starter James Shields to a four-year, $72 million free-agent deal. The move adds a durable frontline starter to a club that already brought in Justin Upton, Matt Kemp, Wil Myers and Derek Norris this winter, capturing headlines and revitalizing a franchise that had seemed stagnant in recent years.

But while the flurry of activity makes the Padres look like a much better team for 2015, on paper they are still no match for the Dodgers. And it’s not even close.

Obviously they still have to play the games — that’s the whole point. And these days, it’s tough to count on anything in baseball except the Cardinals making the postseason every damn year. Plus, the Dodgers have a heck of a lot more payroll to work with, and Preller’s task is to get his club to the playoffs, not necessarily to have the Padres outplay the Dodgers over the 162-game regular season. And maybe Preller found — accidentally or intentionally — some magical and synergistic mix of talent that will propel the Padres to 108 wins. Sometimes that stuff just kind of happens, no matter what anyone expects at the season’s outset.

Still, the disparity is almost alarming when you consider the amount of hype the Padres have generated this offseason: The Dodgers look to be better at virtually every single position on the field.

First try it off the top of your head: How many Padres are clearly more valuable than the Dodger at their corresponding positions? You’d take Justin Upton over Carl Crawford at this point, almost certainly. But beyond that, there are no obvious cases and few murky ones for the San Diego club.

Here’s how the teams stack up at all five rotation spots, closer, all eight positions, and the first two bench spots. I included every player’s 2014 WAR, per Fangraphs, and his 2015 Steamer projection. The leading figure at each position is in bold. The Padres are in brown because the Padres should obviously go back to brown uniforms:

You could make a case for Padres catcher Derek Norris over Padre-turned-Dodger Yasmani Grandal behind the plate, as Norris had a much better year than Grandal in 2014. But even holistic stats like WAR don’t factor in a catcher’s framing ability, and research on that skill suggests Grandal more than makes up the offensive distinction by expanding the strike zone when he catches.

Wil Myers has already showed he can hit in the Majors and Dodgers rookie Joc Pederson has not, but moving Myers to center field represents a risk at least as big as giving a starting job to a top prospect who posted a 1.017 OPS in Class AAA last year. And while the Padres now have solid depth in position players, the Dodgers have an abundance of it.

The addition of Shields likely means the Padres have done more to get better than the Dodgers have this offseason, but the Dodgers’ new front office team of Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi have significantly improved their club by bringing in still-good veterans like Howie Kendrick, Jimmy Rollins and Brandon McCarthy.

And despite all the Dodgers’ big-ticket acquisitions in the last few years and all the Padres’ moves this offseason, the best players on either team, by far, are Clayton Kershaw and Yasiel Puig. Neither of those guys really amounted for a terribly huge splash when he was acquired — Kershaw was drafted in 2006, Puig was signed to an eyebrow-raising free-agent deal out of Cuba in 2012 — as high-profile moves rarely prove the most effective way to find bona fide superstars.