LOS ANGELES — In the eyes of most baseball observers, the 2017 Padres have exceeded expectations.

They did not lose 100 games. They will not finish last in the National League West, probably baseball’s toughest division, and that will be largely because of the utter collapse of the Giants.

They learned some things about their highly touted young talent. The Rule 5 guys they had to keep on the major league roster didn’t embarrass themselves, and some might ultimately be productive big leaguers.

And they still seem on schedule to be truly competitive around 2019 or 2020, once all the kids are settled in place.

But you know where this is going, don’t you? One set of expectations was not exceeded.

“I feel like we’re better than we played,” Manager Andy Green said.

“That’s probably not going to be the common opinion outside the industry. But I think there’s more in there, and when there’s more in there you haven’t exceeded my expectations.”

That is what a manager does. When the world thinks “tank,” he thinks “compete.”

That is how you develop Manuel Margot, who could be San Diego’s center fielder for the next decade. Or Jose Pirela, who grabbed left field and shook it into submission while posting a .288/.347/.490 slash line before a broken pinky ended his season.

Or Hunter Renfroe, who broke Nate Colbert’s Padres rookie home run record Tuesday night with his 25th — despite spending a month in Triple-A to work on what had become an undisciplined plate approach.

Or young pitchers Dinelson Lamet and Luis Perdomo, a rookie and a second-year big leaguer. Both figure to be front runners for rotation spots next spring in Peoria, but they will be pressed from the rear as guys like Cal Quantrill and Eric Lauer and Joey Lucchesi try to get themselves to The Show a year ahead of schedule.

You see it all over the diamond. For instance, current shortstop Erick Aybar is pretty much a placeholder for Fernando Tatis Jr., who was so good in low A ball at Fort Wayne that he bypassed high A Lake Elsinore and went directly to Double-A San Antonio to finish the season.

Even first baseman Wil Myers, who signed a six-year, $83 million extension before this season and is the club’s most recognizable player, could have someone pushing him. Josh Naylor seems the most likely candidate at this point, though his production dropped this year when he was promoted from Lake Elsinore to San Antonio.

“Very few things are going to be locked down going into the spring next year,” Green said. “I love it. I think you’re trying to create a culture of competition and a culture of continuous improvement. The only way you do that is if you have viable options competing for jobs. If you don’t have viable options, nobody feels like there’s somebody breathing down their neck.

“There’s something to be said for security in this game, the understanding that the job belongs to you and (you can) be at ease there. But the reality for most guys in professional baseball is that very few guys get that type of security, so you have to get comfortable in that uncomfortable realm of somebody else breathing down your neck.”

That embrace of discomfort, and that edge — which memorably manifested itself on the final day of June at Petco Park, when Green and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts almost dropped the gloves and had at it — probably made Green the ideal skipper for a club that was going to have to be scrappy, and was probably going to lose a lot and get pounded occasionally.

Yeah, the Padres have had some truly ugly nights. All teams have them occasionally, and bad ones have them more often.

They’ve lost games 16-0, 18-4 and 15-3. They’ve absorbed some truly fearsome poundings by Colorado and Arizona. They’ve lost games to the Dodgers by margins of 14-3 (opening day), 10-2, 10-2, 10-4 and 8-0, as well as 9-3 and 9-2 in the first two games of the series.

And yet they won three of four from the Dodgers in early September, during L.A.’s blue period. They swept the Cubs at the end of May. They won two of three at Cleveland in July. They were 18-18 in one-run games going into this week’s series in The Ravine, and they’ve had 33 come-from-behind victories.

They were 12 games under .500 at the All-Star break, but they were four games under in 68 games following the break before running into the Dodgers this week. That is progress.

“For a lot of us, this is our first full year,” Renfroe said. “You’ve got to put that in perspective. There’s a lot of guys here (who have) never even been past Double-A. But I think we’ve grown a lot this year. We’ll grow a lot next year, and we’ll know what to expect.”

They may be 70-88, and they may be locked into fourth place, but these Padres haven’t given in.

“They play hard,” the Dodgers’ Roberts said. “It’s a group we don’t know a whole lot about, outside of a few position players. But (they’re) athletic, dynamic, and you’ve got Brad Hand at the back of the bullpen … (they’re) very talented, and they play the game the right way.”

While you’re assembling the talent to truly compete, playing hard is a pretty good start.