The Numbers

2001 record: 79-83, .488 (18th overall) 2001 expected record*: 79-83 Runs scored: 789, 6th in NL Runs allowed: 812, 13th in NL Run differential: -23 (19th overall) Starters' ERA: 4.67, 11th in NL Bullpen ERA: 4.21, 12th in NL Payroll (Opening Day): $38.3 million (25th overall) Local broadcast revenue: $12.4 million (21st overall) Attendance: 2.38 million (18th overall) 3-year record: 229-257, .471 (17th overall) 5-year record: 403-407, .498 (16th overall) * based on runs scored and runs allowed

2001 in review
What went right?
Phil Nevin continued his remarkable renaissance, hitting .306 with 41 homers in his third straight outstanding season since the Padres picked up the former No. 1 overall pick from the Angels for Andy Sheets. Bubba Trammell proved he could hit on an everyday basis, swatting 25 homers and driving in 92 runs after he was acquired from the Mets. Unheralded rookie Brian Lawrence posted a 3.45 ERA in 115 innings. Rickey Henderson brought some excitement to San Diego with his successful quests for 3000 hits and the all-time runs record. The farm system continued to amass one of the finest collections of minor-league talent in baseball.

What went wrong
Promising young starter Adam Eaton started the season 8-5 but blew out his elbow in July and may not return until 2003. Free-agent pickup Bobby Jones led the league in losses (19), homers allowed (37), and opponent's batting average (.305). Tony Gwynn hit .324 in his farewell tour, but bad knees limited him to just 102 at-bats. A combination of scandals and lawsuits put the Padres' plans for a new ballpark on hold, perhaps indefinitely.

In retrospect, the critical decisions were:
1. Giving a shot to Brian Lawrence. Lawrence, a 17h-round draft pick out of college in 1998, failed to impress the scouts despite a career 2.81 minor-league ERA, including a 2.28 ERA in the high minors in 2000. He wasn't even listed by Baseball America among the team's top 10 prospects. (The Baseball Prospectus did list him among the top 40 prospects in baseball.) But after pitching sporadically out of the bullpen early in the year, Lawrence was given a shot in the rotation in July and never relinquished it, finishing with a 3.45 ERA, including a 3.13 ERA after the All-Star break.

2. A stellar stock play on Jay Witasick. Witasick, who had intrigued teams with his live arm for years despite no record of major-league success, was picked up by the Padres for the execrable Brian Meadows late in the 2000 season. The Padres elected to move Witasick to the bullpen in 2001, and he started the year with a 1.86 ERA and 53 strikeouts in 39 innings when Towers baited the Yankees into giving up prized middle infielder D'Angelo Jimenez. Witasick's season immediately went into the dumpster, while Jimenez posted a .355 OBP for the Padres even as he continued his recovery from a 2000 car wreck which almost left him paralyzed.

3. Signing Rickey Henderson to lead off. Henderson was a 42-year-old outfielder who had hit just .233 in 2000. While Henderson hit only .227 with the Padres, he walked 81 times (finishing with a .366 OBP) and set the tone for a new team-wide emphasis on the base on balls.

Looking ahead to 2002
Three key questions
1. Can the minor leaguers step up? The Padres plan to open 2002 with a pair of rookies on the left side of their infield, third baseman Sean Burroughs and shortstop Ramon Vazquez. Vazquez is 25 years old and a very polished rookie, while Burroughs is one of the three best prospects in the minor leagues, so they're both capable of producing right away. In addition, the Padres have two of the best starting pitchers in the minors in Dennis Tankersley and Jacob Peavy; if either of them has a breakout season, the Padres could surprise a lot of people.

2. Is Wiki Gonzalez ready to catch every day? The Padres showed a great deal of confidence in Gonzalez with their big offseason trade that sent Ben Davis to the Mariners. Gonzalez had the best season of his career in 2001, hitting .275/.335/.463 in a backup role. He'll have to prove that his offensive performance wasn't a fluke, and that at age 27 he's capable of taking over the starting job.

3. Are rumors of Ray Lankford's demise greatly exaggerated? Lankford was treated like a spare part in St. Louis by resident genius Tony La Russa, even though he was one of the most underrated players in baseball in the 1990s. The Cardinals were widely applauded for trading Lankford for Woody Williams, who went 7-1 with a 2.28 ERA for St. Louis, but the Padres could still win this trade. Lankford bounced back himself, hitting .288/.386/.480 in San Diego. He does need a platoon partner, though; over the last three years he's hit .291/.388/.544 against right-handed pitching, but just .196/.289/.320 vs. left-handers.

Stats Corner
Phil Nevin (above) finished with 41 HRs and 126 RBI, both second-highest in Padres history. The Padres ranked second in the majors (behind Seattle) in runs scored on the road (462). Kevin Jarvis and Bobby Jones tied (with Curt Schilling) for most home runs allowed in the NL (37). Tony Gwynn finished with 10 walks and nine strikeouts. The only season he had more K's than walks was his rookie year in 1982 (16 K's, 14 BBs).

Can expect to play better
D'Angelo Jimenez has three big reasons to take a step forward: 1) he's just 24; 2) he's entering his second full season after a major injury; 3) he's moving from shortstop to second base, and players who move to a less demanding defensive position frequently respond with improvement at the plate. Mark Kotsay is tantalizingly close to becoming a star hitter, and this might be the year he breaks out with a 900 OPS. Bobby Jones won't lose 19 games again.

Can expect to play worse
Phil Nevin has improved significantly in each of his three seasons with San Diego, but he'll have a hard time matching last year's performance. Other than Nevin, none of the Padres regulars appears likely to suffer a serious decline, which is why the Padres have a good chance to leap forward in 2002.

Projected lineup
CF Mark Kotsay
2B D'Angelo Jimenez
RF Ryan Klesko
1B Phil Nevin
LF Bubba Trammell / Ray Lankford
3B Sean Burroughs
C Wiki Gonzalez / Tom Lampkin
SS Ramon Vazquez

Rotation
Kevin Jarvis
Bobby Jones
Brian Tollberg
Brian Lawrence
Brett Tomko

Closer
Trevor Hoffman

A closer look
The Padres are the forgotten team in the NL West. The Diamondbacks are the defending World Series champs, the Giants keep overachieving with Dusty Baker (and Barry Bonds), the Rockies have spent millions of dollars in an unsuccessful quest to unlock the mysteries of Coors Field, and the Dodgers are a big-market team that continues to tread water despite every resource needed to dominate the division. The Padres? They're the poor cousin to the south, a team supposedly without the resources to win, and whose purported salvation -- a new ballpark -- has been stalled by a series of legal problems.

Last spring, 12 ESPN.com columnists predicted the season's standings. All 12 (myself included) predicted the Padres to finish in last place. No other major-league team was unanimously predicted to finish in the cellar.

The Padres didn't finish in last, of course; they won a very respectable 79 games in one of baseball's most competitive divisions. On first glance, it appears they were lucky to win even that many: the Padres flirted with .500 despite a collection of no-name starting pitchers (Kevin Jarvis -- a 31-year-old right-hander with all of 15 career wins to his credit before the season -- was the Padres' winningest pitcher) and a lineup with just a single .300 hitter and only three players who smacked even a dozen homers.

So feel free to dismiss the Padres as irrelevant once again. Just be aware that you do so at your own risk. Because the Padres, who despite their supposed handicaps have won two of the last six NL West titles (and played in the World Series barely three years ago) are gearing up for yet another playoff run.

Padres' GM Kevin Towers is a good friend of Billy Beane, and Beane's success with the A's has made an impression on him. Over the past year, Towers has quietly made the Padres into Oakland South, and quietly -- very quietly -- the Padres seem poised for the same kind of success.

The Rickey Henderson signing had more value for the Padres than just some late-season publicity for reaching a pair of milestones. Rickey knows the strike zone, and bringing him into the fold was Towers' first step in bringing the philosophy of plate discipline to San Diego.

Compare the performance of the Padres' hitters with their opponents. The Padres, as a team, hit .252; their opponents hit .269, and finished with 140 more hits overall. The Padres were out-homered by their opponents, 219 to 161 -- an enormous difference. And yet they were outscored by the piddling margin of just 23 runs.

Why? Walks. The Padres' no-name pitching staff did their best not to beat themselves, surrendering just 476 walks, the third-fewest in the league. Meanwhile, the Padres' hitters walked 678 times. No other major-league team picked up as many free passes, not even the A's (who finished second with 640). The Padres became just the eighth NL team since the dead-ball era to outwalk its opponents by 200 or more.

While Rickey set the tone for the Padres' walk explosion, the credit deserves to be shared by the entire roster. Phil Nevin drew 71 walks, setting a career-high for the third straight season. Mark Kotsay drew a career-high 48 walks, despite missing 43 games. Ryan Klesko, whose career high in walks was 68 before he came to San Diego, has walked 91 and 88 times the past two seasons. Perhaps most impressively, Ben Davis converted to the Church of Plate Discipline, amassing 66 walks. All told, the Padres walked 68 more times between 2001 and 2000, in spite of the expanded strike zone (the rest of the National League drew 14 percent fewer walks last season).

Just as important as Towers' willingness to embrace sabermetrics has been his impeccable track record on the trade market. Consider the following moves that Towers has made in the past 18 months:

1. He traded Brian Meadows, a soft-tosser whose major league ERAs were 5.21, 5.60, and 5.34, for Jay Witasick, whose similar track record belied a mid-90s fastball, and when Witasick blossomed, he moved him for D'Angelo Jimenez. In the span of less than a year, Towers turned a waiver-wire pitcher into a potential All-Star.

2. Last winter, Towers traded Donne Wall, a fine set-up man with some health concerns, for Bubba Trammell. Wall battled through injuries all season and finished with a 4.85 ERA, while Trammell gave the Padres a cheap, productive solution in right field.

3. Towers traded Matt Clement, who has an electric arm but wore out his welcome in San Diego after losing 17 games and leading the NL in walks and wild pitches in 2000, for Mark Kotsay. Clement once again underachieved for the Fish, finishing with a 5.05 ERA while leading the league in wild pitches again. Kotsay hit .291 with a career-high .366 OBP, and made a successful transition to center field.

4. The coup de grace: capitalizing on the Red Sox' desperation for a third baseman, Towers traded Ed Sprague to Boston in the summer of 2000 for a pitcher in A-ball named Dennis Tankersley. Sprague hit .216 for the Red Sox in 33 games, earning his release, and was picked up by the Padres again. At the moment of the trade, only Tankersley's name was major-league caliber; from the moment the Padres acquired him, Tankersley has rained brimstone and fire on opposing batters, vaulting four minor-league levels, and Red Sox fans are already comparing this trade to Bagwell-for-Andersen.

Towers has turned a fungible middle reliever, a head case of a starting pitcher, and two nobodies into three everyday hitters and one of the three best pitching prospects in baseball. Would you trade with a GM that had that kind of track record? The Mariners did, surrendering Ramon Vazquez and Brett Tomko to acquire Ben Davis. Vazquez, who walked 76 times and posted a .397 OBP in Tacoma last year, fits perfectly into the Padres' offense. Tomko, like Bubba Trammell a year ago, has been a capable major leaguer for several years, but has been denied the opportunity to show it due to circumstances beyond his control.

The acquisition of Vazquez, along with the ascendance of Sean Burroughs, will have a significant ripple effect on the Padres' lineup. Vazquez allows the Padres to move Jimenez to second base, and incumbent Damian Jackson to the bench, where he can be an asset as a utility player. Burroughs' readiness made Phil Nevin's departure to free agency easier to swallow ... except that the Padres, to the surprise of many, were able to sign Nevin to a long-term deal. Nevin will move to first base to accommodate Burroughs, and Ryan Klesko will move to the outfield. Where does this leave Bubba Trammell? If you're a Padres fan, he's right where you want him to be: on the trading block. In this case, rumors have Trammell heading back to New York in exchange for Bruce Chen, which would be another feather in Towers' cap: trading a solid, if unspectacular, corner outfielder into a 24-year-old southpaw with excellent potential.

The acquisition of Chen would help cement a starting rotation that makes up in depth what it lacks in star quality. Kevin Jarvis and Bobby Jones are veteran inning-eaters, but the key to the pitching staff -- and perhaps the entire Padres' season -- is their young starters. Brian Tollberg, who like Lawrence doesn't throw hard enough to get the scouts' attention, went 10-4 with a 4.30 ERA last season. Tomko, no spring chicken at age 29, has a chance to prove wrong all of his naysayers over the years. And waiting in the wings if anyone falters are Tankersley and Jacob Peavy.

Breakout candidates lurk everywhere on this team. Kevin Towers has built a team along the Oakland model, and he's about to reap the same harvest that Billy Beane has in Oakland. The Padres may have been the forgotten team in their division, but the NL West is about to find out that no team can afford to forget about them anymore.

Rany Jazayerli is a co-author of the Baseball Prospectus 2002. You can order the book at baseballprospectus.com. Email Rany at ranyj@baseballprospectus.com.