Carpe diem! The Padres’ ownership and front office are living for the day and stacking their roster in preparation for the stretch run and what they hope to be a deep run in the playoffs. With an unprecedented lineup of potentially three Hall of Fame talents (nods of acknowledgment to the ’84 and ’98 World Series teams, and the ’92 “four tops lineup”) a pitching rotation that goes five deep and the game’s top closer, manager Bob Melvin is armed with arguably the most complete Padres roster in franchise history.

What’s even more impressive about the trade deadline moves and roster creation is that the Padres are not living in the typical small market “one-year rental window” as the core of the roster is set up to be here through the next two seasons (starting pitching may be the one exception as Mike Clevinger and Sean Manaea are both set to be free agents at the end of the year).

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The Padres’ active 26-man roster can stack up with any other roster in Major League Baseball (especially if Drew Pomeranz is able to rehab and work his way back into a reliable back-end bullpen piece) but the overall depth of the 40-man roster has taken a hit. As Padres fans learned in their most recent playoff season, sustained health through the playoffs is not a guarantee. Without the likes of MacKenzie Gore, C.J. Abrams and Esteury Ruiz, the drop-off after the first 26 players is quite steep. This is where teams like the Dodgers and Cardinals have a significant advantage as they boast some of the best organizational depth in MLB.

While Padres ownership and the front office are supremely confident that general manager A.J. Preller and staff will quickly restock their minor league depth with astute draft picks and international signings, those acquisitions take time to mature into big league players (and a good number of them if one is inclined to trade them for proven major league players). Aside from Luis Campusano and perhaps Eguy Rosario, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of reinforcements in El Paso. But the boom or bust strategy that the Padres employ is nothing new to the Padres front office since Preller has arrived. Looking at his initial moves leading to the moniker of “Rock Star GM” when he shipped off young talents Yasmani Grandal, Trea Turner and Max Fried to bring in Matt Kemp, the Upton brothers and Craig Kimbrel, it was clear that the Padres were looking for high upside players even if there was a risk associated with them.

Preller and staff have a penchant for valuing high-ceiling prospects over high-floor, low-ceiling prospects, which helps us place this last trade deadline in context. While other GMs and MLB owners ultimately didn’t feel comfortable pulling the trigger to bring in multiple players with top-tier talent, it was another extension of the philosophy Preller and owner Peter Seidler have running a Major League Baseball team. As a life-long Padres fan born in the ’70s, I say thank you.

I came to San Diego in 1981. I immediately became a Padres fan. I have seen the glorious 1984 season, with its great comeback against the Cubs (and Steve Garvey going 4-5 with five RBIs and a game-winning homer in game four); the 1998 pennant winner (the best overall team in my estimation), and this new, improved 2022 team.

On paper we should be wildly enthusiastic. If, and I underscore if, Fernando Tatís Jr. comes back sound (and remains so ‘til year’s end), we should be excited and anticipate a good stretch drive to a No. 3 seed in the playoffs. We will not catch the Dodgers, and the Braves will lock up the first wild-card position. But here’s the rub: I do not believe that the Padres have the starting pitching to make it to the Series. Just look at those recent games against the Dodgers and the starts of Joe Musgrove before this last one. Pathetically lacking.

Finally, it appears that the Padres have lost the swagger and bravado that they demonstrated last season. Gone is the swag chain. Gone is the levity and energy. Gone is the mystique of being invincible. I do not fault Bob Melvin or A.J. Preller. It is something else. I’m searching for the right word, and the only one I can come up with is lackadaisical. From Manny Machado not running out a ground ball to Trent Grissom and Jurickson Profar letting fly balls drop in for hits, the boys are not giving it the needed effort. I guess I’m resigned to making the playoffs and being knocked out in the first round. And as Marlon Brando said in “On the Waterfront,” “I could’a been a contender.”

The overwhelming sense of euphoria felt by Padres fans immediately following the Juan Soto trade is certainly understandable. In fact, it was entirely justified. After last year’s late season collapse, followed by Fernando Tatís’ injury, San Diego was in dire need of a sign of hope. Everyone in town felt the confidence level rocket upwards when they heard the trade news. We suddenly felt emboldened. I heard the words “Now we can take on the Dodgers” mouthed by numerous fans.

But a warning is in order. Euphoria must be tempered by reality. At the risk of sounding like a Debbie Downer, if measuring up to the Dodgers is the Padres’ goal, chances are good that we are once again bound to be disappointed. As last weekend’s dismal encounter in Los Angeles demonstrated, the current version of the Dodgers may be too great an obstacle to overcome. They remain the talented, glamorous and popular “Joe Hollywood” big brother to the Padres’ little brother down the road. I am not sure anything can change the nature of this decades-long sibling relationship in the near term. Fellow San Diego Baby Boomers well-versed in a couple of old sitcoms will understand why I make such a claim.

The recent death of Tony Dow — the actor who played big brother Wally in the late ’50s/early ’60s sitcom “Leave it to Beaver” — reminded me of the significance of this big brother/little brother relationship. As any “Leave it To Beaver” fan knows, the Beaver, as played by Jerry Mathers, was always doing something goofy. He meant well, but he frequently found himself getting into awkward situations that required him to be bailed out by his parents, or even Wally.

On the other hand, Wally was the cool older brother — a good athlete and popular with the girls. He seldom experienced any problems. Despite many “Leave it to Beaver” episodes, this fact never changed. Every script was written with this fundamental concept in mind. What Padres fans must understand is that we are living in a sort of sitcom in real life, one in which the little brother Padres are scripted to be subservient to the cool big brother Dodgers.

If you don’t quite buy my baseball sibling relationship theory, I draw your attention to another Baby Boomer era sitcom. In “The Brady Bunch,” middle daughter Jan always felt inferior to her older sister Marcia. That golden child Marcia possessed the good looks, was popular with the boys and seemed to carry herself with a certain style that Jan could never pull off. San Diegans, let me be frank. The Dodgers are Marcia, and the Padres are Jan. Substitute Jan’s memorable lament of “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia” with the oft-heard equivalent of “Why can’t we beat the Dodgers?” and there is no escaping the validity of this claim.

How do the Padres rewrite this script? Perhaps by finally winning a World Series. There’s just one thing standing in the way. Um, yes, that darn big brother!

The Dodgers are in the Padres’ heads. Players and coaches will deny this, but it’s true. The Pads are constructed to win the World Series, but first they have to get there. San Diego’s best path is to delay facing the Dodgers in the playoffs for as long as possible, and perhaps not at all. Here’s how.

The teams making the National League playoffs are seeded one through six. The two division winners with the best records are No. 1 and No. 2 and both get a first-round bye. Seed No. 3 is the remaining division winner. Seeds four, five and six are the remaining three teams with the best records. In the Wild Card round, No. 4 faces No. 5 and No. 3 plays No. 6, with the better seed getting home field advantage for the entire three-game series.

The Padres cannot get a first-round bye because they cannot overcome the 15-plus-game lead Los Angeles has. Nobody could. The Dodgers are too good to allow such a lead to evaporate so the Dodgers will get a first-round bye and likely be the No. 1 seed.

The Padres could finish with the best or second-best record of the non-division winners, making them a No. 4 or No. 5 seed. One might think that’s something to strive for. It’s not. The winner of that series would have to play the likely No. 1 Dodgers next, in a best of five series. The idea is to avoid playing Los Angeles so soon, if at all. Sure, the No. 4 seed plays its three-game series at home, but would still emerge playing Los Angeles next up. Better to delay or avoid that if at all possible.

But how? The No. 6 seed plays its three-game series at the No. 3. The winner does not play the Dodgers next. It would play the No. 2, likely the Mets or possibly Atlanta, St. Louis or Milwaukee, all teams the Padres have beaten on the road and who are not in their heads. The Mets are good, but the Padres have a better chance of beating them than Los Angeles.

Moreover, who’s to say the Dodgers are a shoo-in to win a five-game series against Atlanta, St. Louis, etc.? Even if they do, the Padres have delayed or avoided playing the Dodgers until the best-of-seven National League Championship Series — something they couldn’t pull off as a No. 4 or No. 5 seed. San Diego’s best path to the Fall Classic is as a No. 6 seeded Wild Card.

I am, have been, and always will be a believer in the San Diego Padres winning a World Series championship before I kick the bucket, and here is why. I am an addict, a Padres addict. It all started before the National League expanded with the Expos and Padres in 1969. My dad moved the family from Phoenix to San Diego in 1957. I was 1 at the time, and my big brother Ed was 8. Ed loved baseball along with dad, and I kind of followed their lead. My dad would take us to Westgate Park to watch the Pacific Coast League Padres play the likes of the Spokane Indians, among others. I even won a PCL Padres season ticket in a contest, courtesy of the “Johnny Downs Cartoon Show.”

To whet my appetite for the big time, my family would have Vinnie Scully and Dick Enberg broadcasting Dodgers and Angels games on the radio in the kitchen during dinner. My dad and I would watch and listen to the MLB Game of the Week with Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean announcing the games. Once MLB allowed the Padres a chance at the big time, my interest grew, and I was hooked. My Aunt Carmen was a huge Giants fan and when she was in town, she’d take us to see the Padres and Giants play at Jack Murphy Stadium. It turned out to be a rough start for the Pads as they usually won about 60 and lost about 100. We almost lost the Pads to Washington, D.C., before Ray Kroc saved the day with his purchase of the ball club.

In 1984, I attended my first and only World Series game when the Tigers visited. To this day there is nothing like a World Series game, where every pitch is meaningful, even if one of those pitches ends up in the opposite field seats like the Larry Herndon game-winning homer for the visitors that night. The journey included the playoff victory over the Cubs and Jerry Coleman’s call of “Nettles to Wiggins. The Padres win the pennant. The Padres win the pennant.” That year we were “Cub Busters.”

The next time the Padres and their fans would taste a World Series game would be in 1998 versus the New York Yankees. The Yankees swept that year, but still, being one of the last two teams playing made it very difficult to forget the experience. It has been a long enough wait for the Padres faithful. America’s Finest City needs something to counter the America’s worst sports town moniker some have placed on the city because of the horrible franchise losses of the Rockets, Clippers and Chargers.

I remain an eternal optimist and continue to root, root, root for the Padres, even though I must admit to being a tad upset at the beginning of the year with the lockout. For a man of 66 who has followed the team from the days of Enzo Hernández to Juan Soto; with a son who is also a fan, along with his three sons of 1, 3 and 5, a positive attitude must remain until that wonderful day a World Series trophy is lifted at a ticker tape parade celebrating the greatest day in San Diego sports history. No question, especially if the players remain healthy, the talent is there overall. However, you know what they say about baseball: Pitching is 75 percent of the game; and those dreaded Dodgers still seem to have that and the confidence to beat us into submission. Darn Dodgers!

The San Diego Padres this past weekend were on a learning curve. They have the talent and youth and the direction of the manager, Bob Melvin. The core players have to learn to focus on execution no matter the team they have in front of them.

Can you imagine a sweep by the Padres on the Dodgers’ home field? Still waiting for a San Diego Padres World Series win since I was born in 1975.

Héctor Lazcano Venegas, Tijuana

Sure, Padres fans can dream about a World Series championship. Since the team was founded in 1969, that’s all that we fans have been able to do. And from my perspective as a baseball fan for longer than the Padres have existed, dreaming is all we’ll be able to do for the foreseeable future. This year’s team is good. At times, very good. But is it a championship-quality team? No, not at all. The starting pitching rotation is decent, but inconsistent. Like last year, it began strong but has begun to fade. And like last year, Blake Snell started slowly but has come on strong, just as the others have not. Same with the bullpen, which began the year as a strength but, even with new closer Josh Hader, is filled with question marks and gradually diminished success.

The deadline trades were fine, but there is still an anemia pervading the offense. The Padres are weak at center field and catcher. Jake Cronenworth is a key figure in the lineup but hasn’t found a consistent stroke. Manny Machado was on fire early but since the ankle injury he has struggled. The return of Fernando Tatís Jr. may ignite the offense, but will it be enough? They still play the Dodgers multiple times, visit Colorado where they have played miserably, and play the Giants in a couple more series. There is serious doubt whether they will even make the playoffs as a wild card. General manager A.J. Preller has made some good moves, and plenty of bad ones. Majority owner Peter Seidler has spent vast sums of money but too much of it has been wasted. Preller has yet to produce a team with a record over .500 in a full 162-game season. So, fellow Padres fans, we continue to dream.

Ownership and management should be applauded for giving San Diego Padres fans and players hope. It is an exciting and unprecedented time. May we rally together and enjoy this wonderful opportunity, this wonderful team and the incredible drive this team has shown. Let’s go Padres!

We are proud of this team and thankful for the hope and the opportunity to be a part of something so special. Thank you!

I am very excited to see general manager A.J. Preller and owner Peter Seidler going out and getting the missing pieces together (Juan Soto, Josh Bell, Josh Hader and Brandon Drury) to make our Padres a very serious contender for this year and hopefully the next few years.

It was time to shed the small market mentality, since you’re either “in it to win it” or not. Let’s go Padres!

Scott M. Blumen, Mission Valley

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