When over a few hours in the same winter a chunk of prospects are sacrificed for two of the more decorated pitchers in the game, the goal isn’t to beat one team, it’s to beat them all.
Still, if you’re the San Diego Padres, it’s a reasonable place to start.
Maybe that’s over six months and maybe it’s across a single week in October, but they’re going to have to be better than the Los Angeles Dodgers or this — the waiting, the plotting, the long view and narrow vision, the daring strikes and occasional restraint and money spent, and the hope, mostly the hope — will be again the story of a lost season, and then another and another.