A World Series banner hangs in downtown Phoenix, honoring the Arizona Diamondbacks’ 2001 upset of the New York Yankees.

Go to the East Village, and you’ll see no World Series banner near the corner of Tony Gwynn Drive and Trevor Hoffman Way. The Padres last won a National League pennant in 1998, the Diamondbacks’ first year of existence. The Diamondbacks have since won two pennants — one in 2001 and another in 2023 — and captured one world title.

So it’s a bit cheeky of me here to point out a crucial truth.

The Padres have become the better baseball franchise.

Where San Diego seems headed toward a fourth postseason berth in six years, the Diamondbacks seem assured of missing the playoffs for the seventh time in eight years.

Contrary to most preseason forecasts by oddsmakers and pundits who gave the Snakes a slight edge, the Padres have turned this year’s two-club race into a rout. San Diego was up nine games on Arizona going into the teams’ series finale Wednesday night in Phoenix.

Torn elbow ligaments have ended the seasons of four Diamondbacks pitchers, including $210 million ace Corbin Burnes. The team placed El Capitan High School and Southwestern College product Kevin Ginkel on the 60-day injured list Wednesday. He has company: Nine Diamondbacks, including Burnes, starting catcher Gabriel Moreno, left-handed closer A.J. Puk and right-handed reliever Justin Martinez, are now on the 60-day shelf.

The Padres always figured to have the better bullpen, and that gap, health-driven to some extent, has been Grand Canyon-sized.

Run prevention is a Padres strength that goes back several years. And the Padres’ pitching health has been good, by MLB’s standards, since 2021.

Yes, A.J. Preller and staff have a good feel for pitching.

But the claim here isn’t that the Snakes are baseball dummies and the Padres are baseball geniuses.

Just two years ago, a Diamondbacks team built by former Padres minor leaguer Mike Hazen reached the World Series. Veteran scout Deric Ladnier drafted outfielder Corbin Carroll for the Snakes before landing a job with the Astros. Carroll, one of the game’s top entertainers, led the 2023 team to the pennant as a rookie and is having a fine season this year.

Wrapping this up, I’ll belabor a point.

It’s more enjoyable to attend baseball games in coastal San Diego than in Phoenix, regardless of whether you care about who wins the games. Coastal San Diego’s charms give the Padres a much better chance to rout the Snakes in the ballpark-profits game. The advantage shows up in the teams’ player payrolls.

The Padres have finished third, fifth, second and third in attendance since 2021 and now stand second, trailing only the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Diamondbacks? They’ve finished 24th, 21st, 20th and 17th in the same span. Now, they sit 16th.

So the large gap in media market size — San Diego’s 30th in the country, Phoenix is 12th — doesn’t seem very relevant in this rivalry.

Even with a franchise-best payroll of $187 million entering this year, one that placed 13th of 30 MLB teams, the Diamondbacks fall well short of a Padres payroll that now stands at $213 million and eighth in baseball, per Fangraphs.com.

So like travelers on the desert stretch between San Diego and Phoenix, Padres fans may want to enjoy a celebratory date shake.

Though many locals are understandably fixated on the Dodgers when considering the Padres’ postseason competition, it’s notable that the Diamondbacks, two years after winning the pennant and riding their largest payroll ever, haven’t come close to keeping up.

Originally Published: August 6, 2025 at 6:23 PM PDT