The night that built the Dodgers dynasty: How the Padres helped create the new ‘Evil Empire’

It’s October 9, 2024.

The air in San Diego feels heavier than usual — like the ocean itself is holding its breath. The Padres have just battered the Los Angeles Dodgers in back-to-back games, outscoring them 16–7, and now stand on the edge of something they’ve never fully grasped: control.

Not just of a series. Of a story. Of a rivalry that has lived too long in someone else’s shadow.

Across the diamond, the Dodgers look like something fragile trying to pretend it isn’t. Bruised. Battered. Held together by tape, belief, and the quiet arrogance of a team that refuses to admit it can bleed. Their rotation is gone. What remains is a bullpen stitched together like a last prayer whispered into the dark.

Their all-star first baseman, Freddie Freeman, can barely walk. A high-ankle sprain has turned each step into a negotiation with pain. An hour before first pitch, even that fight gives out. He’s scratched.

The Padres can feel it. You can almost see it in their body language — shoulders a little looser, swings a little freer, eyes a little sharper. This is what blood in the water looks like.

They hand the ball to Dylan Cease on short rest, not out of desperation, but conviction. This is the moment. The kind players imagine as kids, throwing imaginary pitches in empty backyards — the chance to topple the giant, not once, but twice in three years, and finally step into a light that has always belonged to someone else.

For a few fleeting hours, it looks like the story is ready to change.

And yet, like something out of baseball folklore — the kind that gets passed down like ghost stories in dugouts — the Dodgers refused to die.

Eight relievers. Twenty-seven outs. Zero runs.

The silence that followed in San Diego wasn’t just the end of a game. It was the beginning of something far louder.

History doesn’t just remember outcomes. It remembers the moment everything could have changed.

That night, the Padres didn’t just lose a game. They lost control of the narrative.

Because from that bullpen game forward, the Dodgers didn’t simply survive. They transformed. They hardened. They evolved into something colder, sharper, and battle-tested. Like Thanos in Avengers, they were inevitable.

They went on to win the 2024 World Series. Then 2025. Now, as Opening Day 2026 arrives, they are chasing something sacred and dangerous: a three-peat.

And across the sport, the whispers have turned into accusations.

“The Dodgers are buying championships!”

But here’s an uncomfortable truth that we learned from that 2024 Division Series: The Padres played a hand in creating this current Dodgers dynasty.

Baseball loves its villains. It needs them, like a story needs conflict. The Yankees were the heel for decades.

Now, it’s the Dodgers.

A $300-plus million payroll. A once-in-a-generation talent in Shohei Ohtani. And a roster so stacked it feels like playing Madden in franchise mode with the salary cap turned off.

But villains don’t rise in a vacuum. They are forged through fire. Through resistance. In rivalry. In failure.

And no team pushed the Dodgers closer to the edge — or forced them to become what they are now — more than the Padres.

“What if?” is a dangerous question in baseball. It lingers longer than a hanging curveball.

What if San Diego had finished the job that night?

What if the Padres had stepped over the Dodgers’ body and marched to a World Series title of their own?

Would Dave Roberts still be managing in Los Angeles, or would he have been run out of town after a third straight early exit?

Would free agents like Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki, and Tanner Scott have looked south instead of north on the 5 freeway?

Would we be talking about a Padres dynasty instead of a Dodgers one?

Inside the Padres clubhouse, those questions don’t get romanticized. They get buried.

“You can always live in what ifs,” said Padres manager Craig Stammen, who was part of the 2022 team that beat the Dodgers and was an assistant in the front office in 2024. “I try not to live in what if’s. Hopefully it made us stronger in the process.”

Stammen is not looking to rewrite history. He’s trying to forge his own through the same type of fire that strengthened the Dodgers. 

“They played better than us,” Stammen said of that 2024 series. “Winning that Game 5 matters. It doesn’t happen by accident.”

For Manny Machado, the face of the franchise, the idea of alternate timelines doesn’t carry much weight.

“I’ve never thought about it,” Machado said. “We had a great team… we fell short and that’s where we leave it at.”

That’s the difference between players and fans. Fans replay moments like broken film reels. Players move on because they have no other choice. 

But even in that refusal to dwell, there’s an undercurrent — a recognition of the opportunity that slipped through their fingers.

“We obviously had a great team, we all thought we had a really, really good shot to win the World Series,” said Padres’ infielder Jake Cronenworth.

Even the Dodgers players acknowledged the Padres were the best team they faced. 

Ironically, one of the most telling perspectives comes from a man who stood on both sides of that divide.

Walker Buehler — once the October hero for the Boys in Blue — now wears Padres brown.

“The real change started when the team started upgrading and replacing guys through free agency,” Buehler said. “We did win a World Series before 2024. So the idea that Dave Roberts would have been fired had we lost is a little far-fetched.”

He’s right. Dynasties aren’t built by accident. They’re infrastructure. Culture. Philosophy.

But pressure accelerates everything.

And the Padres applied that pressure like a vice grip.

That 2024 series forced the Dodgers to confront something uncomfortable: talent wasn’t enough. Depth wasn’t enough. Health wasn’t guaranteed.

So they responded the only way elite organizations do.

They doubled down.

They spent more.They developed better. They became relentless in the pursuit of greatness.

Across the league, that relentlessness has been mistaken for something sinister.

“They’re ruining baseball.”

That’s the lazy narrative. 

But inside the Padres clubhouse, the perspective is different.

“I don’t think they’re destroying baseball,” said Padres’ outfielder Jackson Merrill. “I love it. I love how much money they’re spending. Other teams who want to compete, just spend the money.”

There’s a challenge in that statement. A dare, almost.

Because the Dodgers aren’t cheating the system. They’re exposing it.

“They are putting a product on the field that is trying to win,” Cronenworth said. “You can’t fault them for that. Peter Siedler did the same thing with us, and we’re in a completely different market than they are.”

And maybe that’s the part that stings the most. Because the Padres tried to do the same thing.

They pushed their payroll. They chased stars. They sold the farm. They believed they could stand toe-to-toe with Los Angeles.

And for a moment, they did.

But baseball doesn’t reward almost.

It remembers champions. It forgets contenders.

And now, the Dodgers stand at the center of the sport, polarizing and powerful, chasing history while the rest of the league debates whether it’s fair.

The irony is almost poetic.

The team that came closest to stopping them may have been the very team that made them unstoppable.

As the 2026 season begins, the Padres aren’t chasing the ghosts of playoff pasts. They’re chasing something far more difficult: relevance in a division ruled by a winning machine.

“Do whatever it takes to be the best we can be on a daily basis,” Stammen said, when asked what’s the formula for dethroning the Dodgers in the NL West. 

It sounds simple. It isn’t.

Because to beat the Dodgers now requires more than talent. It requires precision. Health. Timing. A little bit of luck. And maybe, just maybe, a moment where the baseball gods blink.

So what if the Padres had won that night?

Maybe the Dodgers never become this version of themselves. Maybe free agency looks different. Maybe the power structure of baseball tilts south instead of north. Maybe San Diego is the one being accused of ruining the sport.

Or maybe — and this is the part no one wants to admit — the Dodgers still find a way.

The Padres didn’t just miss their chance. They helped create a monster by pushing it to the brink and not finishing the job.

Like a fighter who has the champion on the ropes but hesitates for half a second too long, they gave the Dodgers time to recover. And that’s all it takes.

Opening Day arrives for both teams on Thursday. With the sun shining over Chavez Ravine and Petco Park, respectively. 

The Dodgers however have a target on their back that feels heavier than ever. They are chasing history. And whether fans love them or loathe them, they are driving the conversation of an entire sport.

But if you trace the roots of this dynasty — if you follow the story back to the moment it all turned — you don’t end in Los Angeles.

You end in San Diego.

On a night when the Padres had the Dodgers exactly where they wanted them.

And let them go.

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