SAN DIEGO — You can’t hit a home run from the dugout.

The Padres were right to pursue Roki Sasaki, even though, by the time the Japanese pitching ace chose Friday to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers, much of their offseason had come and gone to little effect.

The potential reward was far too great to not recruit Sasaski, who, according to scouting executives such as Dodgers team-builder Andrew Friedman, has a chance to become the sport’s best pitcher during his six years with Los Angeles.

En route to the painful defeat, the Padres did reap a tiny victory.

Sasaki named them one of his three finalists, joined by the Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays. If nothing else, such recognition plants a larger Padres flag in Japan, where Sasaki commands national attention. Coming Japanese stars won’t say “who?” when Padres team-builder A.J. Preller and scouts come calling.

Notice, too, that other than the Dodgers, the Padres stood as the only West Coast team to land among Sasaki’s final three.

The Seattle Mariners could offer him a West Coast locale in a mid-to-large market where Japanese legend Ichiro Suzuki fashioned a career deserving of induction into baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Sasaki didn’t include Seattle, though, among his initial eight candidates who visited with him and his legal team at his agency in Greater Los Angeles.

Nor did the Anaheim-based Angels and Sacramento-bound Athletics clear that first hurdle, despite the West Coast’s relative proximity to Japan.

The San Francisco Giants have most of the Bay Area baseball market to themselves now that the A’s have been relocated. Along with being a big-market team that could sell Sasaki on their ability to maintain a top-10 payroll, the Giants won three World Series trophies last decade and signed All-Star free-agent shortstop Willy Adames to a big contract last month.

The Giants didn’t make it past the first round. The Padres did.

So there was something about the Padres beyond their West Coast status that interested Sasaki, who like most Japanese stars who came to the United States chose a club in a larger market.

If Sasaki, 23, had chosen the Padres, it may been the most poetic decision. After all, one of his fans was Peter Seidler, the late Padres chairman. An underlying factor in Sasaki making the Padres a finalist may have been Seidler’s rare zeal to win a World Series, which contributed to four consecutive Padres clubs finishing among MLB’s top seven in player payroll between 2020 and 2023, a stunning fact to this day. As part of that push, Preller traded for a Sasaki favorite in Yu Darvish, the brilliant pitcher and Dodgers nemesis whose contract Preller and Seidler extended through 2028, when Darvish will be 42.

“Peter and I watched Roki for years,” Seidler’s widow Sheel Seidler, the person with the largest ownership share in the franchise, wrote on social media two days before Sasaki’s decision went public. “I know Peter is rooting for A.J. to get this done.”

“Disappointing news,” Sheel Seidler would write Friday, of Sasaki choosing the Dodgers, “but fully confident in A.J., Mike (Shildt) and all the players to deliver another great season.”

Bottom lines

Even if Sasaki had chosen them, the Padres probably weren’t going to win the National League West in 2025. Sasaki isn’t likely to approach 150 innings this year given his workload and injury history. The Dodgers would’ve been heavy favorites to win the division, even without him.

As Preller pointed out in November 2020, when he said the quiet part out loud to ESPN: “The reality is, the Padres are never going to be able to compete financially and roster-wise completely with the Dodgers. Let’s do the best we can and if we get (to the playoffs), we can beat them in a seven-game series.”

The Padres’ road to the World Series trophy hasn’t changed: get one of three wild cards — which often can be done with fewer than 90 wins — and have enough health and depth come October to win 13 postseason games instead of the 11 required of each league’s top two division champions.

It’s great fun for the Padres (and their fans) when they beat the Dodgers during the season.

But the Dodgers have turned the NL West title into their annual possession, so for the Padres, it’s more important to outperform the teams that can deny them one of three wild cards. The Giants and the Diamondbacks are two such teams. Sasaki joining either of those teams would’ve been the worst possible Padres outcome.

Patience, Padres fans

I don’t see the absence of Padres acquisitions this offseason as alarming.

Preller may have missed out by not trading for first baseman/DH Josh Naylor, who could’ve been terrific for this particular team. But the Diamondbacks’ prospect depth may have given it an edge to get Naylor, regardless of the timing.

Preller made too many good “buy-low” moves the past few years for me to believe it’s too late in the game to find value. The waiting game can lead to bargains. Free-agent players and their agents can grow antsy.

Last, the Padres still stand as a good team. Oddsmakers list them among the top eight contenders to win the next World Series trophy. The same projections have them among the NL’s top five teams, putting them squarely in the wild-card race.

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