Why this week is crucial for Padres' Wild Card hopes

This story was excerpted from AJ Cassavell’s Padres Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Coming off consecutive wins over the first-place Orioles, the Padres sure are riding a high into their biggest week of their season to date.

And I really don’t think I’m being hyperbolic when I say that.

With seven games against the D-backs and Marlins in the next seven days -- the Padres need to treat their next week of games like the playoffs come early.

Look at the calendar. Look at the standings. Look at the schedule the rest of the way. It’s hard to envision these Padres getting where they’re trying to get to without a big week. Conversely, if they do have a big week, they might flip this Wild Card race on its head.

“This is huge,” said first baseman Jake Cronenworth. “We’ve got a group of teams that are ahead of us in the standings, and they’re coming up for us. We’ve got to continue to play like we did the last two nights.”

The Padres sit 4 1/2 games back in the NL Wild Card race. They’ll almost certainly need to leapfrog both the Marlins and D-backs to reach the postseason. This week marks the final time San Diego plays these two opponents.

With the league having recently scrapped one-game tiebreaker playoffs, those tiebreakers will be settled by head-to-head over the next week:

• A split against the D-backs would win the Padres the season tiebreaker (though they’d obviously prefer to make up some ground on top of that).

• If the Padres win their series against the Marlins, they win that tiebreaker. If they’re swept, they lose it. If the Marlins take two of three, the tiebreaker comes down to divisional record.

In short: At this time next week, the Padres’ playoff odds are going to be a lot clearer.

“Just carry this momentum,” said Fernando Tatis Jr., who dazzled with his straight steal of home on Wednesday night. “I don’t know about the week. It’s about just winning tomorrow, then you take care of the next day.”

Indeed, the players are more than welcome to take a small-picture view. But here’s the big-picture reality: The Padres need to (at the very least) split against the D-backs. They need to win their series against the Marlins.

And they need to play those games with a playoff-type urgency. That means quicker hooks for starters when necessary. That means perhaps asking for more from closer Josh Hader, who almost never pitches multiple innings and/or three days in a row. That means the best possible lineups every night for a week, with little concern for rest days.

On Wednesday afternoon, manager Bob Melvin was asked about scoreboard-watching. He said he typically starts in September, but he acknowledged doing so earlier than usual this year, given the team’s plight. Though with so many teams in the mix, he tries to stop himself.

“That's one of the reasons you don't want to look at it too much,” Melvin said. “You start thinking about: 'What does this team have to do?' When it should always just be about us, winning some games and hopefully passing some teams. But when you start looking at who's ahead of you, it feels a little more daunting.”

The Padres don’t have to scoreboard-watch to see the teams ahead of them over the next week. They get the chance to play them -- at home.

“It’s opportunistic that we get to play some teams that are ahead of us,” Melvin said. “We still have to take care of business.”