PHOENIX — The Padres are headed to the postseason, right on what has become their every-other-year schedule.

They won their 92nd game on Friday, which tied them with the 1984 squad for second most in franchise history behind the 1998 team. (It may be pertinent to recall that those are the only two Padres teams to have advanced to the World Series.)

How did the 2024 team get here, to where they are 13 victories from bringing home the franchise’s first championship?

Well, a lot has happened.

So, if you’re just hopping on the bandwagon or if Merrill Madness has affected your memory, here is a review to get you up to speed.

On the margins

This was what new manager Mike Shildt preached after a 2023 season in which the Padres went 2-12 in extra innings and 9-23 in one-run games and missed the playoffs by two games.

That meant an emphasis on playing clean in the field, taking extra bases, moving runners over with bunts and sacrifices and productive outs and thinking of virtually every at-bat as situational hitting.

The Padres are not loved by the modern defensive metrics, but there is no questioning the fact they generally do not give away much in the field. They have committed the sixth-fewest errors in the major leagues, and the 105 games in which they did not commit an error are third most.

They lead the major leagues in extra bases taken on singles and doubles. They have the second-most sacrifice bunts, have avoided practically innumerable double plays by getting good leads and being in motion and have been at or near the top of the majors in batting average with runners in scoring position and in late-and-close situations all season.

Among the ways that has shown up is that they are 10-2 in extra innings and 22-19 in one-run games. (Just as remarkable is that they were an MLB-worst 25-42 in games decided by no more than two runs in ’23 and a league-best 40-25 in such games this season.)

More than anything, it has shown up in their resilience.

The Padres have won 32 games in which they were tied or trailed in the eighth inning or later (compared to 18 last year), scored the deciding run in their final team at-bat in 21 games (compared to eight last year) and gone 31-22 in games in which they lost a lead (compared to 8-33 last year).

Taking care of business

The above phrase is generally used in baseball as a euphemism for “beating bad teams.” And it is what good teams do.

Just one team in the history of the major leagues has gone to the postseason in a year in which it had a losing record against teams with a record of .500 or worse. That was the 2016 Texas Rangers. It’s about as reliable as any axiom can be. Playoff teams beat up on bad teams.

The Padres were swept by the awful Angels from June 3 to 5.

As Jurickson Profar would say later, “I think it was like a switch for us.” The team met, discussing the importance of being focused at the same level for all opponents.

At that point, they were 13-19 against teams that currently do not have winning records. They are 29-16 since.

And their ability to do that — to focus on the day they were in and the opponent they were playing and treat them all the same — might be the defining trait of this year’s Padres. It is the trait that led to so many of the other traits.

It’s a long season

At various points in the first half of this season, there was concern that ranged from furrowed brows to mass hysteria about the Padres’ struggles at home, struggles against left-handed starters, lack of slug, baserunning mistakes, inability to win more than three in a row or sweep a team and whether Manny Machado would ever be a good hitter again.

Machado is his own section. The rest, we will briefly recap here.

• The Padres began the season 14-21 at Petco Park. They finished 45-35.
• The Padres won five of their first six games started by opposing lefties. Then they won just six of their next 21. But on June 19, they won a game started by Phillies left-hander Ranger Suarez, at the time the ERA and wins leader in the National League. Since that day, they are 15-3 in games started by lefties. They were batting .226 against left-handers overall on June 19 and have hit .255 since.
• The Padres went without an extra-base hit six times in a span of games from May 14 to June 4 and were slugging just .389 on June 5 (14th in MLB). They have gone without an extra-base hit twice in the 96 games since and have slugged .420 in that span.
• The Padres ran into a relatively large number of outs in the season’s first few weeks. Shildt just kept explaining he was fine with “aggression with intelligence” and that sometimes players were going to make mistakes when they were trying to make things happen. The mistakes largely subsided. Meanwhile, the Padres have gone on to lead the major leagues in going first to third on singles and first to home on doubles.
• The Padres were the last team to win more than three straight games. Yes, the White Sox, who just broke the MLB record for most losses in a season, won four straight nearly a month-and-a-half before the Padres’ first streak that long and swept an opponent nearly two months before the Padres did so. The Padres won four in a row beginning June 19, lost a game and then won five straight. They put together a seven-game winning streak in late July and another in August and won five in a row again earlier this month. They have swept eight series.

Victor, Luis, contact

New hitting coach Victor Rodriguez set the tone from the start of spring training, and Luis Arraez arrived in a May 3 trade and began setting a tone at the top of the lineup.

The Padres offense is defined by putting the ball in play.

They swing and miss less than any team. They have the highest overall batting average (.264), highest batting average with two strikes (.204), the fewest strikeouts and have hit the most line drives in the major leagues. They rank seventh in slugging percentage and fifth in on-base percentage.

Arraez entered Saturday’s game leading the National League in batting average (.314), batting average with two strikes (.270) and lowest swing-and-miss rate (5.8 percent).

Bottom line: the Padres rank eighth in MLB in runs per game.

The Manny

Machado had elbow surgery on Oct. 3 and was working hard to get back playing third base in spring training when he had a setback. He began the season as the team’s designated hitter and eased into playing third base beginning in late April.

By mid-June, he was off to the worst start of his career. Literally, as of June 18, his .662 OPS was lower than it had ever been 69 games into any of the 11 seasons in which he played at least that many games.

He spoke that day about the difficulties with his swing due to the elbow issue and predicted he was close to breaking out.

From June 19 through Saturday, he has a .917 OPS. It should not be lost that two days after that is when Fernando Tatis Jr., who had been leading the Padres in home runs and runs scored, began a 2½-month stay on the injured list.

And with Machado averaging a home run every 14 at-bats and an RBI every five at-bats, the Padres went 38-21 while Tatis was out.

The real strength of this Padres team — as opposed to the 2020 and ’22 playoff squads — is that there have been so many heroes. In fact, many in the clubhouse have expressed the belief they are better as a whole because Machado struggled. They were forced to prove they could pick each other up.

Still, the Padres were 37-40 on June 18 and have gone 55-28 since.

They are 27-1 when Machado has multiple RBIs, 39-9 when he has multiple hits and 20-5 when he hits at least one home run.

Every team is better when its star players perform, but there is not another star player whose team goes as he goes in the way it is true for Machado and the Padres.

Absolute madness

How to add to or even summarize what 21-year-old rookie center fielder Jackson Merrill has done?

His exploits have been chronicled more than any other Padres player because there have been more exploits than any other player.

He entered Saturday’s game leading the Padres in WAR (5.1) and second in batting average (.292), home runs (24) and RBIs (90) while having started 147 games at a position he had never played before spring training.

And that doesn’t even touch on his contributions as a teammate and even kind of a mascot.

This quote from Michael King about a month ago captures the essence of Merrill and how his teammates have responded to him:

“He’s 21 years old. Everything he does is baseball. It’s not like he has a family that he goes home to and kids that he can go talk to. He gets to the field, and he’s so happy to be here and talks about how we’re all his best friends and we’re just having fun. And now me sitting here having a bad outing, I look at Jackson, I’m like, ‘All right, that’s the mentality that we need to have.’ So I think it’s just his contagious mentality that we go out and we’re playing a kid’s game and we’re loving each other. And it’s a lot easier game when you’re playing for your brothers.”

So many faces

Machado, Tatis and starter Joe Musgrove are the so-called faces of the franchise. Merrill is becoming/has become one.

Trading away Juan Soto in December did not mean the Padres are no longer star-studded. And dropping from having a top-three payroll to 15th does not mean they have not invested in players.

They simply built a more complete team.

There have been so many faces of the team at various points.

• Profar, called “irrelevant” by Dodgers catcher Will Smith in a postgame interview on April 13, hit a bases-loaded double in the seventh inning the next day to win that game and give the Padres a series win. And he didn’t stop providing big moment after big moment for quite some time. While injuries and slumps ravaged the team’s biggest bats, Profar led the National League in batting average as late as June 20. And he led the Padres in many offensive categories well into August and still ranks among the top 10 in the NL in OPS and runs scored.
• Matt Waldron made the starting rotation out of spring training, and while he figured out how to use his knuckleball posted a 5.82 ERA through his first seven starts. Then in a 14-start run from May 11 through July 24, Waldron posted a 2.76 ERA that ranked fifth in the major leagues. There was almost a full month in that stretch, from May 23 to June 22, where the rest of the Padres starting pitchers had a 4.94 ERA.
• Donovan Solano joined the team May 5 and became the primary fill-in for Machado as he worked his arm back into shape. Solano posted a .750 OPS in 185 plate appearances up until the All-Star break.
• David Peralta replaced the injured Xander Bogaerts on the roster on May 22 and struggled for more than a month. Then the 10-year veteran, who from the start was a force of positive energy in the dugout, started hitting like it was 2018 again. As the primary starter in right field while Tatis was on the injured list, Peralta batted .301 with an .850 OPS from June 29 through Sept. 1.
• Jake Cronenworth has arguably been the Padres’ best defender while alternating between first and second base. His average and slug has diminished significantly since around the All-Star break, but during the time Bogaerts slumped and then was out and Machado slumped and Tatis was out, Cronenworth spent much of the season’s first few months trading the RBI lead with Profar. He still leads the Padres with 14 game-winning RBIs.
• Closer Robert Suarez has struggled lately, but the Padres are almost certainly not in the playoffs without what he did the first three months of the season. Suarez worked more than three outs more than any other team’s primary closer and came in to protect more four-run leads than any other team’s primary closer. And far more than most. He posted a 1.71 ERA over his first 51 appearances (51⅓ innings), converting 29 of 33 save opportunities and winning eight games (including seven that did not involve him blowing a save).
• Catcher Kyle Higashioka hit one home run in his first 48 at-bats. His home run on June 1 was the first of 14 he would hit over a stretch of 139 at-bats. Along the way he took over the primary catching job from Luis Campusano.

So many new faces

There are 19 players on the roster as of Saturday who had not played for the Padres before this season, including nine who were not in the organization when the season began.

King and Dylan Cease, who will both garner Cy Young votes, were acquired via trade in December and March, respectively. Merrill was new. Arraez was acquired on May 3. Solano and Peralta were May additions.

And capping the slew of significant moves made by A.J. Preller this year were three in three days at the end of July in which the Padres added relievers Jason Adam, Tanner Scott and Bryan Hoeing and starting pitcher Martín Pérez. The Padres are 8-1 in Pérez’s starts. Adam has a 1.01 ERA in 27 appearances (26⅔ innings), Scott allowed three runs in his last appearance to swell his ERA to 2.72 over 28 appearances (26⅓ innings) and Hoeing has a 1.59 ERA in 17 games (22⅔ innings) after allowing two runs in his last appearance.

All the hearts

The Padres announced shortly after team chairman Peter Seidler died in November that the team would be wearing a patch on their uniforms designed by his children.

It is a yellow heart with his initials (PS) inside. The symbol is affixed to the wall in front of the press box at Petco Park. And a smaller version travels with the Padres to hang in their dugout or clubhouse on the road.

Players decided their primary celebration when reaching base would be to cross their thumb behind their index finger, forming a heart, as they gestured toward their teammates in the dugout. And while they were in Korea for the season-opening series against the Dodgers, Profar was showing a group of fans the celebration and they demonstarted for him how to make a heart by folding their arms over their heads in that shape. He took it back to the team, and it was incorporated into their arsenal of celebrations.

This is a team that would delight Seidler. They hug a lot and laugh a lot and win a lot.