SAN DIEGO — The fallout for the Padres from two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell joining the Dodgers on a $182 million contract this week amounts to more of the same.

The Padres knew that barring a few minor miracles, they’ll be playing for a wild card instead of the National League West title in 2025.

While the familiar caveats still apply that a big contract doesn’t guarantee success, Snell’s decision to join the defending World Series champions further argues against the ‘25 Padres — or anyone else in the West — overcoming this era’s most powerful divisional dynasty in the annual 162-game race.

Snell, 31, gives L.A. another power pitcher with high strikeout rates. Hitters batted .178 off him the past two years.

Shohei Ohtani’s expected return to the mound in spring training will add another ace to an L.A. rotation that will welcome back Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a $375 million addition last winter.

The Dodgers are also pursuing Japanese ace Roki Sasaki, who will be posted later this winter.

Padres fans may not even recall the last time their team won the West race.

It was in 2006, the franchise’s third year in San Diego’s East Village. Bruce Bochy’s final Padres team edged out L.A.

Back then, the Dodgers’ operation wasn’t nearly so formidable.

Under new ownership, L.A. has since become baseball’s Elon Musk — more wealthy than most humans can grasp and bent on world domination.

The good news for Padres fans is that A.J. Preller, the franchise’s team-builder, saw long ago that the Dodgers were becoming a ruthless baseball machine.

“The reality is, the Padres are never going to be able to compete financially and roster-wise completely with the Dodgers,” Preller told ESPN’s Pedro Gomez in 2020, weeks after L.A. swept the Padres out of the playoffs. “So what’s your next best option? Let’s do the best we can and if we get there, we can beat them in a seven-game series.”

Preller understood that in the postseason, the Dodgers would be far more vulnerable, and that the addition of a third wild card to each league’s playoff would give the Padres a realistic road to the postseason in most years.

Indeed, the Padres earned a wild card in 2022 and again last season. In the best-of-five Division Series three Octobers ago, they ousted the Dodgers, only to see L.A. eliminate them last month in the rematch and then go on to win their first full-season World Series title since 1988.

The Padres aren’t going to back down. Preller has built an above-average nucleus to the 2025 team. That’s why several oddsmakers include the Padres among the top eight clubs to win the next World Series.

Preller will need to land a few starting pitchers in the coming months. Though he likely won’t have the luxury of guaranteeing $182 million to any free agents, Preller has shown he can land good pitchers through other means. Dating to the 2020-21 offseason, Preller has made five good to great trades for starting pitchers (Snell, Joe Musgrove, Yu Darivsh, Michael King and Dylan Cease) and two excellent signings of free agents (Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha).

The Snell-Preller chapter offers a case study in how the Padres have owned their niche.

Late owner Peter Seidler provided Preller a budget that would allow him to trade for pitchers who were becoming too expensive to their clubs.

Snell was one of them.

Preller and his scouts’ successes in the draft and the amateur market were providing trade currency. One prospect who generated trade interest was pitcher Luis Patiño, whom the Padres had signed as a teenager out of Colombia for $130,000 in 2016. A pair of Padres draftees, pitcher Cole Wilcox and catcher Blake Hunt, appealed to outside teams as well.

Preller packaged those three with catcher Francisco Mejia in return for Snell. Mejia appeared in 227 games over three seasons for the Rays, then spent last season with the Brewers’ Triple-A club. He and Patiño are now free agents. Wilcox and Hunt are still in the minors.

Snell posted one decent season, one pretty good season and a Cy Young-winning season as a Padre while making annual salaries of $11.1 million, $13.1 million and $16.6 million. His ERAs were 4.20, 3.38 and 2.25. His win shares were 2.1, 3.6 and 4.2, per FanGraphs.com analytics. The free-agent salary value of those three seasons, FanGraphs estimated, would’ve been $17.1 million, $29.1 million and $33.3 million.

Snell was only so-so in his first Padres season. A year later, his strong second half helped the Padres hold on for their first full-season playoff berth since 2006. In the playoffs, he overcame jarring setbacks to assist the only win over the Phillies in the Padres’ first National League Championship Series since 1998.

Snell’s excellence in 2023 wasn’t enough to prevent the Padres from missing the postseason. Preller netted a compensatory pick in last summer’s draft by allowing Snell to leave as a free agent amid a massive reduction in the Padres’ player payroll.

Next up, Preller would no doubt love to land Sasaki, who won’t command large salaries because he’s considered a pre-arbitration player

Overcoming the dragon to the north in the annual West race? That may not be doable in 2025, but Preller — and the Padres — figure to keep things interesting.

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