SAN DIEGO — Let’s start with this: The Padres got a pitcher Thursday who wears Tony Gwynn’s number and averages 101 miles per hour with his fastball.

Mason Miller, newest Padre, could do worse than swapping 19 for 54, the number Goose Gossage retained after coming over from the Yankees and pitching his first San Diego club to the National League pennant.

To visualize Miller in Padres pinstripes, think of Gossage’s rear-back-and-fire launches, only with a gale behind them.

Miller makes a Tesla look pokey. He’s hit 104.1 mph in multiple games.

Let’s move now to the bottom line in Padres Land. A.J. Preller’s trade flurry not only lifted the team’s MLB-best bullpen to “Avengers,” it seemed to improve several positions on a squad that already had a great shot of earning the franchise’s fourth wild-card playoff berth in six years.

Will the 2025 Padres take the final step that Hall of Famers Gossage, Gwynn and friends could not take in 1984?

The same step Gwynn and Hall of Fame closer Trevor Hoffman and mates couldn’t pull off in 1998?

Befitting baseball, the answer begins in the goofy superstitious realm: the 2025 Padres have the numerical kismet covered.

Miller established himself while wearing 19, the Padres’ most hallowed number. Pitchers Dylan Cease and Randy Vasquez don 84 and 98, respectively.

This year’s ace, Nick Pivetta, wears Kevin Brown’s 27. He’s done a fair imitation of Brown, whose brilliance in 1998 helped to create Petco Park.

Before Thursday, the Padres were a good but flawed team, one that stood 11 games above .500 and trailed the Dodgers by three games in the National League West race.

Deep down, the Padres had to know their talent margins weren’t trophy-worthy.

Preller, going on one of his heaters, fattened those margins Thursday. By the time MLB’s trade deadline arrived at 6 p.m. ET, he seemed to have improved the offense, the bullpen, the catching group and perhaps the bench.

Let’s dig into the baseball nitty-gritty.

Preller, said a veteran MLB scout with another club, obtained the most big-league talent of any team in the summer trade market.

On the flip side, Preller gave up the most impressive amount of minor-league talent in his summer trades, said the scout.

The best prospect dealt in the whole trade season was Leo De Vries, the 18-year-old shortstop Preller sent to the A’s as part of the trade that brought back Miller and left-handed starter JP Sears.

And while the scout agreed the Padres now have a realistic shot at winning this year’s World Series, he also said their farm system stands at “an all-time low” for this franchise — a contention I would dispute, but won’t because the scout’s gist may be near the mark.

Why was Preller so aggressive, even by his bold standards?

Manny Machado, this team’s MVP, is 33.

Yu Darvish will be 39 in two weeks, soon before Xander Bogaerts turns 33.

All three are due a lot of money over the next several years. So is Jake Cronenworth, who’s 31.

Starting pitchers Michael King and Cease plus closer Robert Suarez can be free agents after this season.

If not now, when?

Something else to consider is the immense hunger for the Padres to win a World Series. It’s palpable and has soared since the Chargers left town in 2017. I felt it once again Wednesday afternoon in the East Village, as another capacity crowd watched Darvish lead a shutout of the Mets.

“Yuuuuu, Yuuuuuu,” many fans hollered as Darvish exited.

Flipping their small-market status on its head, the Padres trail only the Dodgers and Yankees in average home crowd size.

Attempting to reward the robust patronage with a World Series-winning run is not a mere sentimental notion. It could be a decent investment.

Financially, the 2025 World Series trophy would likely be more beneficial to the Padres than to most or all of the other contenders.

Calculating the financial rewards of winning Rob Manfred’s hunk of metal is part of a front office’s job, if a team’s serious about going the distance (and many aren’t).

“A 1% chance increase of winning the World Series is worth millions — and especially for a franchise that had never won a World Series, because then it propagates in branding and all kinds of other things,” Jeff Luhnow, top architect of the Houston Astros’ checkered dynasty, said three weeks ago on the “Crush City Territory” podcast. “It’s hard to value on a spreadsheet (but) we said each percent (in improved odds) equates to this many millions of dollars.”

For sure, Preller’s moves this week have improved the Padres’ trophy odds by more than 1%.

But the Padres’ odds of winning it all are still under 10% by several points. In part, that’s because it’ll take vaulting the Dodgers and also a National League division titlist to earn a first-round playoff bye.

No other team’s bullpen, on paper, is as good as the high-octane crew that Mike Shildt will call upon beginning Friday night against the Cardinals.

The addition of Miller, a 26-year-old who also has started several big league games, means Shildt will need to amend his “Four Horsemen” moniker denoting the back-end quartet of Suarez, Adrián Morejón, Jason Adam and Jeremiah Estrada. With Miller, the Padres now have more explosive pitching than a high-velocity Brewers group that made Dodgers hitters look old in July, leading Milwaukee to a 6-0 record against the defending champs.

Preller has done as much as could be asked of any GM trying to win this year’s World Series.

Now it’s up to Machado, Bogaerts, Fernando Tatis Jr. and friends to get it done.

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