The Padres arrived in Canada the week of July 17 uncertain about their direction, on the heels of three straight losses in Philadelphia to begin the second half. Back-to-back series wins over the Toronto Blue Jays and the Detroit Tigers merely allowed them to split a 10-game road trip. They returned home and lost two of three to the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates, at which point the industry buzzed about the Padres potentially trading players.

Interested suitors were told to let the weekend play out and wait until Monday, sources said, at which point the Padres would finally pick a side. Then they swept a Rangers team that had established itself among the sport’s most dominant this season, outscoring them 16-4 in the process — and any faint hopes of Snell and Hader getting traded were suddenly dashed.

“We just never got anything that was that compelling for us from that standpoint,” Preller said. “We were open-minded, very prepared from a scouting group, from a front office group, but ultimately there wasn’t anything really on that side that was last minute or really over the course of the last few days that pushed us strong in that direction. It came down to a team that we have belief in, and also some deals that we liked.”

Hill, Choi, Cooper and Barlow don’t bring the appeal of Hader and Soto, who arrived last summer, or even Adam Frazier and Daniel Hudson, who arrived two summers before that. But Hill provides some much-needed rotation depth in the wake of Friday’s news that Joe Musgrove, one of the team’s most important starting pitchers, will miss the rest of the month with shoulder inflammation. Choi and Cooper can bring more offense to a DH spot that has provided next to nothing all year. And Barlow brings a much-needed weapon to the back end of the bullpen. The next two months will determine whether they were enough — and whether a chance at better sustainability was missed by not following the Mets’ path.

The Mets were able to land three premier — though not necessarily blue-chip — position player prospects in Luisangel Acuna, Ryan Clifford and Drew Gilbert by sending Scherzer to the Rangers and Verlander to the Houston Astros. But their owner, Steve Cohen, had to pay down as much as $88 million of the roughly $151 million still owed on their contracts. The only upper-tier prospect obtained for a rental starter appeared to be Double-A catcher Edgar Quero, acquired in the Lucas Giolito trade between the Chicago White Sox and the Los Angeles Angels.

Trading Snell and Hader, who would have represented the best available rental starter and reliever, respectively, by a wide margin, would have infused the Padres with some much-needed talent for the upper levels of their farm system, an essential element to sustainability. In Preller’s mind, it wasn’t enough to justify punting on 2023.

“When it comes to rental players, currently teams are pretty conservative on that front, even with impactful rental players,” he said. “We weren’t going to make moves just to make moves.”

The Padres, with FanGraphs playoff odds now at 40%, continue to sell out Petco Park on a regular basis, while on pace to draw more than 3 million fans for only the second time in their history. On the outside, industry executives note that their overly generous owner, Peter Seidler, will nonetheless lose significant amounts of money this year and stands to lose even more of it without any broadcast revenue next year, a result of Diamond Sports Group’s ongoing bankruptcy. In San Diego, though, some of those who know Seidler believe none of it matters. He wants to leave a legacy, they’ll say, and no amount of money trumps his desire to deliver the city its first major championship.

And that brings us to right now, and why this maddening, confusing Padres team was not broken up.

“If they find a way to get into the playoffs,” a rival executive said, “they’re going to be dangerous.”