Few things in baseball are more irritating than a player grousing about his home park. No matter how tough any yard is on a team’s hitters or pitchers, the other team has to play there as well, and a player worth his millions will figure out a way to take advantage of any ballpark. Alex Rodriguez, for instance, has hit more than twice as many home runs at home as on the road this year despite Yankee Stadium being notoriously brutal for right-handed power hitters.

No stadium in baseball has caused more whining than San Diego’s Petco Park, which opened with the start of the 2004 season and is probably the best pitcher’s park in baseball right now. The huge outfield and the heavy San Diego air suppress power and place a premium on defense, which hasn’t suited the collection of muscle-bound oafs who populate the middle of the Padres’ lineup.

“They paid a lot of money for me and [Brian] Giles and [Phil] Nevin to come in here and drive the long ball,” said slugger Ryan Klesko, who hit only nine home runs last year, in spring training. “To build something like that is their own fault. They can’t blame us.”

This sort of thing is actually pretty funny. It’s the worshipping of raw numbers. Judged by any standard, the Padres had one of the best offenses in the game last year, and do again this year. In 2004, Klesko was one of five Padres hitters to post a road OPS of .870 or higher, and his team outscored opponents 439-363 away from Petco. The Padres didn’t hit particularly well at home, where they were outscored 342-329, but their bats weren’t the problem. It was the pitching and defense.

The numbers back this up. Last year, the Padres scored 4.06 runs per game in Petco, and 5.42 on the road, while their opponents scored 4.20 in Petco against 4.48 on the road. The Padres’ park cut their offense by about 25%, and their opponents’ by about 10%.

At first glance, this would seem to back up the grumbling of Padres’ hitters, but consider this year’s numbers. The Padres are scoring 4.65 per game in Petco and 4.96 on the road (which leads the league), while opponents are scoring 2.85 in Petco and 5.69 on the road. Petco is cutting the Padres’ offense by the same 10% it cut their opponents’ last year, while suppressing opponent offense by a staggering 50%.

There is unquestionably an element of offensive adjustment here – Klesko, for instance, has already matched his home run total from last season. Last year, the Padres didn’t just put up worse numbers at home, their offense was less potent there. But this year, their success isn’t coming so much from their increased offense as from the complete inability of the opposition to score there. Aside from reliever Dennis Reyes, the home ERA of every Padres pitcher is 3.48 or below, and six pitchers have home ERAs below 1.25.

On the road, the staff has faced some woes, partly because they’ve played over a quarter of their games in Colorado and Arizona. Eight Padres pitchers have ERAs over 6.00 on the road, though many key pitchers like ace Jake Peavy (2.30 in road games) have done just fine. In sum, the staff’s home record is 16-4 with a 2.42 ERA, while their road record is 11-15, 5.50.

So while the Padres’ success has been attributed to their offense adjusting to the new digs (and to an April 27 team meeting in which manager Bruce Bochy told everyone to quit complaining about the new park and start playing better baseball), it seems the pitching staff’s effectiveness at home is really the key. That shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Since Petco opened, the Padres and their opponents have scored 75% as many runs there as they have in other stadiums. That is, by any definition, an extreme environment. As teams like the Rockies and Rangers show, playing in extreme environments often leads to problems on the road. Both of those teams have traditionally hit much better than you would expect at home, and much worse on the road. I expect that the Padres will see similar tendencies develop with their pitchers.

Logically, this means the Padres have to press their advantage and aim to dominate at home. With the long ball taken out of the equation and runs at a premium, one-run strategies and defense become more important.

The Padres seem to realize that – while their defense is unchanged since last year at seven positions, they did acquire centerfielder Dave Roberts in the off-season to steal bases and cover the gaps in the outfield. He’s done a fine job of covering for statuesque corner outfielders Klesko and Giles.

The team has also gotten good work out of several homer-prone pitchers just by putting them in Petco, where their weaknesses are minimized. Tim Redding, for instance, has been beyond atrocious on the road, giving up six home runs in 12 2/3 innings. In 12 Petco innings, he’s given up just one. Similarly, Darrell May, who gave up 38 home runs in 186 innings last year with the Royals, has been ineffective on the road but quite good in one start and three relief appearances in Petco, where he has yet to allow a run. These two become useful pitchers in San Diego, where they don’t have to worry about the home run. Meanwhile, Peavy and Adam Eaton are simply quality pitchers wherever they take the hill.

The Padres have also avoided an obvious mistake made by many teams residing in pitchers’ parks – rather than making a fetish of speed-and-defense types as the Mariners do, they’ve kept their lineup stocked with bangers like Klesko and Giles, whose power is still very valuable in Petco even if their numbers don’t reflect it the way a more hitter-friendly park would. All told, it’s a fine way to put together a winning team, no matter the gripes of the team’s sluggers.