SAN DIEGO — Son of a gun. Peter Seidler may have been right.

Eight years ago, when the never-in-it 2017 Padres were headed to the franchise’s seventh losing season in a row, the team’s ever-sunny minority owner insisted the decade to come would be the franchise’s best yet.

Watch out, Seidler said.

In the 2020s, the Padres would earn five playoff berths, he declared, after making sure his comments were on the record.

This, too: the worst the Padres would do in the 10 seasons, Seidler said, would be to contend for a playoff spot only to fall short.

Sustainable success, an unknown for this franchise, was rolling toward 19 Tony Gwynn Drive like Dave Winfield rounding third on a two-out single. Soon to be gone were the days of the Padres punting seasons amid a long-term rebuild.

The decade is now half done, and look at this: The Padres reached three postseasons in the decade’s front half and made some noise in the other two years, although the 2023 team performed miles below its huge payroll.

The punting of seasons has ceased.

So midway through the 2020s, give Seidler’s prediction an A- at worst. Concerning the 2020s, he had 20-20 vision.

It helps to have inside information. Seidler knew the player payroll would be rising far, saying it would land in Major League Baseball’s middle tier.

Turned out, Seidler morphed into the George Steinbrenner of San Diego, minus the bluster. The Padres soared into MLB’s top third in payroll and stayed there for four consecutive years, finishing sixth, seventh, fifth and third among the 30 clubs between 2020-2023.

Seidler may have had an inkling that, beginning in 2022, a third wild card would be added to each league’s playoff format.

The perception of “competitiveness” and “contention” is much more sustainable when three wild cards are dangled every year.

As the post-Seidler era unfolds, will the late Padres’ chairman’s forecast for the 2020s continue to hold up?

Of course, Seidler likely didn’t envision the franchise would lose its local TV partner, dealing a financial blow. Two, a year after he died, a legal fight went public among Padres shareholders that’s still playing out.

Those are serious headwinds. Still, Seidler’s forecast stands a good chance of holding up through the decade.

Under Seidler’s successors, the payroll was 15th last year and now projects as 10th.

There are strong reasons to keep the payroll near where it is.

One, the Padres owe a lot of money to several older players for the next several years. Trading Xander Bogaerts or Manny Machado, said former Colorado Rockies executive Dan O’Dowd of the MLB Network last season, isn’t a realistic option. Having made such a big bet, it makes sense to try to win now with Machado and Bogaerts still in their early 30s. Yu Darvish adds urgency, too. He’ll be 39 this summer. He has shown he can shut down postseason opponents. Get him back to the October stage.

Keeping the traffic light green, the Padres have a build-around tandem in Fernando Tatis, 26, and Jackson Merrill, 21. It would be criminal to soft-pedal any seasons with these two guys on the team.

Seidler knew that greatness isn’t required for a team to stick around in every wild-card race.

In fact, playoff berths are more attainable than in any other Padres era.

Winning the World Series tournament, on the other hand, has never been so difficult.

It takes 13 postseason wins for a wild-card team to claim the trophy. For all the hoopla that playoff contention has generated, the Padres haven’t been as close to winning the trophy as they were the first time they reached the postseason.

Back then, it took only seven postseason victories. That was 1984. The World Series home run in Game 2 by Kurt Bevacqua put the Padres within three victories of the title. And the Tigers kept them right there.

Seidler had the right idea. Make a habit of going to the postseason, and spend enough to build out the depth that can weather October’s four-tiered grind. The Padres got within seven victories of the 2022 trophy. Last year, the Dodgers stopped them nine victories of the title.

By now, they should know what it takes.

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