SAN DIEGO -- Heath Bell, who replaces Trevor Hoffman as closer this season, believes in that old baseball axiom about the importance of good pitching.

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More so than believing it, he's counting on it in 2009.

"They always say good pitching will beat good hitting, and I really believe that," Bell said. "That showed in 2007 here. We had good pitching and we didn't hit as well as we should have. Pitching keeps you in it.

"I remember in '07 it was coming down to the wire and the media would ask if we were nervous playing in tight, important games. I said, 'We've been playing in tight games all season long, 1-0 games. We're used to it.'"

As the Padres move forward into another season, they'll try to put behind them the 99-loss season of 2008 that followed that blissful run in 2007 that got the Padres to within one out of the playoffs.

What accounted for such a dramatic fall? The same thing the Padres hope will lead them up from the cellar in the National League West -- pitching.

"The whole game is all about pitching, really," Padres manager Bud Black said. "For me, it doesn't matter if you are pitching at PETCO Park [in San Diego], Philadelphia or Houston. You've got to pitch and we didn't do that last year. We have got to return to that."

A year ago, the Padres staff ERA went from 3.70, the best in the Major Leagues in 2007, to 4.41. Jake Peavy and Chris Young spent time on the disabled list. The bullpen struggled often and new faces breezed in and out of the clubhouse at an alarming rate.

"We were bad," Padres general manager Kevin Towers said. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would be trying to save our bacon in the last week of the season, trying to prevent ourselves from losing 100 games."

That's why the Padres spent the waning days of Spring Training trying to piece together their bullpen. In the last month alone, they added relievers Duaner Sanchez, Eulogio De La Cruz and, on Wednesday, Ed Mujica from the Cleveland Indians.

Bell will be in his first season as closer and the Padres believe they have a host of arms, though maybe not the power arms they wanted, to get the ball and the lead to Bell with De La Cruz, who has been clocked at 98 mph and Sanchez and Mujica, who throw in the low 90s.

Two newcomers who made the team, Edwin Moreno and Arturo Lopez, are making the jump from the Padres' Minor Leagues system. Both have impressed in Spring Training.

The only holdovers from the 2008 bullpen are Bell and Cla Meredith. The rest have been jettisoned.

For as important as the bullpen is to the greater good of the Padres, Black believes that the Padres must get productive, longer starts from the starting pitchers. That means keeping Peavy and Young healthy for an entire season, something that didn't happen in 2008.

"That is critical for us, and critical for most teams, not just the Padres. Every team in baseball, if you can have your top two starting pitchers make anywhere from 65-70 starts, that's big. That's something we, in Anaheim, wanted," said Black, who was the pitching coach in Anaheim before joining the Padres before 2007.

"For me, as a pitcher myself, that was my biggest responsibility to the team, to make my starts every fifth day. I feel very strongly in what that responsibility means. That's what we need from those two guys."

Calling card
Recently, this has been a no-brainer: pitching. But in 2009, the strength of the team could well be their offense, which figures to be improved from the bunch that scored the fewest runs in the Major Leagues last season and ranked next-to-last in average. David Eckstein offers an upgrade at second base, Brian Giles is coming off a huge season and is showing no signs of slowing at 38 and the Padres still believe they haven't seen the best of Kevin Kouzmanoff and Adrian Gonzalez and up-and-comers Nick Hundley and Chase Headley.

Achilles' Heel

Other than underachieving -- which, among other things, was a problem a year ago -- the Padres can't afford to have such frontline players like Jake Peavy and Chris Young miss any kind of significant time with injuries like last season. Overall the pitching depth -- in the rotation and bullpen -- is shallow as it is. If the Padres can get around 60 to 65 starts combined from Peavy and Young, they will be in good shape. For all their shortcomings, the Padres tandem of Peavy-Young is still among the best in the league.

You'll know they're rollin' if...
Again, if Peavy and Young stay healthy, combining for 60 to 65 starts, if Heath Bell does not skip a beat jumping from eighth-inning specialists to closer and the rest of the bullpen can bridge the gap from Peavy-Young and such to Bell. When the Padres have been good it's been their pitching that has carried them. This means the patchwork bullpen somehow gets it together. That's a big 'if' moving forward.

You'll know they're in trouble if...
The pitching staff falls to pieces and the carousel from Triple-A Portland fires up early in the season and general manager Kevin Towers is on the phone looking for pitching help or is scouring the waiver wire for upgrades. He already had to do that in Spring Training, when many of the prospects he hoped could help in 2009 didn't pan out. Towers would rather not have another call to arms in April.

Testing, testing

The Padres survive the opening month of the season. A year ago, the Padres were buried by a 10-17 mark in April that included a woeful record of 7-14 against NL West Division foes. Included in the bunch was a 22-inning loss to Colorado that the team never seemed to recover from. The Padres only play 13 games their division brethren this time around, but it's against the Dodgers and Giants, two teams they struggled most against in 2008.

Interleague Play
The Padres might want to petition to skip Interleague Play, as they went 3-15 against the American League in 2008. Granted, the Padres faced the two pretty good teams (Twins, Yankees) but also went 1-5 against a Seattle team that lost 101 games. This season, the Padres get six more games against the Mariners, three against Texas, three against Bud Black's old team, the Angels and three against the A's.

The Bottom Line
In the topsy-turvy National League West Division -- where four different champions have been crowned in the last six years -- anything is possible. The starting pitching in the NL West is very good and will again go a long ways in determining who wins. In San Diego, Peavy and Young are formidable but not enough to help this team challenge. There are too many holes, pitching and offensively. Last season, the Padres lost 99 games. They won't do that again, but escaping the cellar won't be easy.