Beating the Pirates may not be more fun than beating the Dodgers.

But it is more important.

For that reason, among other reasons on the margins, the Padres earned a few bonus points Wednesday with their 8-2 win that also decided the three-game series in Pittsburgh.

Can we agree that, unless a meteor hits the baseball universe, the Dodgers will win the National League West race?

Due to L.A.’s monopoly on the annual 162-game marathon, for the Padres to make good on having the sixth-highest luxury tax payroll of the 30 teams, they have to win one of the three wild-card playoff berths.

That’s where the Pirates come in. They’re now a Padres rival in that race.

Never mind that Pittsburgh stands as the losingest National League franchise of the wild-card era, which began in 1995.

Or that its luxury-tax outlay sits at less than half of San Diego’s.

Many baseball analysts see the Pirates as wild-card contenders headed to the franchise’s first winning season in eight years.

FanGraphs.com’s analytics and ESPN’s composite of 30 beat writers’ picks, going large on the tandem of 23-year-old ace Paul Skenes and teen shortstop Konner Griffin, picked the Pirates to outperform the Padres in their preseason forecasts.

The Padres, though, once again enjoyed their stay. By winning the series’ bookend games, the Padres (6-6) got back to even and improved to 69-42 in Pittsburgh since the wild-card era began in 1995.

And, as a bonus, they dropped their new rival to 7-5.

But Skenes and Griffin were impressive. In Pittsburgh’s 7-1 win Tuesday, each player performed at a mile-high level.

Another on-the-margins win for the Padres was this one:

Manny Machado got a full rest,on the same day the Padres won.

Rookie manager Craig Stammen must balance Machado’s wisdom about workload effects with the imperative of not overly burdening the third baseman, who will turn 34 in three months and was barely 20 when he entered the big leagues.

A.J. Preller would not have named Stammen as manager without trusting the former Padres reliever’s relationship with Machado, who is under contract through 2033.

Filling in for Machado, newcomer Miguel Andujar provided a complementary victory. Though Andujar had a subpar throw within a failed rundown, he had no other miscues and had a good offensive game.

There were glitches. Starter Michael King didn’t initiate a rundown well, although his own escape skills were A-plus. Stammen seemed to get a little greedy with King. The Pirates took advantage, chasing him with a pair of rocketed hits.

But the balance of developments had to buoy the Padres, both on their bus ride out of downtown Pittsburgh and the flight to San Diego, where yet another bad Rockies team will oppose them the next four games.

The Padres’ starting rotation, viewed by many as the team’s largest question mark, put up three fair to good outings in Pittsburgh to drop its ERA to 15th of the 30 teams.

Mason Miller showed once against he’s the baddest dude in baseball right now.

Here’s what Griffin, 19, saw from him in the ninth inning: fastballs at 101, 102 and 103 miles per hour, and the sport’s most effective slider, which struck him out.

When a tight’s game’s final third arrived, the Pirates resembled an immature team. Griffin and another shortstop each made a fielding error to open an inning, and a subpar reliever, summoned after starter Mitch Keller had thrown just 75 pitches across six scoreless innings, helped to untrack the Padres.

The two teams will meet again in August. I would be surprised if the Pirates still have the better record, absent major injuries to the Padres.

Miller and the bullpen as a whole give the Padres a sizable edge. The massive difference in payroll points to San Diego having greater depth, and most Padres players are far more accustomed to playing in higher-stakes games. Due to a roster with several key players in their 30s, the Padres are more committed to winning now, which tends to translate into in-season trades that improve the team.