Adrian Gonzalez hit .295/.358/.570 on the road.

The most extreme pitcher’s park in the major leagues can make Marisa Miller look like a Crystal Meth addict. It can make Rosie O’Donnell look like the “after” shot on “Extreme Makeover.”

Yes, it’s that extreme.

More to the point, the home park of the San Diego Padres can turn the excellent Adrian Gonzalez into Ronnie Belliard and the mediocre Chris Young into Sandy Koufax.

Petco Park skews the team’s strengths and weaknesses and those of its players until their statistics can not be read in raw form. They must be split, deciphered and put back together again.

The perception is that the Padres had the best pitching staff in the National League last season because they led the league in ERA and had a mediocre offense because they were ninth in runs.

But that’s not the reality. In road games — which remove Petco from the equation — the Padres were eighth in ERA and fourth in runs.

To be clear: Their hitting is better than their pitching.

For example, Gonzalez hit .282/.347/.502 in 2007 — .295/.358/.570 on the road and just .266/.335/.424 at home.

In road games, Gonzalez ranked 10th in the league in OPS (.928), ahead of Carlos Beltran, Hanley Ramirez, Adam Dunn, David Wright, Miguel Cabrera, Chase Utley, Matt Holliday (22nd) and Jimmy Rollins (23rd).

As for Young, who had a 3.12 ERA, Petco has the opposite effect on him. Young is a mediocre pitcher on the road (4.52 ERA, 24th in the league) and brilliant at home (1.69, first).

The fact that Gonzalez is one of the most gifted hitters in the league and Young isn’t quite the All-Star everyone thinks has generally escaped notice because most writers and television commentators — this means you, Steve Phillips — have been too lazy too notice.

In fact, it’s laziness bordering on incompetence. The chief qualifications of most writers and broadcasters who cover the game are a strong interest in baseball and the ability to write or broadcast at least pretty well.

Well, that shouldn’t be enough.

For a writer, covering a subject — politics, music, baseball — should mean immersing themselves in that subject until they are the expert observer, until they don’t have to rely on sticking a microphone or tape recorder in front of a manager for their daily litany of cliches.

They should know better.
— Kevin Brewer, Padres Nation