(Pictures of Jake Peavy are a dime a dozen, so instead, here’s a portrait of cheapo amp pioneer, Hartley Peavey.)

Which is lamer, that the Padres chose to celebrate winning the NL West with such a mediocre record, or that no. 1 starter might’ve hurt himself in the chaos, then failed to tell anyone? The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Tim Sullivan would probably pick the latter.

In trying to take one for the team yesterday, Peavy might have taken one from his team. He compromised the Padres’ playoff chances by pitching at least part of yesterday’s 8-5 Division Series loss with a fractured rib “ notably, the pitch that produced Sanders’ fifth-inning grand slam.

“Obviously, I ended up hurting my team and feel bad for that,” Peavy said. “But I wasn’t going to be thought of as somebody who was soft.”

Instead, Peavy revealed a hard-headed hubris yesterday at Busch Stadium. He allowed his competitive instincts to cloud his judgment. He did what macho-minded pitchers customarily do when asked to choose between valor and discretion.

He failed to tell the whole truth until it was too late, until after he had already dug his teammates an eight-run deficit.

“He was throwing well and we had no information that anything was bothering him,” Padres manager Bruce Bochy said. “I don’t think he was smart about it. I think he should have said something.”

If Bochy was blindsided by Peavy’s injury, this suggests at least one missing link in the Padres’ chain of command. Peavy said he first injured the rib in Wednesday’s on-field celebration following the clinching of the National League West, and that he had made pitching coach Darren Balsley aware of the problem.

Just last week, Balsley said one sign of Peavy’s development as a pitcher was that he could now count on his candor.

“He’s been honest,” Balsley said. “That’s part of his maturity. In the past, he hasn’t been honest.”

Yet if Peavy confided in his coach, the Padres nonetheless neglected to take X-rays until after yesterday’s game. They would not know the extent of Peavy’s injury until a subsequent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test.