The Padres have broken my brain
I don't know how to handle this new development.
Yesterday, the San Diego Padres did a thing they’ve never done before. Shit, the San Diego Padres did a thing that no MLB team has ever done before. They signed a 22-year old shortstop to a 14-year contract worth $340 million.
I should’ve jumped up and screamed. I should’ve shouted. I should’ve streaked through my neighborhood or ridden my bike down to Petco Park to pray at the feet of the Tony Gwynn Sr. statue or something. I mean, that’s what I would do if the team won a World Series and this was a thing that should’ve felt like winning the World Series!
And, while I was elated, I was also hesitant. I was hesitant to celebrate without regard. I was hesitant to be vulnerable with a team that has hurt me and disappointed me so many times in the 23 years that I’ve been a fan. And, if I’m being fair, this hesitancy is more my fault than theirs.
If there’s anything that defines a team and how it acts, its motivations, it is the owner of that team. Peter Seidler has proven over (dumping Kemp) and over (Myers) and over (Hosmer) and over (Machado) and over (Darvish) and over (Tatis Jr.) that he is the owner we have always been hoping for.
LISTEN: Padres Hot Tub discusses Fernando Tatis Jr.’s 14-year contract extension
Gone are the days of fans trying to figure out exactly how much profit the Padres make to compared to how much they are spending on payroll. Gone are the concerns that any big contract is being signed with the idea of trading it away before it inflates. Gone are the excuses, explaining to fans that money lost on X player means the team can’t spend on Y player.
It seemed like things were going in this direction, but Fernando Tatis Jr. was always the key. He was going to command the largest contract in team history and the smart move was to give it to him now, before he’s even played in 162 regular season games.
While the Padres were trending in the direction of a baseball team willing to spend on elite talent, we still didn’t know if they were willing to place a $300+ million dollar bet on the hopes that they might have a player worth more than that. They’ve never had a player worth more than that! There are very few players, ever, who would be worth more than that.
This was a crossroads Padres fans have always hoped for (what to do with the best player in baseball) but also thought that it would never happen, either because the team would be stingy with a signing bonus in the draft (hello, Matt Bush) or because the team would be stingy with a contract extension when it got to that point (hello, Adrian Gonzalez).
Yet, we’re here. The crossroads approached and without hesitancy, without a backup plan or an excuse or a prioritizing of profits over wins, Peter Seidler and the San Diego Padres did something that just five years ago would’ve been laughed at if someone suggested it as a possibility.
Now that the Padres have shown that they don’t mind acting the way that the “big market teams” such as Yankees and Dodgers and Cubs have been acting for the last decade or so, it’s going to take some time for my brain to accept it. Not just because it’s hard to trust or because it’s a difficult transition, but because it fundamentally changes the way that every baseball fan thinks about the economics behind Major League Baseball.
Why can’t the Milwaukee Brewers, or Tampa Bay Rays, or Cincinnati Reds, or Kansas City Royals spend hundreds of millions of dollars on players’ salary annually? Why can’t they sign multiple players to nine-figure contracts? I’m sure there’s justifications, but now those teams will have to actually answer those questions. Because now the question to those owners will be, “If the Padres can do it, why can’t you?”
The Padres did that. They changed everything. And it wasn’t even some flash-in-the-pan move, like trading for the last year of Kevin Brown’s contract, that we’ll be talking about in the past tense years from now. It’s something that we’ll be living through for at least the next 14 years.