The home opener for the San Diego Padres should be an absolute blast on March 28. Bruce Bochy, the Padres' former longtime manager, will be in town with the Giants, and now that Bochy has announced that he will retire at year's end, he's likely to get a nice ovation when he's introduced before the game.
But the loudest cheers of the afternoon at Petco Park, of course, will be raised when Manny Machado, the third baseman wearing No. 13, is introduced. This is how the theoretical 10-year plan will play out on the field for the Padres, who have chosen Machado to be the anchor for their forthcoming wave of prospects, at the cost of about $30 million annually.
That's when the real test for the Padres' ownership will begin, the test of financial endurance, a challenge that none of the previous San Diego owners have survived. Perhaps Peter Seidler and Ron Fowler, the leaders of the Padres' current ownership group, will be the first.
Ray Kroc, the businessman who popularized McDonald's, bought the franchise in the '70s, and it's easy to forget now, but there was a time when the Padres were among the more aggressive teams in free agency. The Padres signed the likes of Graig Nettles and Goose Gossage, and Kroc was so overt in his push for players that he was fined by commissioner Bowie Kuhn. But Kroc's wife, Joan, did not have his passion for baseball, and after Kroc died in 1984, the Padres' initial era of big spending went away.
The team was bought by a group led by TV mogul Tom Werner, who is now part of the Red Sox ownership. The Padres already had Tony Gwynn at the top of their lineup, and they added Gary Sheffield to Fred McGriff and Tony Fernandez, to create a dynamic lineup. But it also became very expensive very quickly, and Werner's minority owners weren't interested in feeding a big payroll -- and forced what became known in San Diego as the Fire Sale. All of the experienced players on the team other than Gwynn and Andy Benes were sold off, and Werner sold the team to John Moores.
Under Moores and Larry Lucchino, the club immediately got more aggressive, executing a massive 12-player trade with Houston that brought Ken Caminiti and Steve Finley, among others, and with the injection of cash into their payroll, the team became a contender, eventually reaching the World Series in 1998. The surge helped the Padres achieve public support for the construction of Petco Park.
Then the payroll was slashed, again. Expensive players like Kevin Brown went away. By 2001, the Padres' budget ranked 26th among 30 teams. In the Padres' all-in 2014-2015, Seidler and Fowler pushed the payroll from $85 million to $110 million and when that didn't work, they went into a couple of years of rebuilding or tanking or whatever you want to call it.
The Padres' payroll is on the rise again, but this time like never before, with the signings the past three winters of Wil Myers, Eric Hosmer and Machado. Starting in the 2020 season, those three players alone will make about $75 million annually, or more than the Padres' entire payroll just six years ago. Now that San Diego is making a push, more support around Machado and Hosmer and Myers will be needed. In fact, they could really use some veteran pitching right now, if their intention is to contend immediately. Dallas Keuchel and Gio Gonzalez would be good fits. The trio of Machado, Myers and Hosmer is mostly surrounded by young and cheap players as of today, but as the Cubs and Astros can attest, that dynamic changes quickly.
If the Padres win -- and that's the plan, of course -- their payroll could be pushing to $200 million or higher. The true assessment of Seidler and Fowler will begin in earnest in a few years.
The Padres have a long history of owners who turned out to be sprinters, and this is a franchise and a fan base that could use a marathoner.
Typically, this kind of investment by a team with a small or midlevel budget does not work out. The Rockies' signing of free agent Mike Hampton and then Todd Helton to an extension in 2001 greatly hampered the team-building for years to come. In 1999, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays doled out what was then the biggest contract to any free agent when they signed slugger Greg Vaughn, and that turned out very badly. The Orioles grabbed Albert Belle for five years and $65 million, and he spent three of those five seasons on the disabled list.
In 2001, the Texas Rangers signed Alex Rodriguez to a record $252 million contract; within three years, the Rangers had to dump Rodriguez for the sake of financial and competitive viability, while eating about 35 percent of the deal. And there was the Marlins' $325 million signing of Giancarlo Stanton, which seemed doomed from the outset -- and within a couple of years, the Marlins had to unload Stanton right after he won the Most Valuable Player award.
Machado will be under pressure to perform in San Diego, undoubtedly. But the grander experiment in this case will be with ownership, rather than the player.