Olney: How the Padres are embracing the spirit of late owner Peter Seidler

Every baseball fan base has its own identity. A Philadelphia Phillies crowd is intense. Fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers are raucous (but late-arriving, fighting through the traffic bottlenecks). New York Yankees fans are anxious, emitting murmurs of distress between pitches.

In San Diego, as Padres manager Mike Shildt said, “every game is like a party.”

That was late owner Peter Seidler’s vision for this team, which will manifest today in Game 3 of San Diego’s division series against the Dodgers. Seidler died in November at the age of 63 (the cause of death for Seidler, a two-time cancer survivor, was not disclosed). But if he had been in attendance today, you probably would’ve found him behind home plate in the hour before first pitch, genially chatting and absorbing all of the sights and sounds, watching the gathering fans, loud in their Padres colors and enthusiasm, the atmosphere distinct.

Seidler deserved the credit for so much of it. After purchasing the team in 2012, he worked against the industry’s conventional wisdom about what was possible for this franchise. The Padres, long defined as a small-market club that struggled to afford stars, are now a team loaded with big names, big talents and championship aspirations.

With a foundation of expensive veterans such as Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts and Yu Darvish and emerging talents such as Rookie of the Year candidate Jackson Merrill, the Padres have baseball’s best record since the All-Star break, while playing with heart-shaped patches bearing Seidler’s initials.

“Peter was the one who said, ‘Hey, we’re San Diego, we’re putting this city back on the map, I’m going to create this atmosphere,'” said Eric Hosmer, who played five seasons with the Padres.

Tony Gwynn Jr., the son of the late Hall of Fame outfielder Tony Gwynn and an analyst on the team’s radio network, said, “People enjoy coming to Petco Park now, because it’s almost a social event.”

Baseball in San Diego didn’t always feel like this. In 1993, about the middle of Gwynn Sr.’s Hall of Fame career, the Padres drew just 1.3 million fans, in a season in which the team’s then ownership ordered the unloading of stars such as Gary Sheffield and Fred McGriff. On some days, Jack Murphy Stadium — the Padres’ home at the time — was so empty that birds and other wildlife would scavenge leftover concession food — during the game, rather than afterward. There were few humans around to interrupt.

Even in the midst of a stretch of contention after Petco Park opened in 2004, interest continued to lag. From 2008 to 2015, San Diego ranked no higher than 10th in the National League in attendance. A few years ago, Seidler stood behind home plate at Petco Park and talked with a visiting reporter about how to augment the baseball experience in San Diego. He’d grown up in the sport: His mother’s father was Walter O’Malley, the owner had moved the Dodgers franchise from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in the hope of more business, and the team has operated close to or at capacity for Dodger Stadium for most of the decades since. Seidler was raised in baseball, and he knew how a community could link with a team. He was determined to find the path to the same level of excitement in San Diego.

In 2018, the Padres’ payroll was $94 million, with the franchise residing in the familiar neighborhood of small-market teams. But in spring training of the next year, the Padres shocked the baseball world by agreeing to a $300 million deal with Machado — a massive contract that was wildly out of character for the way the franchise had conducted business for decades. At the time, the perception within the industry was that this deal, along with the $144 million contract that Hosmer had signed the prior winter, would place the Padres on an unsustainable financial track.

Even Gwynn Jr., who witnessed the deconstruction of really good Padres teams in the past because of payroll concerns, acknowledged that he was initially skeptical that the franchise would continue on this path.

But Seidler continued to tell San Diego general manager A.J. Preller to think big, to pursue even the most expensive players. The Padres took on salary to acquire Darvish; they traded for Joe Musgrove. In summer 2022, Preller traded for Juan Soto, the game’s best young star, and waded in the deep end of free agency again the following offseason.

The Padres tried to sign shortstop Trea Turner, offering him a record sum for a player at that position, and when Turner signed with the Phillies, Seidler and Preller met with Aaron Judge, dangling the concept of a deal that would’ve been worth something in the range of $400 million. When Judge re-signed with the Yankees, the Padres pivoted to Bogaerts, signing him for $280 million — far beyond what the Red Sox had been willing to pay.

The Padres’ payroll increased to $248 million in 2023. The team’s spending spree has generated a lot of commentary from other organizations — a lot of it negative, with rival executives expressing shock over how much long-term debt San Diego has taken on with all of these deals. When asked about this in spring 2022, Seidler smiled slightly — knowingly — and said, “We’ll be fine.” He didn’t offer any details about how the Padres would make it work, or what new revenue streams might emerge to help pay for the massive obligations. Rival executives have assumed that part of Seidler’s bet was that the Padres franchise would grow in value over time, in a way that would cover costs.

And sure enough, the Padres have ranked in the top four in NL attendance every year since 2021. This year, they averaged more than 41,000 fans a game — more than any team in baseball outside the Dodgers and Phillies. In the first season after Seidler’s passing, the Padres reduced their payroll and flipped Soto to the Yankees for pitching in a blockbuster offseason trade, but Preller and CEO Erik Greupner continued to foster a fan expectation that the team will work to win.

In March, Preller swapped prospects for Dylan Cease, the best available starting pitcher at the time, and then Preller made the first big deal of the season by dealing for batting Luis Arraez in early May. At the trade deadline, San Diego continued to add — relievers Tanner Scott and Jason Adam, among others. With those bold moves fortifying the roster, the team took off after a middling start, making a late run at the NL West title before locking in the NL’s top wild-card spot. They swept the Atlanta Braves in the first round and split the first two games of the division series in L.A. Now, the Padres come home with a chance to take down their biggest rivals in front of a rocking Petco Park, just as their owner would have wanted.

“I’d say San Diegans are really happy with where we are,” said Gwynn Jr., “as opposed to what they had seen before.”