I really like the way colleague Charles-Alexis Brisebois has already illustrated to me the Padres’ spending philosophy. The club doesn’t exactly have a big market, but it doesn’t hesitate to spend for a very simple reason: they understood that appetite comes with eating, as Charles-Alexis already told me.
And in fact, spending is not a guaranteed path to success, as the Mets and these same Padres can attest after the 2023 season. That said, the Californians have given themselves the means to achieve their ambitions, and even if the results did not follow, the process was daring.
The problem, however, is that to use food metaphors, the Padres may have had their eyes bigger than their belly in recent months and years. With a ton of big contracts to pay, we wondered if financial problems would eventually arrive…
And what we learn today is that they have already arrived. In fact, last September, the Padres had to resort to a $50 million loan to cover daily expenses, including player salaries.
The Athletic’s Evan Drellich, Ken Rosenthal and Dennis Lin reported today.
What is clear right now is that the Padres have significant debts. The club spends as if it were at the big table, but it may have overestimated its ability to stay there for a long time.
And teams in debt, that’s not something MLB likes to have.
The league expects a clear plan for the Padres to return to (at least) a balanced budget, and we understand better why the club wants to cut its payroll next year. The figure of $50 million comes up often, and today, let’s say that we better understand the reasoning behind it when we see the size of the loan that the Padres needed.
And inevitably, all this brings us back to Juan Soto. The one who should receive nearly $30 million (or even more) in arbitration for the next season is at the heart of trade rumors and let’s say that the news of the day does not help to foresee a scenario in which Soto remains at San Diego in 2024.
Afterwards, one can wonder if the Padres did not leak such a story to protect themselves from the criticism that would follow a possible transaction involving Soto. Because yes, it could be a public relations thing, in the end.
If we add the departures of Blake Snell and Josh Hader on the autonomy market, we arrive roughly speaking at $50 million. We don’t know if the Padres will definitely let all three go, but it would obviously be a solution.
Real financial problems or a coincidence too perfect? It’s up to you to judge, but clearly, the Padres will have to cut their payroll by the start of next season.
It has always been a risk, and now it seems to be materializing into a real problem.
