That’s a great deal for the Padres outside some catastrophic injury.

I have been unable to figure this out. How did the Padres go from the have nots to the haves? For my entire life they operated in a similar fashion to a small market team, which I think is fairly accurate. They never drew particularly well and weren’t overly popular.

When I research their ownership group, they are wealthy of course, but don’t appear overly wealthy by franchise ownership standards.

What am I missing? How did the Padres go from being the poor team to spending like they have over the last few seasons?

Were they always profitable and the owners simply greedy? Did they get some huge cable deal being the only professional sports team left in San Diego?

It’s just strange to me. The only times I’ve seen small market teams all of a sudden start spending is if they get an extraordinarily wealthy owner or a new ballpark. They are still playing in Petco and I’m struggling to see why this team that always had $40 million payrolls to being one of the over $200 million teams?

I’m watching them spend all this money during Covid when they could never retain talent before, let alone go out and buy players and wondering what I’m missing? Are they washing money for the Tijuana cartel?