Gonzalez didn’t get big payday Manny got

In many respects, Manny Machado is the Adrian Gonzalez of his Padres generation — smooth, both as a corner infielder and with the bat, powerful from foul pole to foul pole, fluent in Spanish and English and passionate about baseball.

Of course, their Padres career arcs differ greatly. The question is why.

The answer is that Padres lacked the chops to make the most of Gonzalez. The lesson, class, is this: Team ownership matters.

Seeing Machado as a buildaround player, Peter Seidler and Ron Fowler were willing to pay top dollar for the slugging third baseman while also promising to bring in other stars.

So far, Seidler’s investment has paid off. And now that Seidler has doubled down on him, ensuring he won’t reach free agency, Machado will have a chance to forge the greatest Padres career of anyone not named Tony Gwynn.

Gonzalez was a build-around player who brought an extra dimension, having grown up in Tijuana and Chula Vista.

John Moores and Jeff Moorad, when the time came, were either unwilling or unable to pay up for Gonzalez and other good players. So, after his massive season in 2010, when he led a $38.6 million payroll to 90 victories, they traded him at age 28.

It is obvious that if Seidler had owned the Padres in 2006, when Kevin Towers got the 23-year-old first baseman from the Rangers, he would’ve signed Gonzalez to a lengthy deal before 2010 and obtained other stars to assist him.

Forgotten by Padres fans, Gonzalez would’ve attained first-name status. Adrian would’ve been as popular as Manny is now.

The same two points Padres teammate/brainiac Jody Gerut made about Gonzalez apply to Machado: 1) sometimes, it’s smart to invest ahead of revenues; 2) his durability seemed a good bet.

Gerut was a Stanford man who ran his own investment fund. If he wasn’t Warren Buffet in cleats, he was right about Gonzalez holding up.

Though a neck injury would erode his game in his mid-30s, Gonzalez didn’t go onto the disabled list until his 14th season and amassed 27.8 win shares (4.6 per year) in the six seasons between 2010-15, per BaseballReference.com. He logged 150 games in seven different seasons, despite also playing winter ball some years.

Machado, who has exceeded 150 games in eight seasons and never gone on the injured list in