Will crazy-spending Padres change blueprint for Monfort’s Rockies?
San Diego owner Seidler: ‘When we talk about risk, there’s a risk to doing nothing.’
You might recall what Dick Monfort said in late January.
When the Rockies owner was asked about the need to spend more money to compete in the National League West with teams like the crazy-spending Padres and the perennial powerhouse Dodgers, he said: “That puts a lot of pressure (on us). But it’s not just the Padres, it’s the Mets, it’s the Phillies. This has been an interesting year.
“What the Padres are doing, I don’t 100% agree with, though I know that our fans probably agree with it. We’ll see how it works out.”
Monfort, as we all know, prides himself on being a prudent, cautious businessman. Far too cautious, many (most?) Rockies fans would say.
Caution is not part of the blueprint for Padres billionaire owner and chairman Peter Seidler, a two-time cancer survivor. He’s betting big that big money can bring San Diego a championship.
“There’s never been a major championship in this city, ever,” Seidler told Sports Illustrated recently. “We listen really carefully to our market, and what we believe that we heard is, ‘If you give us something to support, boy, we will rise up. We will be there in force. … We thought, ‘If we make aggressive moves, our community will respond equally aggressively. And it’ll make sense and it’ll help us win.’ And that’s what we’re seeing.”
The Padres capped their season-ticket sales at 24,000 and recently drew 48,000 people to Fanfest at Petco Park, an event that was extended an hour so that fans could mingle with their baseball heroes. There is a buzz about the Padres, who drew $2.9 million fans last season, trailing only the Yankees, Dodgers, Cardinals and Braves.
Seidler, of course, has a much different take than Monfort.
“When we talk about risk, there’s a risk to doing nothing,” Seidler told reporters at the Padres’ spring-training facility.
San Diego’s $250 million payroll (third largest in the majors) includes some of baseball’s biggest, most exciting stars: Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto, and Xander Bogaerts. Seidler has already committed more than $900 million to Machado, Tatis and Bogaerts, with the hope of signing Soto to a mammoth extension.
Commissioner Rob Manfred told USA Today that the Padres already are assured to lose money this season, but Manfred nonetheless praised the Padres’ plan.
“Look, I think there’s real positives in the Padres story,” Manfred said at his spring training news conference in Arizona. “I think the investment that the club has made in talent has allowed them to grow their revenue to be a payer (and not be a receiver) in the revenue system.
“The trick for the smaller markets has always been sustainability. Hats off to Peter Seidler. He’s made a massive financial commitment personally to make this all happen.”
But Manfred also said: “The question becomes, ‘How long can you continue to do that? What happens when you have to go through a rebuild?’ But they have done a really, really good job of capitalizing on their talent to drive their revenue.”
The Padres play in a city that ranks 30th in TV market size, according to Nielsen. The Rockies rank 16th. But with Regional Sports Networks collapsing, including AT&T Sportsnet that carries the Rockies — the financial landscape is dramatically shifting.
That shift factors heavily into Monfort’s vision of what should happen next with the Rockies.
Monfort is never going to spend like Seidler. It’s just never going to happen. But I do hope the “pressure” Monfort feels will pay off in the future. So that maybe the next time the Rockies have a talented team as they did in 2018, they’ll go all in instead of staying conservative and then watching it all fall apart.