San Diego Padres Sale talks moved closer to the finish line Friday, with a group led by José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones agreeing to buy the team at a $3.9 billion valuation. Manny Machado said he did not want to hear anyone call the Padres a small-market club anymore.
Machado, who joined the Padres in 2019 and signed a 10-year, $300 million contract that year, said he briefly spoke by phone with the incoming owners. He said the size of the bid said plenty about their intentions, and that they appeared to want to carry forward Peter Seidler’s legacy. Pending approval from MLB owners, the deal would become the sixth-highest sale price in North American sports history. It would also mark a steep jump from what Seidler and Ron Fowler paid in 2012, when they bought the franchise for a fraction of the expected price.
For Machado, the sale carries extra weight because he has been one of the faces of the club through its rise under Seidler. He later signed an 11-year, $350 million extension in 2023, a deal that tied him even more tightly to the franchise’s direction. On Friday in Anaheim, Calif., where the Padres opened a series against the Los Angeles Angels, he said the incoming group looked ready to invest in more than just the scoreboard. He added that Feliciano and Jones would be very good for the city of San Diego, and said their arrival was huge.
The Padres have been run more aggressively under Seidler, who died before this expected sale, and the club’s payroll still ranks among the league’s top 10 largely because of the nine-figure deals signed on his watch. After his death, the team pulled back from the $256 million roster it had carried before, a shift that helped frame why the san diego padres sale has become such a closely watched transaction. League sources have also said Feliciano’s private equity firm, Clearlake Capital, is not involved in the deal, even though Feliciano is a private equity investor and co-owner of Chelsea.
Feliciano and Jones are set to become MLB’s first Puerto Rican and African American majority owners, respectively, and Feliciano is expected to become the league’s second Latino controlling owner, alongside Arte Moreno. Fernando Tatis Jr. called the price a pretty healthy number and a really healthy number, but he also said it was sad because everyone knew what Seidler had built and that selling the team was not his long-term goal. Tatis said the only thing left is to wait and see what kind of mentality the new owners bring.
