How The Seidler Family Revamped Padres Baseball 

When Peter Seidler and Ron Fowler purchased the San Diego Padres in the middle of the 2012 season, the Padres were in a rough spot. The team had not made the playoffs since 2006 and was mired in their fourth losing season in five years. Outside of a 90-win campaign in 2010 that saw the Padres miss out on the NL Wild Card by one game, San Diego had not had much success. The team had won 71 games in 2011 and would finish with 76 wins in 2012. San Diego was mostly irrelevant in a division dominated by the Giants and Dodgers. 

In the first seven years of Seidler and Fowler’s ownership, not much changed for the Friars. San Diego’s streak of losing seasons reached nine. The Padres lost at least 90 games four years in a row between 2016 and 2019, and finished either fourth or fifth in the NL West every season between 2015 and 2019. 

That’s not to say the team was not trying. AJ Preller was hired as the team's general manager in 2014, and he immediately began his tenure by making high-profile trades and free agency additions. He brought in All-Star caliber players like Justin Upton, James Shields, and Matt Kemp. When that failed to produce a winning team, he pivoted, selling Shields to acquire a young prospect, the son of former major league infielder Fernando Tatis. 

In 2018, the Padres signed another former All-Star and World Series champion, Eric Hosmer, to an 8-year, $144 million contract. But the biggest move, the one that sent a message to the league, was the 2019 signing of third baseman Manny Machado to a 10-year, $300 million deal. That signing, combined with the promotion of Fernando Tatis Jr. in 2019, was the beginning of a new era for the Padres. 

Peter Seidler Takes Control of Padres & Pushes Them To Greatness

Over the first seven years of his co-ownership, Peter Seidler did not have complete control. That changed in 2020, when Seidler purchased a significant share of Ron Fowler’s stake in the Padres and took over as the team’s chairman, as he became the largest stakeholder in the organization. That was the same year the Padres finally achieved a winning record and returned to the postseason for the first time since 2006. 

That 2020 campaign began a run of success that San Diego was not used to. Even after missing the playoffs in 2021, the team was improving, and under Seidler’s leadership, the team decided to make another major investment into winning by investing into their pitching staff. The Padres added a pair of ace starting pitchers in Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish, and would eventually extend both. It was a sign that Seidler and Preller were willing to spend the money that it would take to make San Diego a contender again in the NL West. 

In 2022, the fruits of their labor paid off. The Padres found themselves neck-and-neck with the Dodgers in the NL West, despite missing Tatis due to a suspension. That led Seidler to green light perhaps the biggest trade in Padres history at the 2022 trade deadline, when San Diego sent a package of four prospects, including James Wood, Robert Hassell, MacKenzie Gore, and CJ Abrams, to the Nationals, in exchange for 23-year-old superstar Juan Soto. 

With Soto on board, the Padres would make their deepest postseason run since losing the 1998 World Series. San Diego reached the NLCS for the third time in franchise history, and although they would go on to lose 4-games-to-1 against the Phillies, it was another year of improvement for San Diego. 

Seidler continued to green light more spending in 2023, as the Padres extended Manny Machado through 2033 and signed shortstop Xander Bogaerts to an 11-year, $280 million contract. With Soto, Tatis, Machado, and Bogaerts hitting atop the lineup, and Cy Young winner Blake Snell anchoring the rotation, the team’s 82-80 record felt like a massive letdown. Considering the team had a +104 run differential, it was also a massive outlier. Their expected win-loss record, with a +104 differential, would have been 92-70, which would have comfortably sent the Padres to the playoffs.

When Peter Seidler died on November 14, 2023, his stated goal of seeing the Padres win a World Series unfortunately hadn't come to fruition. But surely, Seidler would be proud of the way his brother John has handled the team since his death. 

Under John Seidler’s leadership, the Padres have won 90 games in back-to-back seasons for the first time in franchise history, and reached the postseason in back-to-back seasons for the second time. These past seasons (2022-2025) are the best four-year stretch in Padres’ history, with a combined record of 354-294. San Diego ranks seventh in the MLB over the past four years, and fifth in total team fWAR. Even after trading Soto to the Yankees, the Padres managed to improve. 

The Seidler family’s tenure of Padres ownership was marked by big spending, big swings on the trade market, and an unprecedented run of success over the past four years. With José E. Feliciano now set to take over, it will be interesting to see if those trends continue, or if the organization will plan to scale back its spending and rebuild its farm system.