Tom Krasovic: Would a Padres sale help the club win it all?

It might be good if Jeff Moorad buys the Padres, whose leaders announced Thursday they’re open to selling the club.

Please stop groaning.

This time around Moorad, if he so desires, seems to have the money to do it right.

Moorad apparently didn’t in 2009, when he bought the Padres on a layaway plan, subject to final approval that a cadre of Major League Baseball’s owners denied him in 2012, ultimately setting up a group led by Peter Seidler and Ron Fowler to buy the team that August, for a reported $800 million.

The Padres stunk for most of Moorad’s tenure and for several years after the sale, casting Moorad’s stewardship in an unflattering light.

Valued by Forbes at $1.95 billion, the small-market Padres have appreciated robustly since Moorad left the scene in 2012.

Moorad’s wealth has skyrocketed, too.

Two months ago, the former Padres CEO made a killing, selling his stake in McLaren Racing for “more than $5 billion,” per Axios. Five years earlier Moorad led an investment in McLaren Racing, valued at $500 million.

Also, Moorad made a sweet profit on his Padres shares upon selling.

His understanding of the burgeoning regional TV boom in MLB, which was soon to come to San Diego, led him to in effect buy low on a Padres franchise that at the time ranked near MLB’s bottom in local TV money and revenues.

Including a lengthy career as a powerhouse MLB agent, the UCLA alum’s career suggests an understanding of high-stakes dealmaking, sports markets and corporate media’s impact on sports industries.

None of that means Moorad has the chops to help transform the Padres into a first-time World Series champion.

But he understands the MLB industry on several levels, having also served as CEO of the Arizona Diamondbacks from 2004-08. And his Padres tenure did spin off a few highlights worth noting. The 2010 team won 90 games on MLB’s lowest payroll, in part because of a trade — unpopular with fans and financially driven — that Moorad demanded of general manager Kevin Towers, sending Jake Peavy and his $52 million guaranteed contract to the Chicago White Sox in return for pitchers headed by Clayton Richard in July 2009. Peavy, who was past his prime seasons, would struggle with durability issues.

Also, there were draft successes: World Series champion and ace Max Fried, infielder Jedd Gyorko and catcher Austin Hedges.

Front-office executive A.J. Hinch, a Moorad hire, returned to managing and led the 2017 Houston Astros to the franchise’s first World Series trophy, although he lost his job following MLB’s determination that his team benefited from illegal sign-stealing.

I don’t know if Moorad has any interest in buying the Padres, or if anything relating to his not making the final cut in 2012 would be held against him.

But, here’s a potentially large reason to consider him.

Padres CEO Erik Greupner worked with the Padres in two of the three years in which Moorad was the team’s CEO.

Greupner is under contract through 2029. Per The Athletic, he owns a small stake in the team.

Would a Moorad-Greupner reunion ease the challenges of an ownership transition? Seems plausible.

The Padres will attract several prospective buyers. Non-billionaires needn’t apply.

If buyers view this as a vanity purchase, which is often the case, the Padres would be more attractive than other MLB teams that may become available — be it an expansion club in markets such as Portland, Nashville, Salt Lake City or Charlotte; or the Colorado Rockies. That’s because the Padres are a hot ticket. They finished second of 30 MLB teams in attendance in 2023 and 2025 and in the top five in several other recent years.

On the baseball side, prospective buyers will have to consider two big-picture questions:

Would it be wise to trade Fernando Tatis Jr., 26, in return for multiple young players and long-term salary relief, as part of a reset that recognizes that Xander Bogaerts and Manny Machado, each 33 and under a massive contract, are likely untradeable?

Would it be better, instead, to push hard to win the 2026 World Series and perhaps 2027 World Series?

On the financial side, prospective buyers will have a large amount of complexity to sort out.

The lawsuit filed last January by Seidler’s former wife, Sheel — who holds a 24% stake in the ballclub — against two of Seidler’s brothers, Robert and Matthew Seidler, will have produced significant information that potential Padres investors can access and must want to comprehend.

Robert Seidler is a co-founder and managing partner of Seidler Equity Partners, co-founded in 1992 by Peter Seidler, who had been the managing partner. Matthew Seidler is a partner in the same company. A complicating factor: we don’t know what role Seidler Equity Partners played in Peter Seidler’s minority purchase of the Padres in 2012. It appears that history might be part of the explanation for the legal dispute among Seidler’s survivors.

The unknowns all-around are great here.

So, regarding whether a Padres sale will move the club closer to its first World Series title, I can offer only another question:

Who the heck knows?