In a sport plagued by indifference and frugality, San Diego asserted itself by locking up a 22-year-old superstar shortstop with a 14-year, $340 million contract.
In A.J. Preller’s first off-season as the San Diego Padres’ general manager, after the 2014 season, he did what players and fans always want: he went for it. The Padres had become baseball’s most anonymous franchise, so Preller tried to prop them up by trading prospects for veterans and signing the right-handed starter James Shields as a free agent.
It didn’t work. When the 2015 Padres actually got worse, Preller reversed course and spent the next four years building the farm system, often by trading veterans for lottery tickets. One such deal sent Shields to the Chicago White Sox for a 16-year-old shortstop with a major league pedigree who had not yet played a professional game. The player was Fernando Tatis Jr.
On Wednesday night, the Padres agreed to terms with Tatis on a $340 million contract. The deal was confirmed by a person with direct knowledge of it who was granted anonymity because the team has not officially announced it. At 14 years, it is the longest contract in major league history, and the third richest.
Nobody knew that Tatis, 22, would be this good. He has already accumulated more wins above replacement than his father, who played 11 seasons in the majors. In 143 games across two seasons, Tatis has hit .301 with 39 homers, 98 runs batted in, 27 stolen bases and accumulated a .956 on-base plus slugging percentage.
Just as important, perhaps, is Tatis’ magnetic presence in a sport that often struggles to seem hip: stylish blond dreadlocks, hot-pink uniform accessories and bat-flipping élan. He hit .318 last October, helping the Padres advance in the playoffs for the first time since 1998, the last time the franchise was in the World Series and the year before he was born.
“I think he’s the right guy to market the sport,” Padres Manager Jayce Tingler said on Thursday. “I think he’s the right guy for the industry of baseball. We need to market our guys, and there are certainly guys in the league that are great, and he’s one of them — with the look, the energy, the play, the drive to win, being young and talented and still wanting to grow.”
Tatis was hardly destined for this. When the White Sox signed him from the Dominican Republic in 2015, for $700,000, he ranked 30th on MLB.com’s list of international prospects. His rise now seems like a karmic reward for Preller’s initial competitive instinct; had Preller not signed Shields in 2015, he would not have Tatis today, let alone through 2034.
Only two contracts have higher guarantees, both from teams representing Los Angeles: Mike Trout’s 12-year, $426.5 million deal with the Angels and Mookie Betts’s 13-year, $365 million pact with the Dodgers. The Padres, of all teams, are now the first to give two contracts worth at least $300 million; the other is their 10-year, $300 million deal with third baseman Manny Machado.
If all teams acted like the Padres, the industry might not be mired in mistrust between the players and owners. The Padres have traded for three veteran starters this off-season — Yu Darvish, Blake Snell and Joe Musgrove — after a series of pennant-race deals last August. Their first baseman, Eric Hosmer, is also on a nine-figure contract, and they spent $28 million this winter on a four-year deal for Ha-seong Kim, an infielder from South Korea.
“It’s great, because there are so many teams doing the opposite,” said the veteran reliever Mark Melancon, who signed a one-year, $3 million deal with the Padres on Thursday. “It’s sad when there’s only 30 teams out there and you get a sense that a lot of them don’t want to win. So to see San Diego step up and be in a little bit of a smaller market and really go for it is fun and exciting. It’s a shame to see big-market teams kind of dump, you know?”
Melancon has played for the Yankees and in Boston, but his best years came in Pittsburgh, where he helped the Pirates win wild cards in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Those were the Pirates’ first playoff appearances in a generation, yet ownership would not extend beyond 20th in the majors in payroll. The Pirates never reached the league championship series.
“When you have a team like we did those three years there, if there’s ever going to be a small-market team that has a chance, you really feel like you’ve got to push the envelope and go for it when you have that window of opportunity,” Melancon said. “There’s no guarantees, obviously; there’s risk there. But as a competitor, you’d like to think that you’re willing to take the chance when that window usually is hard to come by, or small.”
With six playoff appearances in 52 seasons, the Padres have had few chances like this. Their first big star, Dave Winfield, left for the Yankees as a free agent after four seasons of a 12-year All-Star run. They held tight for two decades to Tony Gwynn and built a statue of him at Petco Park. But they still have no championship banners.
Tatis gives the Padres a cornerstone for the long haul. His deal — negotiated by Machado’s agency, MVP Sports — includes a no-trade clause but no opt-outs. It covers four years of club control, and then adds a little more than $300 million for his first decade of free-agent eligibility. Tatis will be 35 when the deal ends.
“He is certainly his own person, but he reminds me a lot, when he’s on the field, of my time around Adrian Beltre,” said Tingler, a former coach for the Texas Rangers. “Adrian enjoyed the game, he enjoyed his teammates, and even though he was serious and competitive, he had the ability to smile, laugh, goof around, have fun and then lock it in when it came time to compete.”
Beltre won a Silver Slugger Award at age 35, going on to collect more than 3,000 hits and five Gold Gloves at third base. All-around players on that side of the infield often age well — George Brett, Derek Jeter, Chipper Jones, Barry Larkin, Cal Ripken, Alex Rodriguez, Mike Schmidt and Alan Trammell were All-Stars by age 24 and still going strong by 35.
Of course, some players in that class were all but finished by 35, like Nomar Garciaparra, Hanley Ramirez, Troy Tulowitzki and David Wright. There is significant risk in this deal for the Padres, but maybe greater risk in not making it. Baseball is better when teams try.
And if the Padres ever decide to shed Tatis and his record contract, history shows where they can turn. The Dodgers gave Kevin Brown baseball’s first $100 million contract in 1998, the Texas Rangers gave Rodriguez baseball’s first $200 million contract in 2000 and the Miami Marlins gave Giancarlo Stanton baseball’s first $300 million contract in 2014. Before each of those deals was finished, the player was traded to the Yankees.
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