by Myron Logan

My specialty (if I have one!) is certainly not with issues like this. I barely know enough to make an educated post on the current ownership and front office situation, let alone speculate on the possibility of a new owner (or group of owners) and the ramifications that would follow. But it’s too big of an issue to ignore …. so, enter at your own risk.

In case you’ve missed it, a group led by Jeff Moorad is close to buying the Padres. “Close” could be a few months, or much longer. I don’t know … but it looks like it’s going to happen, at some point.

I know there’s a debate surrounding John Moores’ reign as Padres owner: some say he was too cheap, didn’t care about winning, on and on.; others say he was a pretty good owner who spent somewhere in the neighborhood of what was reasonable, based on the Pads’ revenue and all that mumbo jumbo. I never really took a side in that one, but what I liked about Moores was that he certainly was open to a very sabermetic  front office, hiring the likes of Sandy Alderson and Chris Long (see Krasovic’s article from opening day of last year for more).

A lot of Padres fans seem happy because change is on the way. Anytime you have the type of season the Pads just had, any type of change is going to be good. Well, maybe. An organization can obviously shift on a dime with big changes up top, as any Mariner fan right now can attest. I’m not so sure I’m comfortable with that, as that the Padres front office is loaded with knowledge: you’ve got Alderson, Towers, DePodesta, Fuson, and Gayton. And less known guys — but perhaps of similar importance — like Jeff Kingston, Josh Stein, Long, and surely many others.

Jeff Moorad, on first glance, seems to have a similar profile to a Sandy Alderson type. But I can’t really get a read on who exactly he is, from a baseball decision-making perspective. The folks at Diamondbacks Bullpen, a very good, very saber-friendly Dbacks’ blog, are not going to miss him. The sentiment is similar at other places. It appears that he seems to get in the way a bit, at least according to what I’ve read. Now, that’s fine if you know what you’re doing, regarding baseball analysis, player acquisitions, and all that, but I don’t really know if Moorad does (relative to others who could potentially be making those decisions). He might, he might not. He hired some bright guys in Arizona like Josh Byrnes, but he also (apparently) pushed some bad deals (Russ Ortiz, Eric Byrnes, Shawn Green, etc). Splitting up responsibility for moves between CEO, GM, and the rest of the front office is not exactly easy. Anyway, I’m not sure really sure what to make of his track record, being a player agent and all. Perhaps as an owner, rather than a CEO, his role would be different.

My point? The Padres, despite last year’s disappointment, still have a top notch front office, with knowledge and experience from all angles. A change in ownership could, and probably will, have a pretty big impact on that front office. Maybe it won’t, but my initial guess is that it would. Perhaps some new leadership will be brought in, some deserving people will stay aboard, and the direction of the team will remain similar. That would be the ideal situation, I think. But if Moorad comes in and wants to run everything, and all of the sudden we’re signing 35 year old pitchers to four year deals, well, we could be longing for the days of Moores, Alderson, and company.

Really, there’s still a lot of speculation at this point, like I mentioned up top. The change hasn’t even happened yet, and probably won’t for at least a couple of months. Surely, we’ll find out a lot about Jeff Moorad in that time. And we’ll find out about the changes that occur in the front office … when they occur. There probably isn’t much of a point getting too worked up about it now, though I say that 700 words later : )

Additional links

• An in-depth interview of Moorad by Maury Brown can be found here.
• Geoff Young’s interesting perspective at Ducksnorts.
• Ray Lankford, like myself, hopes Mr. Alderson will stay on board.
• jbox hopes that the ownership change will bring more excitement to Pads baseball.