Well, not yet. The owners still have to approve it, but by Opening Day, Jeff Moorad will be the new CEO of the San Diego Padres and will have bought a controlling interest in the team.
This can only spell relief for Padres fans who have had to suffer and watch a dilapidated team march on through the 2008 Major League Baseball season with a primarily young group as the soon-to-be-former owner John Moores was in the midst of a long and nasty divorce.
Financing the divorce got in the way, so Moores decided to slash the Padres payroll in 2009 to $40 million. Hopefully, with a new owner in place, San Diego can keep at least keep its payroll where it is ($45 million) or maybe add to it in the coming months.
However, the Padres will probably still field a team that will be less than satisfactory for fans. There are still a lot of questions for this team and it will probably finish dead last in the NL West once again.
On a side note, the fans who thinks that Kevin Towers and Sandy Alderson are to blame for the failures that have come to San Diego are dead wrong.
Towers is still one of the best general managers is all of baseball. And Alderson, well he is still a baseball genius. It isn't their fault that the Padres were dismanlted in the middle of last season. Sure, they make the personel decisions, but ultimately, it is Moores who signs the checks and has much to lose if he continues to field a losing baseball team.
It was Moores who told Alderson and Towers to start dumping salary. It was Moores who probably wanted to get rid of Jake Peavy. But it was Towers and Alderson who were the frontmen for Moores, protecting their boss as he deals with a divorce that left the team--and Towers and Alderson--strapped for cash.
It's too bad Alderson won't be with the team anymore. A few more years, and I sincerely believe that he would have brought the Padres back to the World Series.
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