Padres Updated Payroll After Manny Machado's Reported 11-Year, $350M Contract
The San Diego Padres are proving playing in a small market is no longer an excuse for teams to not spend money.
The Padres and star third baseman Manny Machado are finalizing an 11-year, $350 million contract extension, per Jeff Passan of ESPN.
Machado had publicly informed the Padres of his intention to opt out of his current contract and become an unrestricted free agent this winter. His previous deal had five years and $150 million remaining.
This new contract ties Machado to San Diego well past his 40th birthday and is the fourth-largest deal in MLB history.
The Padres now have three players on their roster—Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts—with contracts worth $280 million or more. The team also went all-in on a trade for outfielder Juan Soto in August. It's a virtual certainty the Padres will attempt to lock up Soto at some point before he hits the open market, but that deal would likely require the richest contract in MLB history.
The spending is eye-opening for a franchise that plays in the 27th-largest media market in the country. San Diego ranks one spot behind Pittsburgh in terms of market size, and Pirates ownership has long used the team's small-market status for the reason they don't spend enough to compete.
The Padres have an estimated payroll of $251.1 million for the 2023 season, putting them behind only the New York Mets ($336.1 million) and the New York Yankees ($268 million).
While plenty of teams have gone all in on brief windows of competition, contracts given to Machado and Bogaerts this offseason prove San Diego is planning to be a major player in the National League for the foreseeable future.
