'Expectations just changed' when Manny, Tatis arrived in SD

A month after Manny Machado signed with the Padres in 2019, he led a group of veterans into the office of general manager A.J. Preller. Spring Training was winding down, and a young prospect named Fernando Tatis Jr. was on the roster bubble. The gist of that meeting?

“We want to win?” Machado recalled. “We've got to have this guy up here in the big leagues.”

A week later, Machado and Tatis would debut for the Padres on the same day -- March 28, 2019. In so many ways, that day marked a turning point in the history of the franchise.

There’s the era of San Diego baseball before Machado and Tatis -- in which the Padres were perennial also-rans, capable of an occasional storybook season, but forever chasing sustained success.

And there’s the era of San Diego baseball since -- where the Padres have reached three postseasons in five years and pack their downtown ballpark on a nightly basis. From 2020-24, they recorded the best five-year winning percentage (.537) in franchise history by far.

“It's totally a different story,” Tatis said. “Before I got called up, people were paying more attention to the prospects than the team. We were losing 90 games a year. Obviously, '19 was not our best year. But we started playing good baseball after that.

“The expectations just changed. And, man, I'm really happy they did. That's what we wanted.”

There was a time not so long ago when multiple Padres All-Stars would’ve qualified as a surprise. This year, for the second straight summer, they have five -- including Machado and Tatis, who have now been selected as All-Stars with the Padres for the third time. (San Diego also became the first team to send three relievers to the Midsummer Classic, with Robert Suarez, Jason Adam and Adrian Morejon earning the nod.)

Further evidence that the yearly expectations are different now in San Diego. With those expectations comes the defining question of the Machado/Tatis era: Can they stamp the franchise’s turnaround with a crowning achievement -- the first World Series in Padres history?

“It's what I dream for,” said Tatis, who is under contract in San Diego through 2034. “It's [late owner] Peter [Seidler]’s legacy. Every time I wake up, it's something I'm thinking about.”

“That,” said Machado, who is signed through 2033, “is what we play for.”

A simple statement, sure. But in the decades leading up to Machado’s arrival, how often could the Padres have earnestly said that?

These days, it’s clearly different. When Machado signed in San Diego, Mike Shildt was then the manager of the Cardinals. It made him stop and take note.

“Very honestly and candidly, San Diego was just a nice place to come play and hang out,” said Shildt, now the Padres’ manager. “It was still competitive baseball, because it was the big leagues. But you didn’t get the sense the organization was, like, dedicated to winning. It was more just a team in the league.

“But once you sign Manny, once Tati comes up and makes his splash … your investment and your moves tell people in the league how serious you are.”

And the Padres were serious. Tatis said he truly began to feel that at the 2020 Trade Deadline, when Preller famously made six trades involving 26 players.

“In 2019, we still were figuring out what we were capable of,” Tatis said. “But in 2020, A.J. started making all these crazy trades. It was like … ‘This is real.' The expectations changed.”

The Padres reached the playoffs that year. Then, they did so again in 2022 and ‘24.

“We've created a nice little culture here -- every year, we're expecting to go out and compete,” Machado said.

As a result, when the Padres missed the postseason in ‘21 and ‘23, it was unacceptable in a way it wasn’t previously. Managers were fired. Organizational changes were made.

Meanwhile, Petco Park started truly rocking. The Padres have set attendance records in each of the past two seasons and are on pace to do so again this year. The ballpark itself only accounts for so much of that.

“Petco's beautiful; it's a nice place to be,” Machado said. “But it's the product that goes out there every single day. [The fans] embrace us. And we embrace them.”

Now that the Padres are winning -- now that the expectations have changed -- the ballpark fills up every night in a way it didn’t before Machado and Tatis arrived.

“It's definitely rewarding to see,” said Tatis. “But it's just what San Diego deserves.”