San Diego Padres

San Diego Padres, American professional baseball team based in San Diego that plays in the National League (NL). The Padres were founded in 1969 and have won two NL pennants (1984 and 1998).

The franchise came into existence alongside three other expansion teams in 1969. The Padres lost 110 games in their first season to place at the bottom of their division and tie for the worst record in the major leagues, with the Montreal Expos. They continued to finish last in the NL West for the next five seasons, and the team threatened to move to Washington, D.C., before McDonald’s Corporation magnate Ray Kroc purchased the franchise in 1974 to keep it in San Diego. The Padres had their first winning season in 1978 behind the play of future Hall of Famer members Dave Winfield and Gaylord Perry, the latter of whom won the 1978 NL Cy Young Award (at age 39) for outstanding pitching. The winning was short-lived, however, as the Padres posted losing records in each of the following three seasons.

The 1982 season brought two significant figures to San Diego: manager Dick Williams, who had guided the Oakland Athletics to two World Series titles in the 1970s, and outfielder Tony Gwynn, who would go on to become the face of the franchise in his 20 seasons with the Padres. The duo helped the team to a 40-win increase from the previous year, and the Padres finished 1982 with a .500 winning percentage. In 1984 Gwynn and fellow all-stars Steve Garvey and Rich (“Goose”) Gossage led the Padres to their first division title, which they followed with a five-game victory over the Chicago Cubs in the NL Championship Series (NLCS) to earn their first World Series berth. At the World Series the Padres faced off against a Detroit Tigers team that was one of the most dominant squads in baseball history, and San Diego lost in five games. The Padres returned to the middle of the NL West pack the following year, and the team entered into another long postseason drought.

After two last-place finishes in 1993 and 1994, the team hired former Padres player Bruce Bochy to manage the squad. Bochy would go on to lead the team for a club-record 12 seasons, and his positive impact on the team was almost immediate: the Padres rocketed to a division title in 1996 behind the play of NL Most Valuable Player Ken Caminiti. San Diego was swept out of the playoffs by the St. Louis Cardinals that year, but the team was more successful in its return to the postseason in 1998, when it defeated the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves on its way to another World Series berth. Once again, the Padres had the misfortune of playing a remarkably accomplished team in the Series, a New York Yankees squad that had won 114 games in the regular season (an American League record at the time) and that swept San Diego. The Padres were a last-place or second-to-last-place team for the following five seasons.

In 2005 the Padres won the first of two consecutive division titles, led by the pitching of starter Jake Peavy and Trevor Hoffman (who became the league’s all-time save leader in 2006), but each postseason appearance ended with a loss in the first round of the playoffs. A disgruntled Bochy left the Padres after the 2006 season to manage the divisional rival San Francisco Giants (with whom he would later win three World Series titles), and his departure was soon followed by both Hoffman’s and Peavy’s as the Padres began a rebuilding effort. The Padres won 90 games in 2010, narrowly missing a playoff berth. Hopes of a turnaround faded as the franchise subsequently posted losing records and finished at least 16 games behind the division winner for the rest of the decade. In the 2020 season, which was shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Padres finally returned to the playoffs, and for the first time since 1998 the team won a postseason series, defeating the Cardinals in the Wild Card round. However, San Diego was eliminated in the division series. In 2021 the team finished under .500.