ANAHEIM — “Let’s go Padres! Let’s go Padres!”
I don’t recall a louder Padres road crowd than Saturday night’s boisterous turnout at Anaheim Stadium.
Chanting for Gavin Sheets, they were San Diego loud.
When closer Mason Miller entered, the roars may have reached the team hotel in Newport Beach.
They never piped down — hollering for the final out, cheering the victory-line celebrations, chanting on the way out of the ballpark.
Sunday afternoon, they were at it again.
“Beat L.A! Beat L.A.!” they hollered during a game the Padres won, 2-1.
Padres starter Michael King again pitched well in the clutch. Angels hitters swung for the fences over and over, and never got there.
Another victory line assembled, improving the Padres to 15-7 in the young season.
The good times capped a week in which the small-market team was reportedly sold for a baseball-record $3.9 billion, pending approval by Major League Baseball’s club owners.
https://wpdash.medianewsgroup.com/2026/04/17/padres-agree-to-sell-team-to-businessman-jose-feliciano-for-record-price/
Considering that the Angels sit in the country’s second-largest media market — Los Angeles — while the Padres stand 26th in media market size among the 30 clubs, the Padres’ and Angels’ situations would seem upside down.
In theory, at least, the Angels would be the team with the bigger player payroll every year and well-regarded support staff. These advantages, in turn, would boost on-field success and attendance.
Fans react in the first inning between the Los Angeles Angels and the San Diego Padres at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on April 19, 2026 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images)
In reality, the Padres are outperforming the Angels on all fronts.
When owner Arte Moreno explored selling the big-market Angels in recent years, the team attracted no offers near the $3.9 billion that private-equity billionaire and Chelsea FC co-owner José E. Feliciano and his wife, entrepreneur and philanthropist Kwanza Jones, have agreed to pay for the Padres.
In attendance, it’s the Padres who resemble a big-market giant. They’ve ended up second to fifth of the 30 teams every year since 2021, and trail only the Dodgers this season.
The Angels? Twelfth to 17th, and now eighth.
Factors outside each franchise must be taken into account.
The Padres’ Forbes-estimated revenue of $432 million beat the Angels’ total by $22 million last year and will swell to an $80 million advantage this year, per the business magazine. This coincides with the collapse or steep decline of both teams’ local TV partners, which effectively leveled a playing field that had advantaged the Angels.
On the baseball side, Padres owners Peter Seidler and Ron Fowler outperformed Moreno when they hired A.J. Preller and, crucially, stuck with him after he made a few large errors.
Preller has evolved into one of the better team-builders in MLB.
Seidler had the audacity to lift Padres payrolls to a level that ran afoul of the industry’s rule, a fact that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred noted publicly more than once.
But as Manfred also acknowledged, Seidler’s big bet helped to fuel the franchise’s astounding attendance and revenue growth.
Even so, this story of San Diego outperforming an L.A.-market team at the gate can’t be told without the ballpark economics.
The Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr. is greeted by teammates after scoring during the fourth inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Angels, Sunday, April 19, 2026, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Caroline Brehman)
Petco Park is a destination. Anaheim Stadium, not so much.
MLB’s fourth-oldest venue, trailing only Fenway Park (1912), Wrigley Field (1914), Dodger Stadium (1962) and Kansas City’s Kauffman Field (1973), the still-attractive but much-neglected “Big A,” which opened in 1966, may need to be replaced for a billion dollars or so for the franchise to reach its potential.
What Seidler, Preller and other Padres leaders have done is leverage an ideally located gem of ballpark made possible by San Diego taxpayers, John Moores, Larry Lucchino, Kevin Brown, Tony Gwynn and Susan Golding, plus the landscape-altering departure of the Chargers in 2017.
The Padres’ game experience, described by Seidler’s widow Sheel Seidler as a joy machine, has accompanied the franchise’s overall ascent.
A pro-Padres vibe at home games has prevailed. The next step has been Padres fans becoming more of a presence on the road. It was so jarring that as Miller jogged toward the mound Saturday night, the noise brought him up short for a moment.
“It surprised me a little bit,” said the closer, acquired from the Athletics last summer. “I never heard that on the road before. Today, the same thing. You hear the atmosphere, you feel the atmosphere. As soon as I came out the (bullpen) gate, that’s a pretty awesome feeling.”
The potential San Diego power couple, Feliciano and Jones, have no doubt done their due diligence on the franchise.
But they may want to consider, or further consider, this scenario: If the Padres were to win their first pennant since 1998, and the city’s first major sports title, what would the fallout be?
A joy machine in overdrive.