The San Diego Padres Borrowed $50 Million And Now Face Tough Questions

The San Diego Padres were supposed to still be playing baseball right now—at least that was the plan. The roster was built to win the World Series, but finished an underwhelming 82-80 and missed the playoffs instead. Now they must reconfigure the team while cutting payroll.

According to Evan Drellich, Dennis Lin, and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, the team took out a $50 million loan in September to meet payroll obligations. This is a somewhat common practice in MLB, and the team had sufficient credit to obtain the loan after all, so it’s not concerning in a vacuum. However, it reinforces the report by Kevin Acee of the San Diego Times-Union in September that they intend to cut payroll by roughly that same amount.