DALLAS — The Padres have spent big money in recent years on players that comprise the core of a roster that they expect to be competitive for at least the rest of this decade.

They may attempt to sign Jackson Merrill and/or Michael King to long-term contracts at some point in 2025.

But virtually every move they make going forward this winter will be with a dual aim.

They must continue to build the winning club they have promised to a fanbase that has increasingly turned out for them — setting a franchise attendance record each of the past two seasons — while trimming the current projected payroll obligations.

Members of the Padres’ baseball operations department left the winter meetings here Wednesday having not consummated any deals.

“We definitely have a lot of things that we were able to do and could line up on,” Padres President of Baseball Operations A.J. Preller said. “We’ll see where it all takes us in the next couple weeks. … Even though we haven’t lined up on anything from a trade or free-agent standpoint, it’s been super active. Way further ahead from a knowledge standpoint today than we were when we got here on Sunday.”

What they did was lay the groundwork for a potential series of moves that they believe will make them better and will certainly lower their payroll.

Yes, they absolutely believe they can do both by following a similar pattern to what they did last offseason.

Preller has what one member of his staff termed “a thousand” permutations of plans. But the primary goal is to turn at least one player entering his final year of team control into a number of younger (cheaper) players they hope will help them win for a longer period of time.

Multiple sources said the Padres have discussed trading designated hitter/first baseman Luis Arraez and others whose departures would provide some payroll flexibility that would allow the club to shore up other needs.

But starting pitcher Dylan Cease seems at this point to be the most likely veteran to get moved. The right-hander, who like Arraez is in his final year of arbitration eligibility before becoming a free agent, is attractive to other teams because of the premium price for starters on the free agent market.

The Padres are attempting to fill holes in left field and at catcher, as well as find a designated hitter. Whether or not they trade Cease, they also seek a starting pitcher.

One thing remains clear. They will not be using their top two prospects — shortstop Leo De Vries or catcher Ethan Salas — to improve in the short term. The Padres could have had a shot at left-hander Garrett Crochet, who the White Sox traded to the Red Sox on Wednesday, were they willing to part with their prized teenagers, both of whom have a shot to be in brown and gold by the end of this season.

The directive Preller has is to finish constructing a contending roster while not raising payroll all that much above last year’s season-ending $169 million. In fact, the Padres want to lower the current obligations, which are around $210 million when factoring in projected salaries for arbitration-eligible players.

This is a sobering reality when considering the defending World Series champion is in their division and is capable of paying whatever it wants to whoever it wants and to do it however it wants.

The Dodgers currently have $337 million in commitments and are making noise about more significant moves to come.

Their gusto is driven by a number of sources, including the fact they are owned by a hedge fund that handles an estimated $300 billion in investments. They also have local television deal that pays them roughly $340 million a year, more than 10 times what the best estimate of how much the Padres realize as part of their MLB-produced TV package. The Dodgers routinely pack the largest stadium in MLB’s second-largest market. And just last year, they realized what industry experts estimate is more than $100 million in sponsorship revenue directly related to their signing of Japanese star Shohei Ohtani.

The Dodgers are the nearest and most galling example. But they merely are the pacesetter for what appears to be a growing chasm between MLB’s haves and have-nots, a disparity largely divided between teams with big local television deals and those without.

That’s OK, the Padres say.

“We’re not naive that there are certain organizations that have just more competitive advantages,” manager Mike Shildt said. “That’s no state secret, right? We live that every day. I can look at that, and we can look at that as, ‘Oh, woe is us. We don’t have the resources. We don’t have the flexibility. We don’t have the payroll or the income streams.’ And that can be absolutely accurate and factual, and it is. The reality from my seat, our clubhouse seat, our team seat is, it’s still a game that requires you to play right, compete a certain way, play the game a certain way. Clearly the more resources you have, the more talent you can accrue, and that’s real. Talent shows up. We can’t kid ourselves. But effectively it’s about how we’re going to figure out a way to compete and play the game right with the ability that we’ve been given.”

Shildt created a culture of “can” in his first season with the Padres, one in which they improved their record even as their payroll shrank nearly $100 million from the previous year.

The Padres slipped from third in 2023 to 15th in payroll in ‘24 and increased their win total by 11 games — to 93, more than all but four other teams.

Six teams among the National League’s 15 clubs make the playoffs. Two — the Rockies and Marlins — figure to be effectively eliminated by June.

So it would be silly to consider the Padres’ situation all that dire.

This is not a tear-down or a rebuild. It is a realignment that began last year.

What is happening now is essentially the fruition of the warning Rob Manfred sounded in his compliment-slash-prediction in 2023.

“Hats off to Peter Seidler,” the MLB commissioner said of the Padres’ owner that spring. “He’s made a massive financial commitment — personally — to making this all happen. The question becomes: ‘How long can you continue to do that?’”

The thing was, Seidler did not personally fund the Padres’ grand expenditure on players.

Just as the Padres’ market size and television situation puts them on uneven ground with the Dodgers, Seidler was not Steve Cohen, the Mets owner who is worth an estimated $21 billion and whose team on Sunday night agreed to terms on a 15-year, $765 million contract with free agent Juan Soto.

The Padres’ skyrocketing to third in the major leagues in payroll in ‘23 — the pinnacle of a three-year run of top-eight payroll numbers — was funded largely by capital calls on the team’s minority owners and loans.

Seidler, who died in November 2023, loathed the subject of payroll sustainability and pointed instead to the Padres attempting to show what was possible for a small-market team to do.

What they have done with the combination of splashy moves, contract extensions and winning is create excitement that fueled a rise from 16th in attendance from 1026-19 to third over the past four seasons.

Because of the local revenue they generate — even sans a cable TV contract — the Padres will be a revenue-sharing payor for the third consecutive year.

And yet, this is their reality:

They are looking to line up on moves that allow them to line up on more moves.

“Every year, you always have a budget that you’ve got to be in line with,” Preller said Wednesday. “Last year obviously was an exercise (where) we knew that was going to be a different setup than it was in the ‘23 season. So we went in pretty clear with the game plan. This year, really no different from that standpoint. We try to be open-minded to certain players and player-specific moves that are out there — that if they line up we do have some flexibility.”

Originally Published: December 11, 2024 at 5:26 PM PST