SAN DIEGO PADRES

CEO: Jeff Moorad.

Revenue: $159 million in 2010, according to Forbes Magazine.

No. of local employees: 200.

Investors: Moorad and a dozen other partners, including former NFL quarterback Troy Aikman, who are purchasing the team from John Moores.

Headquarters: Downtown San Diego.

Year founded: 1936, as a member of the Pacific Coast League; joined the National League in 1969.

Company description: Major league baseball team.

Luring fans to baseball games, or any sporting event in San Diego, has always been a challenge, but the San Diego Padres may have an even tougher task this season.

Last year’s team won 90 games, came within a game of getting into the playoffs, and featured one of the best pitching staffs in all of baseball, but that was then.

This season, the franchise is without All-Star first baseman Adrian Gonzalez — traded to the Boston Red Sox in December — and has a wounded starting pitching rotation as well as a bunch of new players many fans never heard of.

Hard sell? Not if you talk to Tom Garfinkel, the Padres’ president and chief operating officer.

“I think people want to see a winning team, and Jed (Hoyer, the Padres’ general manager) has done a great job of building a winning team around this ballpark,” Garfinkel said. “In some ways, this lineup is better than last year’s.”

Garfinkel sloughs off the contention that many fans prefer to see high-powered offenses, home runs and lots of scoring.

Fans want to see a winner, and an exciting team that hustles, steals bases, plays great defense, and puts the team ahead of individual stats, which is how the Padres have played in recent years, Garfinkel said.

New Faces

That style worked well in 2010. But this year’s Padres — set to play their home opener April 5 — feature a revamped lineup that includes Brad Hawpe at first base; Orlando Hudson at second; Jason Bartlett at shortstop; Cameron Maybin in center field; and Jorge Cantu as a utility infielder.

Although casual fans weren’t impressed, longtime baseball observers said the changes have made this season’s team better than last year’s.

“They are much stronger up the middle this season,” said Barry Bloom, formerly a longtime beat reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune now working as a national reporter for MLB.com.

If the starting pitching can hold up (the team’s best starter in 2010, Mat Latos, is injured and unavailable in the early part of the season), the Pads should still contend in their division, Bloom said.

Still, the absence of Gonzalez, who accounted for nearly a quarter of the Padres’ offense last year, and several other big names such as David Eckstein and Jon Garland will make selling tickets that much more difficult, conventional wisdom states.

Larger Crowds

Garfinkel does not agree. “Last year we had the fourth highest attendance growth in the major leagues, and this season we’ve had a 90 percent renewal rate by our season ticket holders, which is right with the top five or six other clubs in the majors. We’ll be above 10,500 by Opening Day, and we should get to 11,000 by the end of April.”

For a ballpark that has a capacity of about 42,500, those season ticket sales numbers aren’t close to the top drawing franchises. But they’re a big swing from the depths of 2009, when the Padres sold fewer than 9,000 season tickets. Losing 99 games in the prior season had a lot to do with that.

To entice more fans to come to multiple games, the Padres have reduced some prices and are selling tickets for below $18 for about 15,000 seats.

With discount programs such as two-for-one Tuesdays, expanding the all-you-can-eat section, and cutting beer prices, Padre games should be among the most affordable to attend in all of baseball. Last year, a fan cost index, measuring prices for tickets, concessions and parking for a family of four, ranked the Padres second lowest (the Arizona Diamondbacks were the lowest) at $121.

This year, the team has added a few new food vendors with an emphasis on local restaurants, including Filippi’s Pizza, and expanded the number of taps by Stone Brewing Co.

All the revisions instituted under the aegis of transitional owner Jeff Moorad didn’t quite set Petco’s attendance records afire last year, even though the team was anchored in first place nearly the entire season. The Padres ended 2010 with a total gate of 2.13 million, for an average of 26,318 per game. That was up from the 1.9 million total attendance and an average of 23,699 in 2009, but far from the record smashing year of 2004, when Petco Park opened and drew about 3 million fans.

Sound Approach

Ted Leitner, who has broadcast Padre games for 32 years and is employed by the team, said given the Great Recession and fallout from the housing debacle in the area, the Padres’ attendance is amazing. “I think they’re doing very well. Two million in this economy was unbelievable.”

Maybe even more unbelievable is how the San Diego franchise has been able to compete against much wealthier clubs such as the Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants.

With a payroll last year below $40 million, and this year around $43 million, according to published reports, the Padres rank near the bottom of the 30-team league. Yet since the team moved into Petco, the Padres have finished above .500 in five out of seven seasons and made the playoffs twice.

“There’s about a dozen teams in major league baseball that would give their eye teeth for that kind of record,” said Bloom.

The Moorad group that came in 2009 seems to have a solid formula for finding talented players overlooked by other teams, and isn’t willing to shell out the fat, multiyear contracts that many large market teams are prone to do, said several observers.

“The bottom line is that small market teams like the Padres have a much finer line in their decision-making because they can’t afford to make a mistake on an $8 million to $10 million player,” said Jim Lackritz, professor emeritus at San Diego State University’s College of Business Administration.

Lackritz, who has taught statistics, said in all the analysis he’s done, the margin between the top market teams and the smaller market teams is usually so slim, winning is often more the result of luck than skill.

So hope for the Padres’ 2011 season is really well-founded, he said.

“Every year, one or two small market teams show up not only in the playoffs, but show up in the World Series.”

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