The San Diego Padres ed Major League Baseball as an expansion franchise in 1969.
There was an expansion draft to select players from other organizations, but teams could protect 40 players — the equivalent of their entire MLB roster plus 15 prospects — and only the National League was involved. There also was an amateur draft, but the Padres weren’t allowed to pick until the fourth round (and just one of the 16 players they took ever played in the bigs for them).
The result: The Padres went 52-110 in their inaugural season, 41 games out of first place in the NL West and 29 games behind the next worst team. They would lose 99, 100, 95, 102 and 102 games in the next five seasons. They wouldn’t make the playoffs until year 16.
It’s been a slightly different experience for San Diego’s most recent pro expansion team.
At the midpoint of the Major League Soccer regular season, San Diego FC plays at Minnesota United on Saturday sitting in second place in the 15-team Western Conference, with 30 points (9-5-3) from 17 games and a plus-11 goal differential.
These aren’t the ’69 Padres. But this also isn’t MLB, the NBA or NFL.
“This league,” San Diego FC CEO Tom Penn said of MLS, “has been expansion-oriented for a while and very expansion-friendly. The juice is coming from expansion.”
If SDFC qualifies for the playoffs — and it would have to slide eight spots in the standings in 17 games not to — that would make it six of the last 10 MLS expansion franchises to reach the postseason in their inaugural seasons. Of the other four, three made it the following year.
And if SDFC wins the MLS Cup this year, it wouldn’t even be the first newbie to do it in Year 1. The Chicago Fire won in 1998, something that’s never happened in the NBA, NFL, NHL or MLB.
That, in many respects, is by design.
In the absence of a mega TV deal like the major U.S. pro leagues enjoy, MLS relies on ticket sales and expansion fees as primary sources of revenue. And facilitating instant success is good for business, making a nine-figure expansion fee more palatable.
Penn knows. He was president of LAFC when it ed the league in 2018 and finished third in the Western Conference. He was also a front-office exec with the NBA’s Vancouver Grizzlies, who had a miserable .219 winning mark in their first six seasons and moved to Memphis. The Grizzlies didn’t make the playoffs until their ninth season.
“That was a disaster,” Penn said. “The NBA was very mature, and when you have a mature league, the idea when you expand is you’re giving up 1/30th of your revenues and players and everything else. Because of that, there’s an orientation toward restricting the new team being good right off the bat.
“The mindset was: You’re lucky to get in, bide your time.”
In England, when a club wins promotion to the Premier League, it already has a full roster from the lower division. In MLS, new teams have nobody under contract with the league.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“Part of it is definitely the salary cap and roster rules of MLS,” said Tyler Heaps, SDFC’s 34-year-old sporting director who built the roster from scratch. “So many teams are in cap trouble because of the roster rules that when you start fresh, you don’t have that trouble yet. You start with a clean slate, which can be a challenge, but there are a lot of bad contracts in this league.”
There’s an expansion draft, although SDFC selected only five players off other rosters and promptly traded two for future considerations. None of the other three is a regular starter. The amateur draft doesn’t yield much, either.
Not a problem in soccer.
“If you have smart decision-makers, you’ve got a global talent pool that is quite fluid,” Penn said. “It’s not like you’re seeking talent just from within your league. You’re bringing in talent from all over the world. That’s a total distinction from baseball, the NFL and the NBA, where the best players are already here.”
So Heaps got a midfielder and striker from SDFC’s sister club in Denmark. A defender from Northern Ireland who had been playing in England. An American midfielder who had been playing in Spain. A midfielder from Finland who had been playing in Cyprus. A forward who had been bouncing around lower divisions in England. An outside back from Ghana who was playing in Denmark. A winger from Denmark who was playing in Belgium. A winger from Mexico who was playing in the Netherlands.
He mixed that with MLS veterans and some younger prospects, then hired a 42-year-old to lead them whose head coaching experience was limited to youth teams and an ill-fated, two-game interim stint with the U.S. national team.
Mikey Varas was viewed as a risk, as was the high-stakes tactical style he implemented, pushing his back line high up the field and using his goalkeeper as a de facto sweeper.
But it’s worked better than anyone could have imagined, controlling games with possession and limiting mistakes in the back. They rank second in the 30-team MLS in es completed, third in goal differential and fourth in average announced attendance (28,532).
In their inaugural game, they shocked defending MLS champion LA Galaxy 2-0 on the road and, except for a three-game losing streak in April, have steadily climbed the Western Conference standings. A 5-1-1 May put them five points behind first-place Vancouver.
The record for an MLS expansion club is 1.75 points per match, set by Chicago in its 1998 championship season back when the league had only 12 teams. The second best is 1.68 by LAFC in 2018.
Through 17 games, SDFC is at 1.76.
There’s been an element of good fortune. Heaps considered selecting winger Paul Arriola, who grew up in Chula Vista and had national team pedigree, in the expansion draft from FC Dallas but opted against at the last moment when the two sides couldn’t agree on a contract extension.
Instead, FC Dallas traded Arriola to Seattle, where he tore his ACL after six games, and Heaps got Danish winger Anders Dreyer, whose eight assists lead the league.
The schedule also has been kind. SDFC has played three more home than road games and none against anybody in the top four of either conference. In the back half of the season, they play 10 of their 17 games away from Snapdragon Stadium and seven against top-four teams.
And Saturday at third-place Minnesota United, they’ll be without key starters Hirving “Chucky” Lozano, Luca de la Torre and Anibal Godoy. Four others returning from national-team duty flew directly to Minneapolis from Europe and will have only one training session with the team.
Doubt these guys at your own peril, though
They’re not the ’69 Padres.
“We’ve had a good start, maybe better than people expected because we’re a new team,” captain Jeppe Tverskov said. “The special thing with this club is, everyone wants to be here. When you go to a new club, sometimes a player has been there maybe a year or two too much, or somebody wants to sold. Here, everybody came with a positive mind, smiling.
“I feel like everyone is trying to contribute. We have good harmony within the squad, and it reflects in the games. I feel like we are at a place where the guys run the extra meter for the guy beside you. Yeah, we’re in a good place.”
