Could Warriors Owner Joe Lacob Actually Bring the San Diego Padres to Oakland?
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The rumor around town has long been that Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob wanted to buy the Athletics from John Fisher to keep them in Oakland, but they couldn't come together on a deal—mostly because of Fisher's insistence that the team isn't for sale. Lacob shifted focus to the Los Angeles Angels for a moment, but then Arte Moreno took them off the market.
Now, the San Diego Padres are exploring strategic options for the club, including a potential sale, and Lacob is once again seen as a potential suitor for the club.
Over at Forbes yesterday, Barry M. Bloom wrote a speculative piece about the potential sale, Lacob, and the lease of Petco Park. There is plenty in there about the financials of the club that is well worth your time, but today we want to focus on the whole "hey maybe Lacob will move the Padres out of San Diego" piece of this.
We should say upfront that this is purely speculation on Bloom's part, and there have been no reports that Lacob is buying the Padres at this time, nor that anyone is planning to move the Padres to Oakland.
Bloom states, "It’s not hard to envision a buyer like Lacob paying off the public and private debt, allowing him to ultimately move the Padres to Oakland, which was left vacant when the A’s relocated after the 2024 season to West Sacramento and eventually Las Vegas." He calls it a longshot, but not beyond the realm of possibility, and that seems accurate.
Padres to Oakland?
Here is why it's hard to see this coming to fruition: If Major League Baseball wanted to stay in Oakland in the first place, they would have made it happen, the same way they're helping to make Vegas happen.
They could have made it so that Vegas got an expansion club with Fisher at the helm, while Lacob or another owner took over the A's. They chose not to go that route. There is reason to speculate that the other MLB owners would not like another big spender in their ranks, and Lacob would be trying to create a winning club immediately.
If MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred really wanted a team in Oakland, there would be a team in Oakland. They could have made Fisher pay a relocation fee, or not enforced the deadline that the A's had to meet to stay on revenue sharing. There were paths forward.
That's one reason why it wouldn't necessarily make sense.
Would the Padres be embraced?
The other is that a relocated team, especially from San Diego, may not be embraced as fully by the left-behind A's fans.
There would be excitement that a team would be in town, but at the same time, the "Oakland Padres" wouldn't be loved the same way because in the back of everyone's minds, they'd know that the fans in San Diego were going through exactly what fans in Oakland have been through since 2023. That feeling of loss and sadness not something that you wish upon other fan bases.
San Diego has also seen teams in other sports relocate their franchises, and if they lost the Padres, they'd be left with nothing—sports-wise at least. They'd still have great weather and gorgeous beaches.
The League would also have a say in this entire process, and they could easily just not let Lacob be the one to buy the Padres. If they let him in, they could also block his relocation efforts. While the A's weren't drawing the best in Oakland, San Diego ranked second in attendance with 3.4 million fans in 2025.
The other reason the league could have an issue here is because moving the Padres to Oakland would put two divisional opponents within just a few miles of one another. Typically in two-team markets one team is in the American League, while the other is in the National League.
Of course, when the league expands to 32 teams, there is also going to be a planned realignment, and this issue could be addressed at that time.
When Fisher and MLB decided to make the case to move the A's out of Oakland, they had a readymade argument for people to eat up: there's no fans. Obviously the "sell the team" movement changed that narrative, but the team had already announced that they were out of town by that point. The Padres are selling out constantly.
This whole venture doesn't seem like something that could actually happen, but neither did the A's moving to Las Vegas, and they have broken ground for the planned ballpark over there. This is a story to keep an eye on, but not one to worry about for the time being.
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Jason has been covering the A’s at various sites for over a decade, and was the original host of the Locked on A’s podcast. He also covers the Stanford Cardinal as they attempt to rebuild numerous programs to prominence.
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