MEXICO CITY — The presumptive new owners of the Padres spent the afternoon watching the team they are about to control, as it head toward victory before suffering through a tortuous ending.
José E. Feliciano and his wife, Kwanza Jones, arrived at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú about an hour before first pitch and watched the Padres’ 12-7 loss from the suite of the man after whom the stadium is named.
Most team employees, including manager Craig Stammen and the players, seemed unaware their future boss was in town.
“They were here?” Manny Machado said. “Oh, man. Nice, awesome. I mean, I wish we would have brought them a ‘W.’ This is their team now. So, I love the support. Hopefully we see them more often and see them around San Diego.”
Felicano and Kwanza head the ownership group selected by the Seidler family as the winning bidders for the team. They are said by sources to be set to acquire about 40% of the Padres at a price that values the franchise at $3.9 billion.
The sale must still be approved by a vote of Major League Baseball’s other 29 team owners.
Among those Feliciano and Jones spent time confering with Sunday were MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and Harp Helú.
Harp Helú said emphatically on Saturday that he intends to retain his 15% stake in the Padres, which he has held since 2012, but that he wanted to talk to Feliciano before finalizing his commitment.
King’s finest
Sunday was not the stingiest Michael King had been this season, and on one hand it merely continued a pretty good run for the right-hander.
But it was arguably his best start of 2026.
“Probably with the elements,” King said. “… I just felt I was able to execute.”
That would be the 7,350 feet above sea level at which Sunday’s game was played.
King has been fighting his mechanics — and, thus, his command virtually all of 2026 — following a season in which he made just 15 starts due to injuries.
On Sunday, he was mostly masterful working in the thin air.
He struck out eight, walked one and allowed three hits in his six innings, and he departed with the Padres ahead 7-2.
“Command was back, so that felt good,” King said. “I just had to figure it out. The movement of the pitches (is) weird, so I had to kind of change release points and set my sights in a different spot just try to keep them off balance as much as I could.”
Two of the hits he allowed were solo home runs, but one of those was a 90.9 mph fly ball down the right field line that almost certainly would not have been a home run at sea level or perhaps even at mile-high Coors Field, the only permanent MLB ballpark anywhere close to the elevation in Mexico City.
Since 2015, there have been 23 balls hit with an exit velocity of 91 mph or softer that traveled 360 feet and cleared an outfield wall in any ballpark None of those came at Coors Field.
“The altitude is not fun to pitch in,” King said. “It’s fun to see our hitters hit in it, but I don’t like (it). I don’t feel as comfortable on the mound as I normally would.”
No one would know Sunday. And despite what happened after he departed, the Padres could walk away feeling good about the progress made by their de facto No.1 starter.
He has allowed five runs over 23 innings in his past four starts. His ERA swelled a bit Sunday to 2.48, which ranks seventh in the National League.
King is the lone remaining healthy starter among the three that were expected to anchor the rotation. Nick Pivetta and Joe Musgrove being sidelined indefinitely with elbow injuries has amplified the need for King to return to the form that saw him post a 2.95 ERA and strike out 201 batters over 173⅔ innings in 2024 before a nerve issue near his shoulder and a bone bruise in his left knee hampered him in ‘25.
Managing Andujar
Miguel Andujar was in the lineup Sunday for just the 16th time in 27 games.
His relatively meager usage might seem a little odd when considering he is batting .311 (19-for-61) after going 1-for and hitting his sixth double Sunday. But Andujar has been dealing with some slight hamstring tightness, and the Padres have under Stammen been extremely careful with players.
Andujar’s 341 plate appearances in 2025 were his most in a season since 2018. He has topped 300 plate appearances the past two seasons, but those are his only years with that many outside of his rookie year in ‘18 when he played in 149 games and had 606 plate appearances.
That is largely due to various injuries.
“We’re just trying to manage that,” Stammen said. “… The same thing we have talked about with all the guys about managing their workload and things like that.”
It would seem Andujar will start a second consecutive game for the fifth time this season on Monday, as Stammen said he will start against left-handers. The Padres are scheduled to face Matthew Boyd in the opener of a three-game series at Petco Park.