The only MLB team you can trade sits at all-time highs — and shorts have never bet bigger against it. Longs are underwriting the record Padres comp, ratified unanimously by all 30 owners Monday; shorts bet the December 1 lockout breaks the mark before it can be earned.
Both sides keep adding. Over twelve months, active managers grew BATRK holdings 10% and hedge fund longs 17%, while short interest tripled and its dollar value hit a post-spin record.
The economics cut both ways. The Padres price assumes the next CBA, likely with a salary cap, pays off for owners. But record valuations are labor's cudgel in talks. Franchise scarcity favors the longs, labor leverage the shorts, with positioning tracked daily by S3.
Missed games pay the BATRK shorts; an owner-friendly deal pays the longs.
Now ratified, the $3.9 billion Padres sale heads to closing, and the readthrough lands on Atlanta Braves Holdings, the Liberty Media spin-off in which John Malone holds majority voting control. Fifty years after Ted Turner bought the club to feed TBS, Paramount is aiming to buy Turner's old networks and their postseason rights, while the Braves enter the 2029 national-TV auction owning their broadcast outright.
The short case is the path: a lockout is expected, the sides remain far apart on a salary cap, and every week without a deal between December and spring training is the shorts' friend. In a $3.4 billion company, active institutional investors hold $1.4 billion, hedge funds hold $0.9 billion, and the shorts hold $169 million. Share counts are up on every side this year, and every side's dollar exposure hit a post-spin peak in the past week. December 1 likely starts the lockout; the months after decide who's right — and whoever blinks first shows up in the data.
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