Padres general manager Kevin Towers agreed to a two-year contract extension that runs through 2010, The Associated Press learned Tuesday night.
The deal was confirmed by two people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity because an announcement had not yet been made.
Towers' current deal was set to end after the 2008 season. His extension was to be announced at a news conference scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
Towers has been San Diego's GM since 1996, making him the longest-tenured current GM with one club. Since then, the Padres have won four NL West titles and been to the World Series once, losing in four games to the New York Yankees in 1998.
The Padres won the division in 2005 and '06 before losing to the St. Louis Cardinals in the first round of the playoffs both years. They missed reaching the postseason for a franchise-record third straight season when they lost a wild-card tiebreaker at Colorado in 13 innings on Oct. 1.
Towers has kept the Padres competitive despite working with a limited payroll. He once joked that he's a "sludge merchant," able to move unproductive players with big contracts for more productive players.
Although the Padres have been criticized for their farm system's lack of productivity, homegrown right-hander Jake Peavy was the unanimous choice for the 2007 NL Cy Young Award. He was a 15th-round pick in the June 1999 draft. Peavy recently was awarded the biggest deal in club history, a $52 million, three-year extension that will be worth $70 million if the Padres pick up his option for 2013.
In one of his biggest trades, Towers acquired All-Star right-hander Chris Young and first baseman Adrian Gonzalez in a six-player deal with Texas in January 2006.
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