Padres president Mike Dee denies recent whispers that GM A.J. Preller’s job is in danger after the team’s failed attempt at contention last season, Joel Sherman of the New York Post writes. “Not true,” says Dee. “We have more confidence and excitement about him as GM than when we hired him in 2014. … He’s here for the long haul.” Dee says one reason the team hired Preller was because of his background in acquiring amateur talent, and it will take awhile for his efforts in that area to bear fruit. Notably, the organization is already rumored to have committed almost $30MM to talent that will become available in next summer’s Latin American amateur market — a huge figure, particularly given the penalties that will be involved. Here’s more on the Padres.
- Sherman also has some fun details of the Padres’ activity — or lack thereof — on the trade market last summer. They were reportedly offered only outfielder Junior Lake from the Cubs in return for Ian Kennedy. The Mets offered pitching prospect Michael Fulmer (later the key to the Yoenis Cespedes deal) for Justin Upton, but the Padres were concerned about Fulmer’s long-term viability as a starter. The Yankees, meanwhile, offered infield prospect Jorge Mateo for Craig Kimbrel (who, of course, later netted a considerable return from the Red Sox). They let Kennedy and Upton walk, but will receive compensation picks for them.
- After trading Nick Vincent to the Mariners, Preller says he doesn’t think the team will make any more significant deals before the start of the season, Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune writes. “I don’t really think so,” says Preller. “I think at this point, our focus has been more on some of the position battles, the competitions to round the club out. But you never want to say no.” As Lin notes, the team acquired Kimbrel just as the season started last year, but it doesn’t appear they plan on something like that happening again. Preller adds that the team is happy with Wil Myers at first base, seemingly in response to a question about whether they might pursue someone like James Loney (who’s now in limbo after being told he won’t make the Rays’ Opening Day roster) to platoon with him.
- Former phenom Brandon Wood — who belted a remarkable 43 home runs as a 20-year-old for Class A+ Rancho Cucamonga in 2005 but never made an impact in the Majors — is now 31 and preparing for his first season as a minor-league manager, Ted Berg of USA Today writes. Before the 2006 season, Baseball America rated Wood (then with the Angels) the third-best prospect in the game. Now he’s set to manage the short-season Tri-City Dust Devils. Wood says anxiety was his undoing as a player, recalling that he at times struggled to control his body because he wasn’t breathing enough.
- The Padres are expected to be keenly interested in free agent starter Tim Lincecum, Jon Heyman writes (Twitter links). Lincecum is rumored to be throwing 90 MPH off flat ground, Heyman reports, but he hasn’t yet had a showcase (even though there has been talk of a showcase for months now), saying he wants to be “perfect” for it. Lincecum is making his way back from hip surgery.
Wood managed the Padres Arizona League club last summer, so this will be his second year. It’s worded funny in the source article, which probably led to the error here.
the Orioles should sign lincecum and gamble he is better than gallardo
How about gambling that he’s better than Tyler Wilson or Mike Wright or Vance freaking Worley?
Nice to see a public announcement of what Fowler/Dee have been saying all along locally. AJ isn’t getting fired and we’ll have to see if the picks turn into more. Junior Lake? AJ did fine with what he got from Boston.
What does it matter, the franchise is destroyed. It will never recover. Buster and Joel can now say ” I told you so”
If Lincecum proves he is healthy I wouldn’t mind seeing the O’s taking a flier on him. He could be a huge risk but also a pretty big reward for a rotation with only 3 MLB starters.
Didn’t really understand why the Padres went all in last season. It’s not like they had an emerging young core at the major league level to add veteran talent with. Outside of their 3 top starters (Ross, Cashner, Kennedy) the team was extremely thin in general.
However, I think Preller is a decent gm to have rebuilding a team. They got a haul for Kimbrel and have a few valuable chips on Ross, Cashner, and potentially Myers. They also have 3 first rounders and apparently are looking to spend on international talent. I think their farm could be pretty good.
I agree with you questioning why the Padres went all in for the 2015 season. The team they assembled had no depth, an injury or two was bound to happen and when it did they had no where to turn. Upton was obviously going free agent after the season and was not going to sign a long-term contract to play in possibly the best pitchers park in MLB (he and his brother have always gotten contracts for what they’re going to do, and they never did it); Kemp is a decent enough guy still having some power but not a great hitter and an terrible OF – an OK investment at $10-12 a year if you don’t have to trade much for him; Kimbrel is terrific, but he’s more of the final piece of a team with a solid group of set-up men and a contending team; Shields does well on a team with solid defense – Preller! ignored defense; and Will Myers is loved by Dave Cameron of Fangraphs, but not so much by the front office personnel and managers that he’s played for. Yet for those guys, Preller! emptied out a decent farm system that could have been built on and put his payroll at risk for 3-5 years. Worse yet, he’s competing in a division with the Giants and Dodgers – franchises that have farm systems that develop players and had depth on their ML rosters. I have to believe that either Ron Fowler pushed him into that cockamamie action, or Preller! sold that to Fowler in the interview for the GM position.
From day one I had questions about Preller!. He’s one of these new front office types that is concerned with promoting himself as a guru as opposed to building a solid organization, He reminds me of some NFL GM’s that were nice scouts for a solid GM, but when given a franchise to run, proved to be over their head. In MLB he can be compared to Jack Zduriencik who did a great job building the Brewers farm system, only to fall on his face as Mariners GM.
It is going to take the Padres at least 3 years and a lot of money to get back to were their organization was player-wise at the end of 2014. They appear to have an interesting manager, but it takes years to build cohesion, and the fact is that 3 years from now there very well may not be more then 5 guys on the Padres ML roster that are on it today. Peller! wins the sizzle award, LaRussa and Stewart are the ones that turned their NL West team around in 2 years.
I think that Preller! will be best remembered for the 3 way trade that allowed the Nationals to give up Seven Souza and Travis Ott for Joe Ross and Trea Turner. That trade may well go down as one of the top 5 steals of the 2010’s decade. When you’ve got veteran successful GM’s like John Hart, Andrew Friedman, Mike Rizzo and now Dave Dombrowski rushing to make trades with a neophyte……..
Yeah it makes sense for the ownership to possibly be involved with Preller getting “name brand” guys like Kemp. And that Wil Myers trade still hurts.
I’m interested to see how this team will look in another 2-3 years. I’m still willing to have some confidence in Preller for now with hope that the prospects he drafts/acquires will make an impact, but we’ll see.
Wil Myers was, by an order of magnitude, the best player involved in that trade.
Padres went all in the 2015 season for a few reasons.
1) Their pitching in 2014 was very good overall and had they any offense they would have been competitive. So Preller took a chance they could sustain pitching and increase offense, however pitching did not sustain.
2) Management was pushing for a splash and excitement, so they went for what was available.
3) From the beginning Preller wanted to revamp the Padres from top to bottom. He has been trading all of the previous regime’s players for his own. Some of the players he obtained (Kimbrel) I suspect he planned on flipping for prospects he liked. He also must like what he sees in the 2016 draft class since many of his moves were designed towards the 2016 draft class such as keeping Kennedy and Upton for their picks.
Lincecum’s “showcase” was supposed to happen 2 months ago. I bet he doesn’t throw a pitch in the majors in 2016
Nothing else has worked in San Diego in the past, might as well give preller more than one season to see if he can do to bring the Padres back to a winning state.
That’s what people said last year.
Hmm… I think I would rather have Michael Fulmer than the extra draft pick, and those last 2 months of Justin Upton had no value to the Padres, so Preller should have made that trade. And while that draft pick has a decent shot at developing into something better than Junior Lake, Kennedy wasn’t exactly a surefire QO candidate so if I had been in Preller’s shoes I probably would have taken that trade. But I guess that’s why I’m not a GM.
I’m sure there were better offers given, but that is what you will only be able to see in a pro-Preller article…Or I wouldn’t be suprised if those are the only declined trades that got leaked out…It just overall makes him look better, for why he chose to keep them…
Or at least that is just my opinion, I definitely could be wrong.
I think the cubs make a trade for ross, which he could bring back a nice package of young players.
Yes, I’m quite certain that Mike Sherman and his editors at the New York Daily News are quite concerned that they need to paint AJ Preller in a positive light.
The padres don’t need pitching. They can always find pitching as proven by their track record of rehabilitation with guys looking to rebuild value and late round pitching prospects. They need position players that can be productive. I’d rather have the extra 1st, draft positon players, and go from there. Fulmer is highly regarded, but definitepy not a need the padres have often. They always seem to beed position players.
I see both Cashner and Ross being traded at the deadline, Ross to the cubs and not sure where Cashner will end up maybe st.louis or pirates. Possibly the white sox if they are in contention.
I think Preller played it right. People get to hung up on the idea that Preller absolutely 100% needed to move players for prospects. Lake and Fulmer are decent prospects but not blue chippers so I have no problem with him getting extra draft picks which could net better players than what was offered. Trades and drafts are crapshoots either way, why not hang onto your guys if you don’t get what you want in a trade.
He clearly did better hanging onto Kimbrel so I applaud him for that.
Like I said before, Fulmer is worth more than the extra draft pick and Lake might not be but at the time it was questionable whether Kennedy would be worth giving a QO to. Honestly the whole Kennedy QO situation could not have worked out any better than it did. Not for the Padres or for Kennedy himself.
The way I’m reading your argument, it’s that AJ took a big risk in not making a trade because he didn’t know whether he’d want to give Kennedy a QO.
If he knew he wanted to give Kennedy the QO (which, it seems pretty obvious was the case), then it wasn’t a risk. The fact that other people had doubts about whether AJ was going to give Kennedy a QO doesn’t mean that AJ did.
Junior Lake was never a “decent prospect” No power, no walks, he was eventually released by the Cubs.
That is hilarious that Theo/Hoyer would insult the organization that actually allowed the Cubs to negotiate to get Hoyer so Theo could get the band back together and join forces as they once were in Boston by offering them Junior Lake. Lake is at best a AAAA showboat who cares much more for making himself look good in a bad situation rather than actually playing the game the right way. You offer Lake for Kennedy and his true market value turns out to be Tommy Hunter. That is hilarious! I applaud Preller for debunking the Cubs junk for Kennedy who actually will get you a better player through the draft than any value Lake ever could give you. As a Cub fan, I could not wait to see the Cubs get rid of Lake. He has amazing speed, a very good glove, power, and the ability to make the spectacular play from the outfield. His problems lie between his ears. He was demoted after a hot start a couple years ago in order develop some plate discipline and become more of a situational hitter. In 18 months down in the minors, he never cut down his swing and still brought his razzle dazzle style back to Wrigley, resembling the exact same player they sent down. It’s always nice to look back at what could have been, but in no way would a team give up a major asset if they even sent one scout to view Lake. Lake has reached his ceiling. Smart move on the part of Preller, way to dodge the bullet. Good luck being an organizational piece for the O’s Lake! The Cubs maximized their value on lake, even though they didn’t steal away Kennedy.