Padres general manager A.J. Preller returned from his unpaid 30-day suspension for failing to disclose medical information to the Red Sox in the Drew Pomeranz trade, writes Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports reports (links to Twitter) that following the dismissal of Padres CEO Mike Dee, Preller will now report directly to ownership (which Lin specifies further, listing Ron Fowler and Peter Seidler). According to Rosenthal, that arrangement will remain in place even after the Padres hire a replacement for Dee, as the team’s next president will only oversee the business side of operations. Furthermore, Rosenthal adds that the Padres plan to make at least one hire, if not two, that will ensure compliance with medical regulations.
Preller offered a short comment to Lin upon his return: “It’s obviously been a busy day catching up on phone calls, getting started, looking toward the off-season with the front-office group, getting back and talking to (Padres manager Andy Green). Obviously, we’ve got a lot of work in front of us, today has been busy catching up on everything, and looking forward to getting back on the job.”
Lin adds that despite recent speculation on the matter, Major League Baseball’s investigation into the scandal is complete. As commissioner Rob Manfred said earlier this month (link via the Boston Herald’s Evan Drellich), the Red Sox were asked whether they wanted to rescind the Pomeranz-for-Anderson Espinoza swap when it came to light that the Padres had withheld information, but the team elected to hang onto Pomeranz because the trade deadline had already come and gone (the implication being that they wouldn’t be able to acquire further rotation help). The team will not hire a president of baseball operations to oversee Preller, Lin continues, nor will Preller’s decision-making power diminish in the wake of the scandal.
Preller is doing to the Padres what Jerry Dipotto did to the Angels over a handful of years. Wake up teams. Vet your GM choices more closely.
Yeah that couldnt be further from the truth LOL.
Dipitto gave out bad contracts to aging players and did nothing to help the farm system.
Preller for the most part has fone a decent job acquiring talent through trades. People harp on him for the turner and ross trade, but the other trades hes made hes added more talent than he gave up.
Hes also done a great job in the IFA period the past 2 years. Didnt dipitto sign baloquin to 8 mill which wrecked their IFA going forward?
Prellers brought in a surplus of young controllable talent to the padres. And he hasnt given out huge contracts to players either.
What? Go back more than last season, nice signs! Remember how they were going to contend? In addition, some of the surplus was because he purposely deceived other teams and his group collaborated to help. A flat out joke!
Well you can only go back 2 seasons and show me where it was AJs call to sign the FA and not a direction from above. Regardless, if it were AJ at least this group did something to change the course instead of waiting for a different result from the same talent level. It didn’t work and they righted the wrongs this season. Still to early to tell but the longer it goes there is far more good than bad.
The kemp trade was terrible too
Well the Ross and Turner trades were MAJOR blunders
Ross and Turner netted Wil Myers. Early days but far from a “major blunder” at this point.
Turner is already better than Myers with 3 more years of control and that’s not even considering that we gave up Joe Ross and Jake Bauers.
He’s done a reasonable job in trades but the Kemp trade was an absolute disaster from day one.
Exactly, what a crook and a 30 suspension is a joke. He/his group should have been fired on the spot and Espinosa/ others should have been given back to the original clubs
Not sure why people post without reading the article. Every single article about this has stated red Sox had the chance the rescind the trade and they turned it down.
Yes the Red Sox could have rescinded the trade but they were in a pennant race and they needed Pomerania and it was AFTER the trade deadline. They were in between a rock and a hard place. Return Pomeranz and try to find a waiver pickup or call up a minor leaguer, or see if Pom could help them in some capacity.
Padres are far better off today than they were when Preller was hired. Farm system is stocked with fantastic talent at the lower levels. Major league club has a batch of promising big leagers and AAA guys coming up. Padres aren’t going to win the WS, but at least there is a real plan to get there.
Sure they are, nice showing again this year. Prospects at the lower level means you want people to “drink the look-aid, the real plan is to hide info and lie to make deals, you must work under him
What is “look-aid”?
It looks he was trying to go with “kool-aid” but either got two letters mixed around, or it auto-corrected him.
But seriously, either you just wanted to be “that guy” or you couldn’t figure out what he was saying based on the context… neither is a good look..
Shady bro. Good luck getting people to answer your calls.
LOL yeah this will really affect his ability to trade in the league. Heres an example that shoots down your asinine theory.
Mets want wil myers for 1st base. But nationals want wil myers for 1st base. And what do you know so do the marlins. (Purely random teams representing division rivals but could be a number of teams). Now someone wants wil myers and preller could trade him to marlins or nationals if mets dont want to play ball. Thats fine they can face him down the stretch vs use him.
Yeah the league will surely punish him by not inquiring on talent they have to make their clubs better next season LOL. Really sticking it to the padres by watching them trade to another club.
The general consensus is, in situations where a team is tossing up on where and who with, to pull the trigger – AJ Prellers misdeeds will hinder things breaking his way. They will also hinder his ability to pitch a player, or players of his own, to other teams. There are scenarios out there, besides the Padres having a player multiple teams want. Not every scenario is X, Y and Z chasing one of Prellers known commodities, and even those are in question now.
There are numerous off the record accounts stating that Preller has seriously harmed relationships, both existing and future.
Your response is incredibly condescending and narrow minded.
If the padres have the best option on the market OR an equally effective option for a fraction of the price you seriously think teams will withhold pursuing those options LOL? Doubt it. The padres are in rebuilding mode and have young and/or controllable talent as well as depth accumulated in some areas. Preller doesnt need to sell anything cause teams will be asking to fill their own needs esp in the off season and deadline- i.e. teams that need a center fielder may call up the padres about jankowski cause of the depth the padres amassed with renfoe dickerson margot plus all the other options in the minors that are near mlb ready. Why did the red sox want pomeranz? He cost 1/10 what sale would have- end of story.
Both hand and buchter are controllable assets and easily effective and upper notch lefties in the league who most likely will become available at the winter deadline if not by the regular season deadline. Teams that dont want to pay the price for britton or chapman will be calling the padres to fill their lefty needs or go with a strict loogy they get for cheap thats not as effective as hand or buchter.
Again. If teams rather go with a lesser option just cause of preller preller will have no problem taking a deal elsewhere. There’s always demand when you have something people want. And teams would want hand buchter jankowski.
You act like if teams are given padres vs dodgers options theyll take dodgers cause padres are liars. Wrong on soooooo many levels. Theyll look at whats available and what the asking price is well before they consider not talking to the padres.
If its a sellers market like it was this year options become slimmer and teams become forced to look.at whats available. In which case preller gains the upper hand.
If its a buyers market preller loses the upper hand.
Right, if the Padres have assets that other teams want, no one is going to just not call Preller. Wil Myers’ value (for the sake of carrying on the example) has no bearing on another GM’s relationship with A.J. Preller.
However, if people aren’t keen on working with Preller, they’ll find other options for 1B or LHP, or whatever it is they want from San Diego. And less teams calling Preller because they hate the guy means Preller can’t get more bids for his guys, meaning he takes less for Myers than he could if he had better rapport with other GMs.
And yes, if people have better rapport and trust Friedman more than they do Preller, they will most certainly go there. Why do you think we see so many common trade partners (OAK-WAS; ARZ-ATL; CHC-OAK)? GMs go to the GMs they trust.
Well what about if the Padres want something from another team? Preller will have to overpay. He should have been fired on the spot
No he won’t. If Preller makes a fair offer and no one else offers more, they will take it. Otherwise they won’t get the guys they want from us.
There are two of you that just wasted a significant amount of your time because you couldn’t comprehend what I said. At no point did I talk about not even calling AJ in the first place.
It’s a shame when potential for a decent debate is ruined by people who are unable to stop and listen. Feel free to take a moment and re read what I said, we can try again.
Whose consensus? Look art the simplest explanation for what happened: Preller didn’t hire the new trainers, prez/CEO Mike Dee did. Dee got fired “for cause” and Preller got a promotion of sorts, no longer answering to the middleman, instead answering only to the owners directly.
Say the Commissioner’s investigation found Mike Dee was responsible. Can Manfred suspend a team executive? NO. It was a baseball-related infraction so the highest ranking baseball guy gets suspended, the Director of Baseball Ops, Preller.
Manfred doesn’t reveal the results to the team being investigated, and the Chairman says no stone will be left unturned. Who gets put in charge of turning the stones? Mike Dee.
Nothing happens until just before Preller’s suspension ends, when the Managing Partner Peter Seidler, on behalf of the majority owners, finds out it was Mike Dee and fires him for misleading the owners. Manfred’s office issues a statement that “MLB is very pleased with the Padres’ action.” The new President will be limited to the business end and Preller no longer answers to a middleman.
The simplest explanation is that Mike Dee told his hires to keep dual books, and when Preller was supended, didn’t ‘fess up to ownership, but let them think it was Preller’s doing. The owners found out, fired Mike Dee for misleading them, and in effect promoted Preller.
Every ballclub can see what happened and put 2+2 together. With the Padres planning another hire of one or two people to supervise the updating and maintenance of medical reports (and the Commissioner watching), every club would know the medical records the Padres post on the confidential database are as complete as possible within the federal Medical Records Privacy Act. They should have no problem dealing with Preller and the Padres.
They left him messages. It said in the article he was busy returning calls.
Preller is still the best guy for the job. Our farm system is the best it has ever been. Legitimate prospects everywhere. Exciting times for the patient true fans. Glad your back AJ!
Get excited, they have embarrassed the org
Welcome back AJ!
Despite what some may think, he still has been doing a great job actually putting together a plan for future success for this team. He’s been doing a good job acquiring a lot of young talent, and hopefully he can keep it up.
Barely a slap on the wrist, really. The punishment will be handed out by other GMs in negotiation dynamics. Still, a month holiday at the back end of the season? Hardly anything.
Manfred and MLB has moved on and so have the Pads. You should try it.
^
LOL so other GM’s are going to refuse to trade with Preller even if the Padres have a player they like and Preller is offering a trade proposal that they feel is fair? Try again buddy.
Let’s say we are trading collectibles. You have something I want, I have tradeables you want. Cool, we have a starting point.
But let’s say I have a history of conning people. I give them less than they thought they were getting, it’s not as valuable as I claim, etc.
If you know this, you come to the trade weary and skeptical. You certainly won’t bring the best you have, as there’s no guarantee you end up with goods as advertised.
It’s the same with Preller. He can have highly desirable assets, but if he’s not trustworthy, it’ll be tremendously difficult to get a lot accomplished.
I’m not even going to bother with a silly analogy to debunk you. Other teams know that MLB will be keeping tabs on Preller and so he will be extra careful to make sure the medical info he is presenting the other teams is up to date from now on. He’ll be able to trade with other teams just like always this offseason.
The slap on the wrist was likely by design. A.J. Preller didn’t get fired, the President/CEO Mike Dee, the guy who hired the new trainers, got fired.
I don’t see why the guy has been labeled so badly. People need to take these matters into their own hands, meaning the Red Sox should have looked further into this deal before making it. Dont they have their own medical staff??
And I’m not taking the last minute before deadline as an excuse to the Red Sox not thoroughly investigating. You wanna make a last minute trade, that’s a risk you have to deal with. No sympathy for the Red Sox the MLB is just pandering to an organization they love.
Plus everyone likes to point the finger at Preller, even within the organization. There many other people involved it takes more than a GM alone to hold information.
Now everyone is gonna want trade-backs if an injury arises. This isn’t Major League Carebears.
If you don’t want to make deals with another organization you have the power not to. Look at the Giants and As.
How do you suppose they look further into the deal before making it. Teams are supposed to keep treatments jn a database for all teams to see when working out trades, the padres kept two databases, deliberately hiding information they were supposed to give. Also, it wasnt just the red sox that complained, three other teams did as well. The fact that he received any form of suspension was proof he did something wrong.
I just can’t believe he threw the sample collector under the bus and lied about it.
Well played!
Much
Much ado……..
Regardless of the quality of the minor league org, Preller is a bad guy and the Padres should have have done the honorable thing and fired him.
However, the world doesn’t work like that anymore. Shame!
First off, not a Padres fan, but cannot understand how the Padres can fire other front office personnel and keep Preller? Knowing what he has done, how is it possible for them to trade with any other club going forward?
And does anyone really believe that Preller was completely “left out of the loop” for those 30 days? Is it possible that after a short period of time, he (Preller) too is shown the door?
Padres don’t really need to trade, they need to develop.
They spent over 80 million on international players and the month before potentially drafted two aces with their 1st two picks. They also have Espinoza, Lamet, Allen, Paddack possessing front line stuff. So looking at their farm, I see a bright future with the pitching they got. Of all their arms, I expect Morejon to be the best of the bunch 5 years from now, obviously too early to tell but if they’re players develop they should be tough.
Hope Houston ends up w a real gm
I love when Padres “fans” comment about the Ross/Turner trade.
1. This was a single transaction, not two separate trades.
2. The Padres received Wil Myers in this trade. He was an All-Star in 2016, and looks to be a building block at 1B moving forward.
This was not the terrible trade people make it out to be. Yes Turner looks tremendous, but there are far worse returns than an All-Star 1B.
Exactly.
I’d expect more in exchange for an All Star shortstop with 6 years of control
Padres got an Allstar but Turner has arguably been the best player in baseball. Small sample size; I’m sure the league will adjust some but sure would of been better to have playing SS for the Padres, yes! Ross is a good but he’s no Kluber. Brynes traded Kluber without even giving him a call just like they traded Ross and Turner without giving a call. Padres traded their best prospect but Preller got some terrific one’s of his own. Arguably best draft and international signing period of any team. Preller should of kept Turner but Myers was a 25/25 player. Padres need more 25 hr or sb guy’s.
Kluber was a fringe prospect when he was traded. Turner was a recently drafted 1st rounder who, at the time of his trade, had done nothing to suggest that the Padres used their 1st round pick poorly.