Long ago, A.J. Preller wasn’t so hot when it came to trading minor leaguers.
To Preller’s credit, Trea Turner and Max Fried didn’t cause him to run scared.
Preller has wised up during his adventurous run as the Padres’ top baseball executive. What was once a weakness now appears to be a strength.
Preller’s successful trades of numerous minor leaguers helped the Padres make the 2022 National League Championship Series and has transformed this year’s team into a playoff contender that boasts a bullpen many experts love.
Good information is power, and early on, a Padres management team lacking in-job experience wasn’t very wise to MLB team-building.
Soon after second-year CEO Mike Dee hired Preller to become a first-time general manager with approval from team owners Peter Seidler and Ron Fowler, who were also learning the ins and outs of their new jobs, the Padres launched a win-now push meant to deliver a World Series title (at best) and boost attendance and buzz (at minimum).
Seidler and Fowler inherited a farm ranked between first and third by various publications. When Preller took over, the system still stood above average.
Rather than initially attempting a scorched-earth, draft-and-develop build-up like those that would help make the Cubs and Astros into world champions, Preller began to auction off minor leaguers.
The win-now push would cast the new Padres leaders as heroes to long-suffering fans, earning them invaluable trust for later when they began to punt seasons.
Alas, other GMs circled like sharks. They snapped up, among others, future All-Stars Turner and Fried. The shortstop and pitcher went on to help lead the Nationals and Braves to World Series titles,
A bad trade with the Dodgers raised another yellow flag, as did Preller’s giveaway of Emmanuel Clase, who’s now having a third dominant season as Cleveland’s closer.
It can be OK to trade prospects who become standouts.
But the Padres weren’t winning games as a result.
Know thy own players being a prominent commandment to GMs, Preller needed to step up his game.
Many years later, he’s one of the best in MLB at it. In fact, Preller and his staffers have done a lot right in recent years.
(Yes, Seidler improved Preller chances of success by funding massive player payrolls and large investments in amateur markets.).
Preller held on to Jackson Merrill two summers ago when the same Nationals general manager, Mike Rizzo, sought the Single-A shortstop.
An All-Star center fielder at 21, Merrill is having one of the best Padres seasons in decades by a player the franchise drafted and developed.
While Rizzo did well in his trade of Juan Soto to the Padres, it’s also true Preller got several contributors to the current club when he dealt Soto to the Yankees last offseason.
Vital to the 2022 Padres reaching the franchise’s first World Series qualifier since 1998 and the 2023 Padres landing second in MLB attendance were Preller’s trades of 10-plus prospects. Years later, Preller seems to have correctly evaluated those minor leaguers he dealt to get the ‘22 NLCS team’s top-three starting pitchers, incuding 2023 Cy Young Winner Blake Snell and closer Josh Hader.
This year, Preller managed to get Dylan Cease by trading three more prospects in March.
It’s rare for a scout to speak definitively of a trade’s bottom line, as soon as one did when asked to review Preller’s deal for Cease.
Preller “fleeced” rookie White Sox GM Chris Getz, the scout said in this space May 6.
While Cease has returned great value as an ace on an $8 million salary who’s also under Padres control for 2025, the MLB-worst White Sox have seen former Padres prospect Drew Thorpe, 23, post a 5.48 ERA and a poor strikeout rate for their big-league club. The results sit better for the other pitching prospect sent to Chicago, Jairo Iriarte, a 22-year-old in Doublt-A.
Dealing prospects once again in early May, Preller got Luis Arraez from the Marlins. A different scout praised the deal immediately, saying Preller wouldn’t regret offloading any of the three prospects obtained by Marlins rookie GM Pete Bendix.
The three prospects are all having subpar seasons, one due to injury.
when you were a child and adults in your life used to say money doesn’t grow on trees?
Preller’s farm system is like a money tree that never stops producing some form of useful currency — even when the Padres drafted late or had their ability to invest in the farm trimmed by the g of Xander Bogaerts.
Striking once again at this year’s trade deadline — two years after a scout said the trade for Soto left the system “decimated” beyond Merrill — Preller dealt eight minor leaguers.
The return brought in three relievers headed by former Marlins closer Tanner Scott and a starting pitcher, Martin Perez, whose recent Padres debut led to a victory.
TBD on those minor leaguers Preller dealt, the scouts said.
“Seemed like Preller got whatever he could for pieces he didn’t care much about,” one said. “The current versions of the guys he gave up aren’t that impressive. But, several of them have some real upside if you have a good development system.”
However the current team fares, it’s clear Preller and his scouts know how to find prospects who will return some sort of big-league value, either as Padres producers like Merrill and catcher Luis Campusano, or, more likely, as players who will be traded to teams with lower player payrolls.
Presumably, Preller embraces truths such as a telling one MLB Network aired on deadline day: Of the 633 minor leaguers traded in the summer market between 2013 and 2023, only 23 prospects (3.6 percent) became impact players.
After a Dennis the Menace phase early on, A.J. Preller is growing up before our eyes.
