![\"San](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SUT-L-padres-0802-015.jpg\")
San Diego Padres President of baseball operations A.J. Preller and Mike Shildt #8 chat before the game against the St. Louis Cardinals at Petco Park on Friday, Aug. 1, 2025 in San Diego, CA. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\nThe summer wind was on the verge of blowing into Chicago, yet as Bruce Bochy walked in the city following yet another defeat, the young Padres manager talked as though one of Lake Michigan\u2019s notorious winter gusts \u2014 the Hawk \u2014 might soon tear into him.<\/p>\n
Ambling the streets that June night in 1996, Bochy quipped that if his team didn\u2019t soon pull out of its tailspin, Larry Lucchino, the team\u2019s president, would be all too happy to fire him.<\/p>\n
Bochy may not have been jesting entirely. At Wrigley Field that afternoon, his Padres were beaten for the 10th time in 11 games. And Bochy, by not being Lucchino\u2019s \u201cguy,\u201d had reason to wonder, absent an imminent turnaround, if he would weather this freefall.<\/p>\n
Lucchino had inherited Bochy after joining the Padres, as the sidekick to incoming team owner John Moores. Bochy\u2019s first season, in 1995, was only so-so. MLB\u2019s labor strife that year afforded him a mulligan. He wouldn\u2019t get a second one. The Padres had to win. Moores and Lucchino sought public funding toward a downtown ballpark. Playoff contention was required.<\/p>\n
The 1996 Padres pulled out of their June swoon, although not before they fell into last place with their 19th loss in 23 games. They went on to win just the second divisional title by a Padres club.<\/p>\n
Bochy, for his part, was just warming up.<\/p>\n
He became one of baseball\u2019s top managers \u2014 ever.<\/p>\n
Leadership\u2019s well-informed patience with Bochy reaped enormous rewards two years later, when the Padres helped get Petco Park built by winning the 1998 National League pennant. Later, Bochy guided the Giants to their only three World Series titles in San Francisco and the Texas Rangers to their only World Series crown since they began play in 1972.<\/p>\n
Many years later, a similar Padres scenario has played out. Only this time, it was A.J. Preller, the team\u2019s top talent man, on the hot seat.<\/p>\n
Had Preller had been fired early in his tenure as Padres general manager, it would\u2019ve been unsurprising by MLB standards \u2014 and it would\u2019ve been a big mistake, almost certainly.<\/p>\n
Hired in August 2014, the rookie GM had a first offseason that was long on gusto. But it was so short on wisdom, I would come to wonder if Preller was cut out for a GM gig.<\/p>\n
He traded two prospects he inherited, Trea Turner and Max Fried, in separate deals. Both would become big-league stars who helped their teams win a World Series.<\/p>\n
Committing a Padres felony in that same debut offseason, the rookie GM made a bad trade with the Dodgers. And he overpaid pitcher James Shields by a lot, a deal that also cost the Padres a top-15 draft pick.<\/p>\n
Preller survived. That\u2019s because the bosses who\u2019d hired him, Peter Seidler, Ron Fowler and Mike Dee, who were in the midst of their own steep learning curve, believed he would lead the franchise to sustained playoff contention.<\/p>\n
There would be more turbulence: Major League Baseball suspended Preller in September 2016, two years into his tenure, after it determined he failed to disclose\u00a0required medical information\u00a0in a trade.<\/p>\n
Preller kept his job. Not all GMs would have.<\/p>\n
San Diego Padres President of baseball operations A.J. Preller and Mike Shildt #8 chat before the game against the St. Louis Cardinals at Petco Park on Friday, Aug. 1, 2025 in San Diego, CA. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
But Preller, rewarding ownership\u2019s faith, outgrew his Dennis the Menace phase.<\/p>\n
His Padres haven\u2019t won any pennants, true. But unless this year\u2019s team falls apart in stunning fashion, the Padres will this year secure the club\u2019s fourth postseason berth in six years \u2014 the franchise\u2019s best run of relevance.<\/p>\n
Like with Bochy, a lot of MLB folks underestimated Preller.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s laughable to revisit some of the comments scouts or executives from other MLB teams made after Preller\u2019s suspension nine years ago.<\/p>\n
They said GMs would become reluctant to trade with Preller.<\/p>\n
Yeah, right. Preller has become the highest-volume blockbuster trader of this era.<\/p>\n
Deeper into the GM\u2019s tenure, other teams often raised another false notion \u2014 that Preller had dealt so many prospects, the farm system would stink for several years, hindering his ability to continue to trade prospects for big leaguers.<\/p>\n
Instead, after trading nearly more minor leaguers during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season than the whole league did, Preller backed up the farm truck again in 2022, 2024 and now 2025. In return, he got a bunch of big leaguers.<\/p>\n
The GM and his scouts sustained their success in the amateur markets, drafting players and signing teens out of Latin America that other teams would seek in trades. Believing that the first job of the farm system is to improve the big-league team, Preller became extra-comfortable at trading with a wide variety of teams.<\/p>\n
For the most part,\u00a0dating to the 2020-21 offseason, he has done a good job of it.<\/p>\n
Preller has created a rare niche in MLB. That\u2019s difficult. And he has owned it. That\u2019s even harder.<\/p>\n
Though the Dodgers can outspend them, Preller and his scouts have, in effect, created their own extraordinary level of currency. They\u2019re able to regenerate loads of trade value and use it to improve the big-league team. It\u2019s why they now have a chance of challenging the Dodgers for the National League West title and a possible first-round playoff bye.<\/p>\n
A Bochy outcome here \u2014 an extraordinary World Series title \u2014 isn\u2019t probable.<\/p>\n
But it is possible. And it began with bosses allowing a young leader to get his footing.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: August 2, 2025 at 6:11 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The summer wind was on the verge of blowing into Chicago, yet as Bruce Bochy walked in the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":114419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1370,1266,3549,1306,7264,62,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-114418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-san-diego-padres","15":"tag-sandiego","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114962281630710294","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}