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“PADRES–AN OUTSIDER’S VIEW OF AJ PRELLER”
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Padres baseball…we live with it, cover it, have views of it from close up.
Sometimes it is good to look outside our circle to see what others are saying at this hour about the Padres off season. The one that follows another disappointing playoff finish. The one that takes a different view of the roster, the budget issues, even the ownership group and what happened this week.
Take a read-some of what he says..I have said. What do you say
‘The Athletic’ with its perspective of Padres baseball at this hour:
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By Chad JenningsOct. 14, 2025 5:08 pm PDT
A.J. Preller always has a trick up his sleeve. As head of baseball operations, his aggressive brand of hocus pocus has defined the San Diego Padres for more than a decade.
Voila! Preller traded for Fernando Tatis Jr.
Poof! He signed Manny Machado.
Presto! He acquired Juan Soto.
Even this summer, with money tight and his farm system depleted, Preller pulled Mason Miller, Ramón Laureano, Ryan O’Hearn and Freddy Fermin out of his trade deadline hat.
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When one sleight of hand doesn’t work, Preller’s always ready to try another, and for his next trick, Preller’s looking for someone to put in a managerial box that might be sawed in half within a year or two. After Mike Shildt’s sudden retirement on Monday, Preller is in the market for a new Padres manager, and like any good magician, his sales pitch is full of razzle-dazzle, with a healthy dose of misdirection.
“I think it’s a really attractive job,” Preller said in a conference call on Tuesday.
He talked about the Padres’ potent bullpen, and their strong core of position players. He praised the ballpark, the fanbase, and the city. He noted that the Padres have been to the playoffs four times in the past six years, and that they’ve gotten there with three different managers.
“Which I think speaks to the strength of the roster and the organization,” Preller said.
Never mind that none of those three managers lasted more than two years on the job, and pay no attention to the age of those position players — or the length of their contracts — and keep looking at that mighty bullpen, because there isn’t much to see in the Padres’ rotation.
Oh, and don’t worry at all about the unsettled ownership situation — nothing to see there.
Eight Major League teams are looking for managers this offseason, and the Padres’ job might be the least predictable of the bunch. The Colorado Rockies and Minnesota Twins are obviously rebuilding. The Baltimore Orioles and Atlanta Braves are turn-key opportunities to win quickly and perhaps sustainably.
But the Padres? All of Preller’s talking points are correct. Their bullpen is tremendous. Their position player core is in place. There is energy and opportunity, and Preller is wired to compete.
But even a quick glance behind the curtain should raise serious questions about the viability of this particular magic act, and who’s going to be left holding the cards if and when the whole thing falls apart.
The Padres have stars like Fernando Tatis Jr., left, and Manny Machado, but they are also hamstrung by giant contracts.Mark Brown / Getty Images
It’s a roster with talent …
The competitive window is still open. The Padres won at least 89 games in three of the past four seasons, and there’s nothing to indicate they’re planning a shift into rebuilding mode.
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Tatis Jr. is firmly in his prime and playing like it. Five years into a 14-year contract, Tatis turns 27 in January and just had a 6.1 fWAR season. Jackson Merrill turns 23 in April, and next season is the start of a nine-year, team-friendly extension. Those two are fixtures, young and dependable.
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Machado is 33 but still an All-Star. Xander Bogaerts and Jake Cronenworth will be back next season. Fermin and Laureano can also stick around. The lineup could use some thump, but the offense is certainly not starting from scratch.
… that is expensive, unmovable, and long-in-the-tooth
Machado turns 34 in July, and his 11-year, $350-million contract is backloaded so that he’ll make $35 million a year from 2027 to 2033 (he’ll turn 35 in the middle of that 2027 season). On top of the $35 million in salary, he will get $5 million in signing bonus payments each year from 2027-33. He remains a well above-average hitter, but he hasn’t had an OPS in the .800s since 2022.
Bogaerts, who turned 33 in October, has been putting up even worse offensive numbers lately, and his past two seasons have resulted in his lowest fWAR since he was a 21-year-old rookie. Bogaerts is signed through his 41st birthday.
Add the five years remaining on 31-year-old Cronenworth’s deal, and the Padres already have more than $128 million — basically, the entire Rockies payroll — on the books for 2030, with most of that going to players who will be in their late 30s by the time their deals expire. Preller said he wants a manager who will be on the job for 10 years, but that’s going to be one helluva decade when all of those long-term deals start to sour.
The bullpen is nasty …
Every manager loves a good bullpen, and the Padres have a great one.
Even if All-Star closer Robert Suarez opts out, the Padres have Miller, who is more than capable of filling the void. Jason Adam, Adrian Morejon and Jeremiah Estrada also should be back, and David Morgan and Bradgley Rodriguez showed promise as rookies.
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Bullpens are always fraught, but the Padres’ pen is about as sustainable and reliable as a bullpen could be. There’s some chance the Padres could tap into that depth to audition a reliever as a starter, or make a deal to address other needs, but if a strong bullpen is a luxury, the Padres bullpen is a five-star resort.
… but the rotation is non-existent
Getting to that bullpen requires going through a rotation that basically doesn’t exist. The Padres had a middle-of-the-road rotation during the regular season, but it had grown thin by October and will practically vanish this offseason.
Dylan Cease is heading for free agency, as is Nestor Cortes, and Michael King almost certainly will decline his end of a mutual option. Up-and-coming starters Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek were traded at the deadline, offseason addition Kyle Hart fell flat, and mid-season acquisition JP Sears wound up in Triple A.
What’s left is 32-year-old Nick Pivetta, who’s coming off a career year, but has an unusual contract that jumps from $1 million salary in 2025 to $19 million in 2026.
Yu Darvish is 39 years old and coming off a career-worst 5.38 ERA, but he’s signed for three more seasons with little certainty that he’ll play all of them.
Joe Musgrove is signed for another two seasons, but he turns 33 in December and missed all of 2025 recovering from Tommy John surgery. Randy Vásquez is not yet arbitration-eligible and made 26 starts this season, but he’s more of a back-end arm, and the Padres never used him in the playoffs.
The club has both an aggressive front office and a history of spending …
Preller’s had to fix stuff like this before, and he’s done it in a variety of ways. He’s best known for his trades, but he’s also spent money, and the farm system has had some development success (including a handful of those good relievers).
During Tuesday’s conference call, Preller reiterated that commitment to building a winner, though he was predictably — and perhaps understandably — vague about what exactly he planned to do in pursuit of a third-straight playoff berth.
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Roster Resource and Cots Contracts estimate a current $230 million competitive balance payroll for the Padres in 2026. They were closer to $270 million in 2025 and above $290 million in 2023, so there could be room to spend. For prospective managers looking to win right away, there are far worse situations.
… and no guarantee either of those things last
It’s fair to wonder just how quickly that competitive window might slam shut.
Preller is in the last year of his contract. He’s had the job since 2014 but could move on without some sort of extension. The farm system he has to work with is among the worst in baseball, limiting Preller’s trade chips and minimizing the potential for impact call-ups. Even the ownership situation is complicated, as former owner Peter Seidler’s widow has sued two of his brothers for control of the team.
Given the aging core, the contractual commitments well beyond a player’s prime, and a potentially lame-duck head of baseball operations, the Padres’ job is fraught with complications, and even winning hasn’t been enough to guarantee longevity in the job. Since 2020, Shildt, Bob Melvin and Jayce Tingler got the Padres to the playoffs as manager, but each lasted only two years in the seat.
So, what’s Preller looking for in his next manager? He mentioned all the predictable attributes. Baseball knowledge. Communication skills. Decision making ability.
“I think somebody that embraces expectations,” Preller said. “That’s a real thing in this market.”
For the next Padres manager, there might be nothing as important as figuring out what’s real, and what’s an illusion.
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