San Dego Padres GM A.J. Preller has some pretty unique gifts, and one of them is pulling off last-minute deals. He did it last year at the trading deadline and the Padres ended up making a strong bullpen even more dominant, which got them into the postseason again.
This season Preller will need that gift even more. The Padres are going into the season with a thin rotation and plenty of lineup holes, and that means it’s time for the GM to work his magic and find a spring-training bargain.
That possibility was one of three burning questions posed by Dennis Lin of The Athletic as the Padres enter spring training. The other two were about the sale and a possible extension for Preller, both of which are familiar subjects, although Lin did point out that the sale could take six months or more given the experience the Baltimore Orioles has when they were put on the block two years ago.
The spring-training bargain possibility is far more intriguing at the moment. Preller has done this before, as Lin noted, and not just once. A year ago, he signed first baseman/DH Gavin Sheets to a minor league deal that panned out, and Preller also waited out the starting pitching market and signed current ace Nick Pivetta to a backloaded $55 million dollar deal. Without these two signings, the Padres almost certainly wouldn’t have made the playoffs last year.
The GM also scored a bargain in 2024, re-signing outfielder Jurickson Profar to a $1 million contract, so Preller has a track record that goes back at least a couple of seasons. He gets most of his publicizing based on big deals, but these smaller ones matter, too.
They’re especially key this year. Even with the Seidler family lawsuit being settled, it’s unclear whether Preller has the authority to make big baseball moves, especially since he hasn’t been extended yet. He’s floated some big rumors, but those have been mostly smoke with little fire.
There will be opportunities on the market. Super agent Scott Boras slow-crawled the free agent market as usual, so there are a lot of teams scrambling to put together their rosters as pitchers and catchers report this week. This will almost certainly result in some talented players being available, so there’s a better chance than usual that Preller will be able to strike gold in spring training.