A Silicon Valley adage — “move fast and break things” — describes the Padres under Peter Seidler and A.J. Preller.
On the one hand, their bold, often surprising moves have stoked enthusiasm and possibility, benefiting Padres attendance, revenues and franchise valuation.
On the other hand, the baseball results stand as below average, Seidler’s infatuation with Preller appears extreme and Preller’s habit of going through so many managers and coaches seems unsound.
Let’s start with win rate. It’s .470 since 2013, Seidler’s first full season as part of the team’s ownership group. The .470 mark ranks 22nd of 30 teams in Major League Baseball.
The Padres have a .469 win rate under Preller, the former Texas Rangers scouting executive who was hired as general manager in August 2014.
Forcing the Padres into “wild card or bust” mode every year, not one of Preller’s nine teams has come close to winning the five-team West race.
So, although a push for next year’s World Series would be far from shocking, given the many years of ramping up, a talented core and another top-10 payroll, when it comes to producing steady baseball success, Seidler appears a better private equity investor than a team owner; and Preller appears a better scouting executive than a GM/President of Baseball Operations.
Padres assistant general manager Josh Stein and general manager AJ Preller chat during a spring training practice workout in February.
(Meg McLaughlin/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
That Preller is now about to hire his fifth manager further supports the initial scouting report on him — aggressive scout, questionable leader.
This week’s departure of manager Bob Melvin to the Giants, just two years after he arrived, only reinforced the belief that when push comes to shove in Padres Land, Preller will prevail.
My argument at season’s end that Melvin should be retained was tied to hiring a GM who could head all communications between the front office and Melvin, while Preller focused his abundant energies elsewhere.
It was a Band-Aid solution meant to reduce the well-documented dysfunction between Preller and Melvin.
While everyone involved may be better off now that the Giants have hired Melvin, reuniting the Bay Area native with his former Oakland A’s colleague Farhan Zaidi, you wonder if Seidler truly understands what it’s like to work for Preller.
I wonder how things would’ve turned out, long ago, if Seidler had hired Mike Hazen, the former Red Sox assistant GM who interviewed for the Padres’ GM job that Preller got in 2014.
Hazen’s seventh Diamondbacks team is now in the World Series on a payroll less than half what Preller spent on this year’s Padres club.
Hazen is reputedly intense, a description applied often to Preller.
But he and Torey Lovullo, his one and only manager over the seven years, know how to fight and how to move on without blowing up the relationship.
Has Seidler’s infatuation with Preller produced a large opportunity cost in times when the Padres were off-limits to potentially more capable leaders?
Off to a fast start with the Orioles is fifth-year GM Mike Elias, the former Astros scouting director and assistant GM.
Under Elias, the long-bumbling O’s produced a winning season last year and won 101 games this year on a payroll $181 million less than the $255 million Seidler afforded Preller.
How about a Padres pairing of Chris Young and Bruce Bochy, each of them intense, sharp baseball men with excellent people skills?
Wasn’t going to happen with Preller in charge.
Former Padres pitcher Chris Young has built a Rangers roster that’s now in the World Series.
(Tony Gutierrez / Associated Press)
Young and Bochy’s only collaboration with the Padres, as starting pitcher and manager, contributed to the franchise edging out the Dodgers in 2006, a feat that still stands as the franchise’s most recent West-winning season.
Both Young and Bochy created a strong favorable impression on the other in that lone season, a big factor in their reunion last winter.
As for their first year together in Texas?
The Rangers are squaring off against Hazen’s Diamondbacks in the Fall Classic.
Interesting, isn’t it? The Rangers hired the strong-minded, highly competitive Young as a GM and had him report to Jon Daniels, the team’s president of baseball operations. Seidler, on the other hand, has long entrusted both the GM and president of baseball operations titles to Preller.
Heck, even when Theo Epstein was transforming the Cubs into World Series champs, he worked with GM Jed Hoyer.
My free advice still stands: Seidler should hire a new GM, preferably one from outside the organization.
This person could work to create better teamwork between the field personnel and the front office, enabling Preller to focus more on the draft and collecting dope for trades, free agency and contractual negotiations.
And this new GM should have comparable baseball and leadership chops to those of Young, if such a person can be found. Young, within two years of becoming GM, assumed control of all baseball operations after Daniels was fired in 2022. Smart move. My new Padres GM, likewise, would be capable enough to ascend into Preller’s job if there’s reason for it.
It’s well past time to stop treating Preller like he’s some sort of baseball god.
