I wrote my annual awards column in the past few days, but didn’t include an Executive of the Year. And I actually think the choice this season is easy: Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller.
Preller is hardly beloved by his peers. He was suspended in 2010 when he was the Rangers assistant GM for illegal negotiations with a Dominican pitching prospect — the initial three-month ban was eventually reduced to a month. In 2016, his second full season with the Padres, Preller was suspended 30 days for keeping two sets of medical records and providing a less-detailed one to teams with which he made trades.
There is a cutthroat element in the relationships between teams, but there is also a need for trust on issues such as trades. Thus, there are executives who approach their dealings with the Padres with greater suspicion than others.
I can hear many of them screaming now that rewarding Preller as Executive of the Year is myopic — that there will be a price to be paid down the line for all the long-term mega-contracts signed under his watch and all the prospects traded. After all, the big spending did not get the Padres into the playoffs last season and Preller’s past notably includes dealing Max Fried and Trea Turner (when they were prospects) in deals that did not work.
