Last fall, FOX premiered the series “Pitch,” about the screwball-throwing first female pitcher in major league history. She was a Padre.
This spring, A.J. Preller premiered a roster that had four catchers (one of whom is also now a reliever), three Rule 5 players (none of whom played above Low-A ball last year), a starting outfield on which Travis Jankowski is the experienced guy (yep, that Travis Jankowski), a rotation that has three pitchers (Trevor Cahill, Jhoulys Chacin and Clayton Richard) who were released at some point during the past two seasons and another (Jered Weaver) who averages 83 mph with his fastball (about 4 mph less than Ginny Baker was bringing it on “Pitch.”) These guys are all Padres.
Only one of these is a fictional story.
Now, we have seen levels of tanking in our major sports leagues in recent years. But this is raising it to art form. Did we mention the Padres are paying as much ($35 million-ish) for guys not to play for them in 2017 as for those who are?
The roster is so Long Island Duck-ish, in fact, that I inquired with the commissioner’s office if it was offensive enough to act upon and basically was told that what the Padres are doing is within the rules. Essentially, you can’t force an organization to put better players on the field or not overfill on Rule 5 pieces — though I wonder what “best interest of the game” is if not interceding on this.
What Preller, the Padres’ general manager, is doing is a more extreme version of, say, what the Astros and Cubs did — lose enough to get high draft picks and the better slot money that comes with it, in addition to getting a larger pool of international dollars. But the roster configuration and Rule 5 splurge is unique.
Preller defends this path by noting with what he could spend last offseason, excellence was not available. So he could have kept, say, Kevin Quackenbush, Cory Spangenberg and Brett Wallace over Rule 5ers Miguel Diaz, Allen Cordoba and Luis Torrens, but is that even the difference between 60 wins and 62? His preference was to stack talent for the long term (remember, if a Rule 5 player does not stay the full season on the 25-man roster, he must be offered back to his old team).
“It’s an Opening Day roster,” Preller told me by phone. “It doesn’t mean we are locked into it until Sept. 30.”
Preller said there was disapproval that he put two Rule 5 guys on his major league roster last year, and Luis Perdomo now has the look of a legitimate major league starter and the Mariners refused to take back outfielder Jabari Blash, allowing the Padres to keep him in their system.
The problem, though, is as much who assembled the roster as the roster itself. If Theo Epstein, for example, had hatched this plan, it might not be beloved, but the criticism would be more muted. Often without being provoked by a question, scouts I talked to in Arizona and outside-looking executives slammed what the Padres were doing, and it felt more personal toward Preller.
A distrust and dislike has formed toward Preller. He has been suspended twice — once while with the Rangers for his actions involving international signings and last September for not fully divulging medical information in his trade of Drew Pomeranz to Boston. Preller also had to reconfigure a portion of a large trade with the Marlins due to questionable handling of medical information.
In addition, Preller came thundering into this job by acquiring, among others, Matt Kemp, Craig Kimbrel, Wil Myers, James Shields, Justin Upton and Melvin Upton Jr. while stripping a good deal of San Diego’s prospect quality/depth. That 2015 team tanked, ushering in a 180-degree change in philosophy. That included eating large chunks of contracts on players such as Shields and Upton Jr.
Through trades, the draft and the majors’ largest international investment last year, Preller has attempted to restock the system with talent. And the Rule 5 spree — San Diego either picked or traded for the top three selections in the December draft — is of the same ilk.
But scouts in spring in Arizona insisted the Rule 5 guys (the position players Cordoba and Torrens, in particular) were nowhere near major league ready and that their careers could be stunted or worse by limited action against talent they are not equipped to face.
Cordoba, who never played above Rookie Ball for the Cardinals, has been transformed from a shortstop into a jack-of-all-trades. Diaz, who was 1-8 with a 4.66 ERA at Low-A last year, is a hard thrower being used out of the bullpen. Torrens, once considered a top Yankees prospect, missed all of 2015 after shoulder surgery and played just 52 games at Low-A last year. The Yanks still liked him, but felt he had regressed offensively and defensively during his absence and, thus, was a minimum of two years from even being considered for the majors, which is why he was not protected on the 40-man roster.
He was one of the four Padres catchers on the Opening Day roster. Another, Christian Bethancourt, is trying to become a reliever. Preller mentioned successful transitions from position player to pitcher such as Kenley Jansen and Alexi Ogando. But those changes were made in the minors. Bethancourt was the first reliever used out of the Padres’ pen this year. In his initial two appearances, Bethancourt allowed seven runs in 1 ²/₃ innings — which included six walks, two wild pitches and no strikeouts.
“We will get 4-6 weeks in and if it [this plan] is not worth it, we’ll adjust,” Preller said. “To me, it makes more sense to carry the talent and see what it looks like.”
Oh yeah, for those wondering, “Pitch” ran for 10 episodes, got poor ratings and FOX has decided not to make new episodes, while not outright canceling it yet.