TRADING PLACES
Preller gave up a lot for Clevinger, who will face several former Padres today in his long-anticipated return
“We made a deal that ultimately was about getting somebody who could pitch in the front of a rotation.” A.J. Preller • Padres GM, on deal to get Mike Clevinger
A.J. Preller is generally not the emotional type.
But as the Padres’ president of baseball operations stood in the visitors’ dugout at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park a few days ago discussing the trade that sent a bunch of young players to Cleveland in August 2020, he ran a finger down his cheek.
“I don’t want to say I had tears in my eyes,” he said. “But I had tears in my eyes.”
That reaction was specifically about the conversation in which he told Gabriel Arias he had been traded as part of the mega-deal that brought pitcher Mike Clevinger to the Padres.
“That’s the hardest part of the job,” Preller said.
He recalled the first time he saw Arias as a 15-year-old, remembered what he walked like, what he was wearing, what they talked about in Spanish.
“You get attached,” he said. The topic sent him down a somewhat wistful path in which he discussed Ty France and Jack Suwinski and Tucupita Marcano and others shipped as part of the construction process of the Padres’ current roster.
“I follow them all,” Preller said. “I love those guys.”
He doesn’t plan to be at Progressive Field for the intermarried family reunion that will take place over the next two days. There’s a team to continue building, places to be, probably some teenage baseball players to see in some far-flung locale.
He might, later in the season, make it to Seattle, where there are almost as many former Padres playing as there are in Cleveland.
But not quite.
Austin Hedges, Owen Miller, Josh Naylor and Franmil Reyes are in the Guardians’ lineup more days than not this season. Cal Quantrill will be their starting pitcher Wednesday against the Padres.
That is, in order, a catcher who played 406 games for the Padres from 2015 to ’20; a former top-11 Padres prospect; a former top-10 prospect who played 112 games for the Padres in ’19 and ’20; a gregarious slugger who was beloved in the team’s clubhouse and by its
fans during his time in San Diego from 2018 to ’19, and a first-round draft pick who pitched 33 games for the Padres