The San Diego Padres far and away were darlings of the offseason until the Los Angeles Dodgers stole some of their thunder late in the winter by signing Trevor Bauer to a record-setting three-year contract.
The Dodgers had long been identified as a dark horse — if not favorite — to sign the Southern California native. However, as the process was reaching its final stages, most expected Bauer to sign with the New York Mets.
Ultimately the Dodgers and Bauer proved to be an ideal match in their willingness to commit to one another on a short-term contract. Bauer took multiple months to make his free agency decision and fielded interest from several teams throughout the process.
During an appearance on the “Big Time Baseball” podcast hosted by Tony Gwynn Jr. and Jon Heyman, Padres president of baseball operations and general manager A.J. Preller shared what interest his team had in Bauer:
“We did have a conversation early in the process with his agency — with Rachel Luba and Jon (Fetterolf). We had two different conversations, but I think we had a pretty general sense of where it was headed from a dollars standpoint, what they were looking for and what they were looking to do.
“Ultimately we ended up going the trade route at that time. But yeah, we checked in. Obviously he’s one of the best pitchers in the world. We checked in and had a few conversation but ultimately felt the trades just fit our roster and situation a little bit better. …
“I think everybody was straightforward. I know from our standpoint, the reason we’ve been able to make deals — both with free agents and on the trade front — is to be real transparent and straightforward on what our opportunity was and from a budget standpoint what we were looking to do. I think early on we had a pretty good sense from them, ‘Hey, this is kind of the different paths we may go down in terms of dollars and years.’
“Ultimately, when we started feeling that we could acquire Darvish and Snell, and potentially Musgrove, at price points that are never easy to do but felt like it was something we would do, that’s when we pivoted and went that direction. We didn’t really get that far down the road with Rachel and Jon. I think also too in their case, we knew he was going to take his time to make a decision, and we didn’t want to get left at the end without having addressed our starting pitching.”
The Padres wound up addressing their pitching need by trading for Yu Darvish, Blake Snell and Joe Musgrove in a flurry of activity. Preller said the trades were necessary in order for the Padres to close the distance between themselves and the Dodgers, though he declined to state if San Diego has become the better team.
In the meantime, Preller seemingly was rewarded for upgrading the roster by being named president of baseball operations in February while still retaining his general manager title.
Bauer looking forward to facing Machado
With a longstanding history — and not much success — of facing Manny Machado from their time in the American League, Bauer has been open about his excitement to see the Padres’ third baseman with plenty of regularity moving forward.
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