What To Make Of A.J. Preller's Extension With The San Diego Padres
2026 could be the final chapter of the most successful run in Padres baseball history.
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A.J. Preller was named the San Diego Padres' general manager nearly 12 years ago. It’s been a tale of two halves for the team’s long-time general manager. In the first five seasons, the team won around 70 games yearly. Over the last five seasons, the team has won around 87 games yearly. The Padres have made the MLB playoffs four out of the last six seasons. It’s been the most successful run in the team’s history, and Preller has overseen it all.
This week, it was announced that Preller had agreed to a multi-year extension with the team. Preller trails only New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman in being the longest-tenured shot-caller for his team. It’s another well-deserved extension for one of the best general managers in the sport. It’s also well-timed, as the PECOTA & Fangraphs projections don’t exactly love the Padres this season. This could be a ballclub that hovers around .500 this season, or worse.
The Padres have been real contenders for half a decade now, and San Diego has had a payroll that has fallen somewhere in the top-11 every year since 2021. Their projected 2026 payroll ranks 9th, per Fangraphs, which would be the lowest since the COVID-shortened 2020 season. With a projected win total of roughly eighty wins and the worst farm system in baseball, you can see where the wind is blowing in San Diego this year and beyond.
If the bottom starts to fall out after six years of contention, Preller has more than earned the opportunity to be the chosen executive to lead the reboot. After all, he built this team that has won 90-plus games in back-to-back seasons. Before these last two seasons, that had never been done in San Diego. The Padres have never won at this level and with this kind of consistency as a franchise, dating back to 1969. Sure, the team hasn’t made the World Series during this run, but that is such a silly way to remember this era of Padres baseball. Preller built a sustainable, real contender year after year for six years now, regardless of what happened in the postseason.
You also can’t talk about the Padres without talking about the Los Angeles Dodgers. It’s easy to overlook San Diego’s success because of Los Angeles, a team that has won back-to-back championships with the highest payroll in the sport. However, the two teams Preller has assembled over the last two seasons have won 183 games in the regular season – the Dodgers have won 191. Eight more wins than the Padres across two seasons, just eight. Preller and the Padres haven’t blinked as the Dodgers continue to build the biggest juggernaut of all juggernauts. Preller has rewarded fans who stuck with him during those tough first five seasons with the club with a contention window that has now lasted over half a decade. If San Diego competed in the NL Central the last six seasons, how does the rest of baseball view this run by Preller and the Padres?
All of this winning has come at a cost, though. The Padres now have the worst farm system in baseball, per ESPN. This was an inevitable result for San Diego at some point. Preller has continued to be aggressive, trying to get over the hump in the postseason. When you trade for Blake Snell, Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, Juan Soto, Josh Hader, and Mason Miller during your six-year contention window, the farm system takes a hit. You wonder if this season starts to go sideways in San Diego, that Preller, now with his extension, elects to re-stock the cupboard and trades Miller, Fernando Tatis Jr., Michael King, Nick Pivetta, Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts, and many other possibilities. Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill might be the only under-30 players in the everyday lineup this season on a team that could win fewer than eighty games.
It could also go the other way with so much veteran talent, sprinkled in with young stars like Tatis Jr., Merrill, and Miller. With so many questions about the 2027 MLB season, I like that Preller is willing to see how things shake out with this group and take fliers on guys like Ty France, Walker Buehler, Griffin Canning, Miguel Andujar, etc. The San Francisco Giants and Arizona Diamondbacks certainly aren’t sure things in 2026. The Atlanta Braves and New York Mets both missed the postseason last year. It’s baseball, you never know.
Everyone needs a little bit of luck in this sport. The Diamondbacks have made the postseason just once since San Diego vaulted into contender status and then made it all the way to the World Series, losing 4-1 to Texas. The Snakes made one postseason appearance and won the NL pennant. The Padres made the postseason four times, but did not win the NL pennant once. It has to be a bit frustrating for Preller to see two different NL West teams make the World Series for three straight seasons now, and your team not included. The Padres needed some postseason fortune like the Diamondbacks found in 2023. Perhaps that’s 2026 for San Diego as a wild-card team. Perhaps not.
Preller has continually assembled a team that has needed Lady Luck to smile on his ballclub in the postseason, just once, and everyone might view this era of San Diego baseball, and Preller for that matter, quite differently. That could happen this year, even with the tepid preseason projections for Preller’s club. That’s when it happened for the D’Backs in 2023. Preller has done a really good job for a really long time now in San Diego, but 2026 feels like the last chapter in the most successful run for the Padres, and I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.