Tommy Pham made push to get San Diego Padres to trade for Blake Snell

Tommy Pham knows Blake Snell well from their time together with the Tampa Bay Rays. And he made sure the San Diego Padres pursued a trade for him.

According to Dennis Lin and Josh Tolentino of The Athletic, San Diego Padres outfielder made a strong push to reunite with his former Tampa Bay Rays teammate Blake Snell.

Per Lin and Tolentino, Pham was one of a number of Padres that reached out to GM AJ Preller directly to express their interest in Snell joining the team.

Pham only spent two years with Snell in Tampa Bay but he saw the absolute best he had to offer. Traded to the Rays in 2018, Pham caught the final stretch of Snell’s Cy Young award season. And I have to believe that as soon as the 2020 season wrapped up, Pham was banging Preller’s door down begging him to save Snell from the team that pulled him early from a dominant World Series start.

Whatever Pham needed to do to get Blake Snell in San Diego, it worked. Maybe it wasn’t quite as dramatic as described above, but Pham clearly campaigned hard for Preller to make this trade happen. He knows that the Padres have a chance to be a special team over the next few seasons, and he wanted to make sure they did everything they could to capitalize on the opportunity.

And not only did the Padres acquire the 2018 Cy Young winner, they also acquired 2020 Cy Young finalist Yu Darvish on Monday. Nearly overnight, they turned a rotation with some question marks into one of the strongest in baseball. They’ve clearly declared themselves as a legitimate title contender, and a frontline of Dinelson Lamet, Snell and Darvish can compete with any team in baseball come October.

The Padres are going to be one of the best teams in baseball over the next few seasons. And in 2022 when Clevinger returns, they could easily have the best rotation in the game. Snell and Darvish may be exactly what they need to bring the San Diego Padres their first World Series title in franchise history.