Grading A.J. Preller and the San Diego Padres front office at the midway point

Acquired or traded

Especially at deadline time, Preller can be aggressive in his team-versus-team maneuverings. Just last season, he acquired 13 players via trade, waiver claim or purchase. Most of those, however, were deadline deals of names such as Juan Soto or Josh Hader.

We’re not at the trade deadline yet … and, for the eight months since the end of the 2022 postseason, he has been unusually passive in this respect. In fact, Preller has added only one new face to the Padres’ major league roster via a multi-team transaction in that time.

That new face was catcher Gary Sanchez, picked up from the Mets on a late May waiver claim. Sanchez, who washed out in Queens and in Minneapolis and the Bronx before that, has actually been a contributor for the Padres, hitting seven home runs and catching passably enough that he has not worn out his welcome.

But Sanchez is the full extent of Preller’s acquisitions from other teams.

Nor has he moved many out that way. The only one who can even plausibly be counted is Washington Nationals pitcher MacKenzie Gore, and Gore doesn’t technically count because he was included in the 2022 deadline deal that brought Juan Soto to the Padres. But the Nats kept him at Triple-A the rest of 2022, so as a functional matter he was a rookie for Washington this year.