The Padres recently interviewed the Diamondbacks' scouting director.
While there have been rumors aplenty that Kevin Towers might be a candidate for the Padres' vacant GM position, it is actually Arizona Diamondbacks Scouting Directory Ray Montgomery who the Padres have initially targeted from that organization. Montgomery has been with the Diamondbacks in that role since 2010. Prior to that he worked his way up the ranks in the Milwaukee Brewers' organization. He was with the Brewers for 8 seasons, the first four as an area scout, then two as their midwest scouting supervisor and the final two as their assistant scouting directory and national supervisor. Before that he was a professional baseball player for over a decade including parts of 3 seasons with the Houston Astros.
With the Brewers there aren't many picks you can attribute to him in his days as an area scout or as the midwest regional director, although it is also part of a scouts job to make sure the team refrains from picking players that he has seen and does not recommend. When he was an assistant scouting director, he seems to have earned the buzz that made him a future scouting director from the 2007-2009 drafts. Matt LaPorta, Brett Lawrie and Jake Odiorizzi were are all Brewers picks that were used to acquire major league players in trade (Sabathia, Marcum and Greinke respectively) and Jonathan LuCroy, Khris Davis and Scooter Gennett are all major league contributors now.
By joining the Diamondbacks in 2010, Montgomery is not associated with any of the Padres' old DBacks connections (Moorad, Garfinkel and Byrnes) and, in fact, was offered the Padres' scouting coordinator position back in 2009 when Hoyer was the GM and Montgomery had yet even sniffed the snakes. Montgomery did not want to relocate at the time. Then when Kevin Towers came to Arizona and fired the sitting scouting director he hired Montgomery as the replacement.
In Arizona he inherited a farm system that was already buoyed by some good players either selected by previous administration (Matt Davidson, A.J. Pollock, Chris Owings and Wade Miley) or acquired in the Dan Haren trade (Patrick Corbin and Tyler Skaggs). He also got the added benefit that the previous year's 1st round pick was not signed and thereby the team had two 1st round picks the next year. His first draft saw the selection of two premium pitching prospects in Trevor Bauer and Archie Bradley. The first is paying dividends in the form of SS Didi Gregorius for whom Kevin Towers traded the young hurler. The second is one of, if not, the top pitching prospect in baseball. The system took a step back after the graduations of Pollock, Miley and Corbin and the trade of Bauer. Since then it has been a middle of the pack farm system, but they did hit on another fine prospect in Brandon Shipley in the 2012 draft. Like his time with the Brewers there is not a lot of wow factor here, but it seems like he does a solid job on the amateur scouting front.
The Padres will be looking at more about Montgomery than just his draft picks, but as an outsider that is all that we can go on. As a scouting director you cannot give him credit for player development, trades or other processes related to the team, something that you could do with some of the other candidates because they were assistant general managers. You can only give him credit for establishing and supervising a team of scouts and try to evaluate the results of that. The Padres leadership would then have to project how he would do an expanded and more diverse role.