While we were all distressed that the Padres lost out on Yasmany Tomas to the Diamondbacks, Padres GM A.J. Preller didn't seem to care so much, which I guess means that after doing his due diligence he didn't come away all that impressed and was unwilling to spend anymore of his budget on him. That's a good thing if you're the type to blindly trust Preller's evaluations and a bad thing if your evaluations, having never seen Tomas play, were different than the GM's. Either way the Padres are still in desperate need for mo' better players, that's for sure and for certain.
Padres continue search for offensive upgrade | padres.com
"As we went through the process, we felt comfortable with our evaluation and our offer," said Preller told MLB.com. "There were no surprises at the end. We just weren't able to connect."
When asked how Preller would explain the missed connection to us fans, he rambled on about something or another.
"From a baseball ops standpoint, at the end of the day, you keep moving forward toward deals, both in terms of trades and free agents," he said. "But you need to make sure it lives up in the short and long term. We're going to keep moving forward. But you really can't force anything."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, good, good." would be what I'd be saying about half way through Preller's statement. Preller isn't much of a communicator. It's times like these when I miss Jed Hoyer. That dude could sweet talk me off a ledge any day.
Also as a postscript to discussion, Corey Brock learned that the Padres are in no way interested in reclaiming Chase Headley. Sure they'd be willing to pay a Panda $100 million but a mopey Chase Headley gets squat. I'm okay with that actually. We've seen the Padres with Headley for a lot of years and they weren't much good then either.