The San Diego Padres will have to play out the remainder of their season without their general manager around as A.J. Preller has been suspended 30 days without pay.
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The announcement from the commissioner’s office, though, did not explain on what Preller did wrong.
Preller and the Padres were reportedly systematically misleading with their medical reporting, but the suspension was specifically about the club’s trade with the Red Sox involving Drew Pomeranz.
“MLB’s Department of Investigations conducted the thorough review, which included interviews with relevant individuals from both clubs”, the league said in a statement, released on Thursday.
Major League Baseball considers this current matter closed, according to Olney.
“To be clear, we believe that there was no intent on the part of A.J. Preller or other members of our baseball operations staff to mislead other cubs”.
The punishment comes on the heels of a report by ESPN’s Buster Posey, who reported that the Padres hid medical information regarding their players from the league’s data base.
San Diego has come under scrutiny for trades that it’s made this year.
According to previous reports, Red Sox officials discovered after the trade that Pomeranz had been receiving medical treatment, and that the Padres had not been fully entering player health data in a central database, which would give them an advantage in trade talks. Two sources with direct knowledge of the Padres’ meetings told ESPN that the staffers were instructed by front-office officials to document medical details about players into two separate systems. He went on to say that, while teams usually have around 60 entries by the All-Star break, the Padres had fewer than 10. In July, San Diego sent pitcher Colin Rea to Miami in a seven-player trade. When Preller ran worldwide scouting operations for the Texas Rangers, Major League Baseball had suspended him for a month, reportedly over improper contact with a prospect.
In September 2015, the Padres were fined an undisclosed amount for another global violation under Preller, per both Scott Miller of Bleacher Report and Jeff Sanders of the Union-Tribune.
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This is the second time Preller has been suspended by Major League Baseball. The team lost 88 games in 2015, Preller’s first full season in San Diego.
