The official spoke to USA TODAY Sports only on condition of anonymity because of the private nature of their internal conversations.
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The Padres withheld medical information about Drew Pomeranz, a starting pitcher who Boston acquired from San Diego on July 14 for top prospect Anderson Espinoza, an 18-year-old hard-throwing righty from Venezuela.
Sources said that officials from a minimum of three Major League Baseball teams, including the Boston Red Sox were upset when they first became aware of San Diego’s practice and reached out to the commissioner’s office.
The Padres said in a statement that they accept the discipline and will change their medical record-keeping procedures. “I want to emphasize that there was no malicious intent on the part of me, or anyone else on my staff, to hide information or disregard MLB’s recommended guidelines”.
Earlier, Buster Olney of ESPN reported that MLB had been investigating the Padres for intentionally concealing medical information on their players from both the league and from potential trade partners.
After going 8-7 with a 2.47 ERA in 17 starts with San Diego this year, Pomeranz was 2-5 with a 4.60 ERA in 11 starts in Boston entering Thursday. Unknown to the Marlins was that Rea had been getting treatment on his elbow for weeks by Padres trainers. Rea was sent back to the Padres.
After Rea was sent back to San Diego, Marlins president of baseball operations Mike Hill said that the teams exchanged medical records before the trade and there were no concerns.
“Rest assured, we will leave no stone unturned in developing comprehensive processes to remediate this unintentional, but inexcusable, occurrence”, they said in the statement.
“There was no direction or intent on our part to mislead other clubs with respect to a player’s medical information”, she told ESPN.
Two years later, Major League Baseball has suspended Preller again.
September 15, 2016 This is Preller’s second suspension by Major League Baseball. When he was with the Rangers, he was suspended for breaking worldwide signing rules, and with the Padres he was reprimanded for holding an unsanctioned workout for players.
It’s not a stretch to say Preller’s job could be in jeopardy. As Fowler noted during his interview, however, Preller was hired in part because of his ability to acquire young talent – the Padres had a wide array of picks in last June’s amateur draft and they have already far exceeded their global spending limits to land several highly-touted names from this year’s worldwide class.
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This is the kind of thing that happens to dipshit GMs who get way too high off their own reputations as forward-thinking innovators: They come to the conclusion that the disruptive, bleeding-edge technique that will take their team to the promised land is lying about the fact that some guy is taking Advil.
