The Cardinals-Astros hacking scandal has been dominating the news this week, but there’s another scandal still making news. Remember the drama with AJ Preller and the Padres’ secret medical database with details that they didn’t reveal to teams who were trading with them? Well, we haven’t heard the end of that yet. Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports published an article yesterday that detailed the consequences of the trade, the return, and another team that was involved that no one knew about.
The Padres’ medical shenanigans had far-reaching consequences
Friday’s Say Hey, Baseball features the Padres handicapping two other teams, imagining the Orioles joining the National League, and a magical honeymoon hole-in-one.
So let’s start at the beginning. The Marlins and Padres executed a seven-player trade on July 29, which included Colin Rea going to the Marlins and Luis Castillo going to the Padres. After Rea got injured after his first Marlins start, the Marlins wanted to reverse the entire deal, down to the last player. And the commissioner’s office gave them that chance, but they declined because they thought the commissioner’s office wanted them to come up with another solution. Instead of completely exchanging every player in that deal, the Marlins sent Rea back to San Diego, and the Padres returned Luis Castillo.
If every player in the original deal had gone back to their original team, the Marlins had a backup plan. They needed another starting pitcher, so they were going to send Josh Naylor, a first base prospect who had gone to San Deigo in the original, to the Phillies in exchange for starter Jeremy Hellickson. But by the time the two-player exchange was announced, it was so close to the trade deadline that no one had time to do anything. The Marlins couldn’t flip Castillo for a starter, and the Phillies couldn’t move Hellickson.
The Marlins finally got a starter for Castillo in the offseason, but that whole ordeal, including the Marlins assumptions about what the commissioner’s office wanted them to do, affected both the Marlins and Phillies a lot, especially considering that the Phillies still haven’t been able to trade Hellickson. And the Padres? They got to keep three players, one who is going to be in their starting rotation in 2017. The kicker? Preller’s 30-day suspension wasn’t even for this deal, it was for the Drew Pomeranz trade with the Red Sox. It’s easy to see why baseball people feel that Preller’s punishment was way too light, because it was.
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