The trade
In a span of two days before the 2015 season, Preller traded for Matt Kemp, Wil Myers and Justin Upton. One week before spring training, he signed Shields to a four-year, $75-million contract, then a franchise record.
The Padres finished the season with 88 losses. The ensuing winter, Preller traded relievers Craig Kimbrel and Joaquin Benoit for a collection of prospects. He mostly kept the rest of the roster intact as the 2016 season opened, but the front office clearly was looking toward the future.
Early in the season, San Diego opened trade discussions with Chicago. Hoping to contend, the White Sox sought to fortify their rotation. The Padres, meanwhile, were after high-ceiling talent. Their prior looks at Tatis came to mind.
Preller: In our initial conversations, he was a target guy for us. The White Sox indicated that a few of their top guys would’ve been off-limits, and I think we basically indicated that if that was the case, then Tatis was a guy that would have to be in the deal for us if we wanted to do something with James.
We talked about two of their top prospects. They weren’t going to move those guys. And we talked about Tatis as well. You got the sense that he might be the guy they would talk about in the initial conversations, just because he was further away and hadn’t played a game yet.
Peter Seidler, Padres general partner: Our baseball ops guys look for upside, and if possible they look for elite upside. You take a risk with a 16-year-old, it’s obviously a lot less certain than, “Oh, he’s 20 years old today,” in the case of Tatis. And that’s an important skill I think to have in a baseball organization, and we’re confident we’re pretty skilled in that area.
Ron Fowler, Padres executive chairman: This was about A.J. knowing the player and having seen him play many times in the D.R. and being very familiar with him. And A.J., by the way, has educated us — us meaning me to a greater extent than maybe Peter, because Peter might’ve known this based on his days with the Dodger family — that it’ll sometimes cost you a decent amount of money to get what’s considered to be big talent. If I remember correctly, I think we had given more money to (Shields) than we had ever given to another pitcher. When we made the decision to move on, we really put what we were going to get back in the hands of A.J. and our scouting group.
Preller: The fact that we had some history with the player, and knowing that we needed to make a shift in terms of going with young players and ceiling and upside, trying to present how that would fit into a bigger-picture scenario — when we talked about all those things with Ron and Peter, they were very supportive.
After posting a 3.91 ERA in 2015, Shields delivered a series of solid performances early in 2016. Through 10 starts, his ERA sat at 3.06. Meantime, the Padres sat at the bottom of the division standings.
On May 31 in Seattle, Shields surrendered a career-worst 10 runs as San Diego took a 16-4 thrashing. In a radio interview the next morning, Fowler publicly criticized the team, Shields in particular.
Fowler: There had been some preliminary discussions with some teams before that. But I think that’s when it became accelerated.
The bad performance, and what I thought was a lack of ownership on it, my view is just say you screwed up or you were terrible and move on. But when that didn’t happen, I very much said, “Guys, let’s just get this thing over with, cut the cord.” And they aggressively went after it.
Preller: Rick Hahn, he’s a great GM, and I think at the end of the day, where they were positioned to be, they were contending, they were competing. They saw, my guess is, James as a real complement to the group that they had.
You could tell that (Tatis) wasn’t an easy guy to give up or deal. But they were making a move for a pitcher who had come off a 200-strikeout season and was highly competitive, and they were trying to win. Good GMs don’t change; you’ve got to give up something good to get something good. It wasn’t, like, the first phone call and, yeah, let’s make this trade. It was a back-and-forth over the course of a few weeks.
I think we went into it knowing we were trading for a ceiling guy, that we liked the look and we had some different scouts come back and all say the same thing. Again, there’s definitely risk involved, making the deal. He was a guy that we targeted, but to sit there and say, hey, 100 percent, we knew exactly how it was going to play out — no. Philosophically, we just thought this was the path we wanted to go down.
Tatis Sr.: A.J. saw Fernando when he was working for Texas, and he liked Fernando a lot. A.J.’s a very smart guy, and when he likes some player he’s going to go for it, no matter what.
Four days after the rout at Safeco Field, the Padres and the White Sox completed the trade — Shields and a significant amount of cash in exchange for Tatis Jr. and minor-league pitcher Erik Johnson. While the players in the deal had been discussed for some time, the money was the last piece. Ultimately, San Diego assumed responsibility for $31 million of Shields’ remaining contract.
The news reached Tatis in Arizona, where he was preparing for what he thought would be his professional debut with a White Sox rookie-level affiliate later that month.
Tatis Jr.: I called my dad and said, “Hey, Dad, they just traded me.” He said, “Stop playing around.” I said, “Yeah, Dad, I’m serious. I got traded to San Diego.”
Tatis Sr.: I was shocked in that moment, because how in the world do you trade a kid without seeing him play one game? So, they didn’t even know how good he’s going to be or exactly what kind of player you have.
You never expect that at that age. It’s something where you want to be with your team, you want to be with the team that you signed with. And when you get traded, it’s something where you feel weird and you think, “Now I’m going to miss all my friends. I’ve got to make a lot of friends on another team. I’m going to go to another team that I don’t know.”
Tatis Jr.: I was thinking about (making it to) Chicago all the way around. It was the main goal, the main focus. It took a couple days. When I got (to the Padres’ complex in Arizona) and I started practicing with the boys, it was like, this is really happening.
Tatis made his professional debut on June 22, 2016, and went 0 for 5 with two strikeouts for the Padres’ Arizona Rookie League club. Five days later, he went 3 for 4 and hit his first home run. The opposing team: the AZL White Sox.
Tatis Sr.: It was very exciting at that moment to hit it. He called me right away. He was very happy.
DeYoung: Any time you get traded, I’m sure there’s some motivation on the player’s part to go to a new place and show what you can do.
Tatis Jr.: When you’re just underrated like that, you’ve just got to keep going, keep working hard, keep showing what you’ve got.