On Monday night versus the Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego clinched their fourth playoff berth in six years, a first in franchise history as well as back-to-back trips to the postseason. It may not seem like much at a glance, but it was the first time the Padres had consecutive trips to the playoffs since the Bruce Bochy-led teams in 2005 and 2006.

I caught up with the architect of this team on Wednesday morning, A.J.Preller, the general manager and President of baseball ops, to discuss what is special about this trip to the postseason considering the grind it took to get there. We also discussed how often he has trade regret, (I’m talking about you, James Wood and Leodalis DeVries), as well as his relationship with chairman John Seidler and if he’s had any conversation about a contract that expires after the 2026 season.

A portion of our conversation is below as well as a link to the full 17-minute interview from Petco Park. 

Q. Can you just explain how rewarding this postseason has been for you versus previous Padre teams? 

A. Yeah, I mean it’s always good to get to October so I think from that standpoint it’s always a great feeling. And again, I think our ability to do it, you know, you talk about four times in six years, just a lot of pride for the organization. I think it speaks to the organizational strengths, scouting, player development, and the team and obviously our players.

You know, again, you want to be consistently… amongst the best organizations in the game and that starts with playing in October and we’ve been able to do that here that’s far over the last five or six years.

Q. How big a deal is that for you?  Four times in six seasons, the first time in franchise history, I know when you made all these moves, when you signed Manny Machado, when you got your extension, you talked about the expectation of creating the expectation of post-season every single year, not just once in a while. 

A.  I think from day one here we’ve talked about playing on the big stage. That’s not like every three or four years if we can just get into a wild card series and you get bounced in three games. The big stage is the world series to do that. To do that you’ve got to give yourself a lot of chances and a lot of spots in the dance in terms of giving you some ability to go play and get to a World Series.

Again, it’s hard to do, it’s hard for organizations to do it. There’s a lot of great teams, great organizations throughout the game. But we were able to do that and also win playoffs here. I think we won four playoffs here this decade and advanced each time. I think that’s huge. So I think that’s how we measure ourselves in terms of getting to October and then winning in October. You know to be in that position again this year is pretty special. 

Q. You’re aggressive at every single trade deadline, especially this one. When you think of all the trades and you’ve made, you’ve had bigger splashes before, you know, getting Juan Soto, Josh Hader.  But do you think this is the best deadline that you have pulled off?

A. Yeah,  in terms of what we needed this year, you know, we had a team that that we felt good about, but we felt had some real holes… We knew that we needed multiple bats and if we could we’d like to address it behind the plate and then also an impact arm. 

Glad to see really the way that the guys have embraced the new players, the way they fit in here, because you can’t really predict that how it’s going to fit on the field, but we’ve seen it off the field the way they’ve matched. Like the chemistry and I think that part’s been good to see. Every year is a little bit different. You look at last year… the bullpen that we had blown some games in the first half of the 24 season and getting Jason Adam, Brian Hoeing and Tanner Scott last year were big for the team and I think it helped us catch October and helped us win a playoff series. I think this year is the same thing. We got to the deadline. I think our group did a great job.

Q.  You have quite a you have quite a few guys in this team significant players are gonna be free agents come this offseason. How much of your aggression was about making sure that you won now with this group with many Machado over 30, Yu Darvish towards the latter side of his career. How much was taking advantage of the talent you do have and the guys who expected to walk after the season? 

A. Yeah, I think we’re always cognizant of, you know, again, we talked about it in 20 when we made a lot of trades at the deadline. You know, that doesn’t mean that year after year we expect to be good every single year. Six years later, we’re back in a postseason situation. Mason Miller is going to be with us for four or five playoff races. Same thing with Freddie Fermin, Laureano has a chance to be here next year as well. It’s like the rental player situation’s got to be the right deal, right player, etc. But we’re adding to a core group of guys that we feel like are going to be good and good for a while. I don’t think everyone will get into a spot where, hey, this is a one-year situation we have to win this year. We look at it as we expect to win and we expect to have a team and they can go deep into October. And when you have a team that can win the world series, we take that serious.

I think it’s a little bit easier time still looking to say hey, we want to keep this window open until 2030. I think we’ve demonstrated that we have the ability to do both. We have the ability to be a contestant at the deadline and still look up five or six years later and year in year out have a team that we feel like we’re in a world series. 

Q. What’s your relationship like though with (Padres chairman) John Seidler? 

A.  John’s very respectful of our baseball team and our organization. I think he allows me, myself and Eric (Greupner) to do our jobs and hopefully we’ve demonstrated we can do them at a fairly decent level and good clip for the city of San Diego and for the fans. He’s seen the track record. He’s a baseball fan. He comes to all the games, you don’t have to explain a little bit in terms of what it means, big picture-wise. He has a pretty good feel for the game, like the big picture side of things and the Padres specifically. He’s watched a lot of Padres games over the years…. Last year with Eric Kutsenda and this year with John, I think the thing that’s been has been consistent in terms of the different setups that I’ve had is you have people that want to win and they love the game of baseball. And I think from my standpoint, I think that our groups are right there and there’s a lot of trust there and I think we’ve earned that trust.

Q. By the way congratulations,  you finally you finally you broke the odd number curse. (Preller’s Padres had never been to the playoffs in an odd-numbered year until 2025) Four times in six seasons,  and a lot of that success is about what the players you brought in. You have one year left on your deal. I’m not sure how unusual it is for a GM, also a manager to go into a lame duck season. Have you had any talks with this ownership group about your extension? 

A. Yeah, to me again, it’s not anything that from my standpoint, it’s the focus is all on the field, the team, the playoffs. It’s a super important time and like I think where we’re really dialed in to whoever we’re going to play here next week doing everything we can to be ready from an advanced scouting standpoint,  information standpoint for a player and team. I love San Diego, I love this organization and it’s been my life here obviously now for more than a decade you know living here and staying in San  Diego, what we built as a group and organization, Eric Gruepner and myself,  the Seidler family. So, again, I think there’ll be a time and a place for that, but right now it’s all about on the field and try to do everything we can to go win a World Series. 

Q. How do you evaluate the season Fernando Tatis has had? 

…Watch the video below for the answer and full interview with A.J. Preller