ORLANDO, Fla. — Logan White is walking away from his baseball life with joy and sadness.

“It’s been 40 years of me grinding it out,” White said Wednesday morning, the day after he announced his retirement as a scout and baseball executive. “I didn’t feel I could give A.J. and the Padres what they deserve. If I can’t be at the top of my game, I don’t want to be hanging on.”

White, who recently turned 64, said he still loved the job and remains healthy and sharp. The move to step away, he said, was largely because he wants to spend as much time as possible with his younger sister, Lynette, who has esophageal cancer.

“It’s serious,” White said. “They’ve given her a year.”

White, who served the past 11 years as one of Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller’s chief lieutenants, told Preller of his decision at the start of the winter meetings. White made it public while accepting an award as one of MLB’s Scouts of the Year on Tuesday night.

“God has blessed me,” White said. “I have such a great wife and such a great family. That comes first. … There’s a time in life you have to do the right thing for people, for family.”

White’s first full-time scouting gig was in 1989 with the Orioles, and he achieved his greatest level of acclaim while running the Dodgers’ amateur scouting department during a period in which they drafted Clayton Kershaw, Cody Bellinger, Matt Kemp, Nathan Eovaldi and Corey Seager.

White worked for the Padres for three years in the mid-1990s before returning to the Orioles and then being hired by the Dodgers in 2001. He joined the Padres in October 2014.

“Logan has been involved in pretty much every decision we’ve made from a personnel standpoint,” Preller said of the man he brought to San Diego about two months after he was hired by the Padres. “He’s got a lot of really great perspective. Obviously, he’s been kind of one of the legendary scouting directors and scouts in the game. His list of players that he’s been involved in signing is probably second to none, honestly, over the last 25 seasons. And he served as a mentor to a lot of us.”

Preller and White met in 2003, when Preller joined the Dodgers as a scout. Legendary scout Don Welke, also with the Dodgers, had long been White’s mentor. Welke became Preller’s mentor and eventually accompanied him to San Diego.

“It was hard for me,” White said of leaving Preller. “I love A.J. … I will always love the Padres.”

Still, White and his wife, Pam, are enthused by the prospect of their new chapter. A man who has been a scout for nearly four decades is a man who has spent much of the past 40 years in Marriotts.

“I’m really looking forward to some things I haven’t done,” said White, who also has an 8-month-old grandson. “God has blessed me to be at a point where I can do this.”

Pujols on Padres

Albert Pujols will get his chance to manage Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. this spring when the two Padres stars play for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic.

At one point, there seemed to be a chance Pujols would be working with them during the season.

The future Hall of Famer was a finalist for the Padres’ manager job that went to Craig Stammen.

“It was a great, great experience,” Pujols said of the interview process. “I learned a lot. I think I did very well. They chose their manager. I would do that again when the opportunity comes. … I learned a lot from the front office, a lot of things they were looking at. That got me more prepared for my next opportunity.”

Mexico City series

Major League Baseball announced Wednesday that the Padres and Diamondbacks will play April 25 and 26 in Mexico City.

Tickets to the games, for which the Diamondbacks will be the home team, go on sale via Ticketmaster on Jan. 19.

This will be the Padres’ second trip to Mexico City in four seasons. They swept the Giants there in 2023 by scores of 16-11 and 6-4. The teams combined for 15 home runs at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, which is approximately 7,350 feet above sea level.

Rule 5 draft

The Padres did not select or lose anyone in the major league phase of the Rule 5 draft, but they did lose two minor leaguers in the Triple-A phase.

The Cubs selected third baseman Devin Ortiz in the third round and the Nationals selected right-hander Eiker Huizi in the fifth round.

Ortiz, 26, hit .242/.325/.317 with six homers in 126 games in 2025 at Double-A San Antonio. Huizi, 25, had a 5.88 ERA in 41 ⅓ innings split between rookie ball and high Single-A Fort Wayne.

Staff writer Jeff Sanders contributed to this report.