{"id":771850,"date":"2026-08-06T21:36:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T21:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/771850\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T21:36:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T21:36:18","slug":"padres-aj-preller-refuses-to-say-dodgers-are-ruining-baseball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/771850\/","title":{"rendered":"Padres’ AJ Preller Refuses to Say Dodgers Are Ruining Baseball"},"content":{"rendered":"

The San Diego Padres made a few major trades at the deadline<\/a> this year, giving the team a much stronger chance to reach the playoffs \u2014 and potentially even make some serious noise.<\/a><\/p>\n

San Diego has been trying to battle back from an underwhelming start to the season, but after a recent hot stretch, the Padres are right in the thick of the wild-card race in the National League.<\/p>\n

However, the Padres still trail the rival Los Angeles Dodgers by 10 games in the NL West. The talent gap between the Padres and Dodgers is fairly large, and it only grew over the trade deadline.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers traded for Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers<\/a>, adding another All-Star to an already stacked rotation.<\/p>\n

After the deadline, Padres president of baseball operations AJ Preller was asked on a conference call with reporters if he believed the Dodgers were ruining baseball. His answer was very telling.<\/p>\n

“You kind of expect that a lot of teams in our division, especially the Dodgers, are going to improve every single year. Personally, when you have great teams and you have great players, it just raises the bar of other people and other players and other teams,” Preller said to reporters on a conference call after the trade deadline.<\/p>\n

“Our focus is on what we need to do to get better with our group and our team. But when you’ve got a really competitive division or team, that definitely can help raise the bar of what it looks like.”<\/p>\n

While the Dodgers have been adding stars almost yearly, the Padres have been able to keep up with them.<\/p>\n

The two sides have played each other in the postseason three times since 2020, with the Dodgers taking two of three series. But the Padres did eliminate them in 2022 on their way to an appearance in the NL Championship Series.<\/p>\n

Preller understands the rivalry, but he is only focused on making the Padres the strongest team possible. If the two sides were to meet up again in the playoffs, San Diego would feel comfortable matching up with the reigning two-time World Series champions.<\/p>\n

The immediate goal for the Padres is to just get to the playoffs, as if they can make it in<\/a>, they know that anything can happen.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our free newsletter<\/a> and follow us on Facebook<\/a> and X\/Twitter<\/a> for the latest news<\/p>\n

\"\"Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Diego Padres made a few major trades at the deadline this year, giving the team a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2407],"tags":[5,4,43,137,18,4339,4338],"class_list":["post-771850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego-padres","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-padres","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sandiego","tag-sandiegopadres"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117050722768707623","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}