Padres GM AJ Preller Once Flatly Called Out Manny Machado to Be Better

The job of a major league general manager or president of baseball operations is multi-faceted.

Primarily, he or she is responsible for assembling major- and minor-league talent. Hiring other executives, managers, and coaches all fall under their purview. So does assembling the personnel responsible for an organization's scouting and analytics departments. Explaining and defending these decisions to the press is important, too.

Communicating directly with players primarily falls to the team's coaching staff, but not always. In the case of AJ Preller — who recently became the league's second-longest tenured head of baseball operations — even difficult conversations with tenured veterans are not off-limits.

According to Britt Ghiroli and Dennis Lin of The Athletic, Preller has prodded Padres third baseman Manny Machado to be better in unambiguous terms: "He challenged Machado once, telling him he was the majors’ seventh- or eighth-best third baseman at the time. One employee recalled Preller asking the infielder a similarly pointed question: What was Machado going to do to get back to the top?"

Machado, 33, is a seven-time All-Star, a two-time Gold Glove Award winner, and a two-time Silver Slugger Award winner. If anyone deserves chiding, Machado is arguably the last man in the Padres' clubhouse who Preller should confront.

But some players respond better to challenges than others. When it comes to knowing how to motivate players, Preller earns the benefit of the doubt. He was appointed GM on Aug. 6, 2014. Only Yankees GM Brian Cashman has been in his position longer.

“He’s always been very straightforward. He’s not afraid to tell you how he really feels, if it’s going to hurt your feelings or not,” Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove told The Athletic. “He’s very good at putting the front office presentation away and just being a guy talking baseball.”

Padres pitcher Mason Miller added to that sentiment in the same piece: “He shoots you straight and is willing to have conversations a lot of other people won’t.”

Preller isn't afraid to be self-critical in public, either. Speaking of a lopsided trade he once made with the Los Angeles Dodgers (prospect River Ryan for infielder Matt Beaty), he admitted Ryan was "probably one of those guys that you wish we had stayed a little longer."

Besides having rare tenure, and intimate knowledge of every player in the organization, Preller might simply prefer a straightforward style because he doesn't have time to beat around the bush. He completed five trades involving 22 players on July 31 alone; the Colorado Rockies have made four trades in the last year.

Does Preller's style work? Correlation isn't causation, but Machado posted a 4.7-bWAR season in 2025 — his best campaign since 2022. Hopefully that moved him up the third baseman rankings in Preller's eyes.

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