PEORIA, Ariz. — The direction of the San Diego Padres made an abrupt, 180-degree turn at 3 a.m. in a dimly lit, long-since-closed Marriott restaurant at Los Angeles International Airport.
When team President Mike Dee landed at 11:30 p.m. during the first week of August 2014, he already had decided on the Padres’ new general manager. It wasn’t A.J. Preller, the man waiting for him outside baggage claim.
Preller was the quirky, baseball savant who showed up for interviews with a nondescript spiral notebook that Peter Seidler, the franchise’s lead investor, described as the kind you’d pick up at a Target with “scribbles and notes at all these weird angles.