Newly acquired Padres starting pitcher Martín Pérez was on the phone with his mother Sunday morning when he asked her a question.
Did she remember A.J. Preller, the team’s president of baseball operations who signed him while with the Rangers at 16?
Pérez is now 33.
“She said, ‘Yes, because he spoke to me in Spanish and I could communicate with him,’ ” Pérez relayed of the long-ago memory in Valencia, Venezuela. “She said, ‘You guys have to take care of him. He’s just 16.’ At that age, moms don’t want you to leave home.”
There are track records with the arms the Padres scooped up at the trade deadline, in baseball and with the team. There’s a World Series ring, All-Star Games, a World Baseball Classic medal and plenty anchoring them to the Padres and the man pushing the buttons.
Preller lassoed Jason Adam, one of the best wipeout relievers in the game, from the Rays for prospects Dylan Lesko, Homer Bush Jr. and J.D. Gonzalez.
Adam thought he would become a member of the Padres organization much sooner.
“A.J. and I go way back,” said Adam, who won a WBC silver with the U.S. in 2023. “He was scouting me with the Rangers when I was in school. That’s why I thought he was going to draft me at the time (before ending up with the Royals). So we’ve had this full-circle thing.”
The bottom line: Much of the deadline haul was more than number-crunching and analyzing options on paper and video.
Stir in Tanner Scott, a 2024 All-Star and the NL’s reliever of the month for July, and it allows a pitching coach to sleep better on warm August nights.
“When they go out there, they’re in control of their emotions, of their breathing, just in control of the game and themselves overall,” Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla said. “That tends to come off to the other team and our dugout.
“You can tell how their experience comes up.”
If the Padres are going to make a run — not just to the playoffs, but something deeper — this collection of arms, along with pickup Bryan Hoeing, became the poker chips to push to the center of the table.
Though their names do not mean as much to some casual baseball fans, Adam and Scott are well known across the game.
If Pérez, a left-hander, repeats anything close to his first appearance in San Diego — a six-inning, seven-strikeout, one-run, no-walk performance Saturday against the Rockies in a get-right game — those types of innings could be late-season gold.
Pérez played with Bogaerts in Boston and Arraez in Minnesota. Scott lined up with Manny Machado in Baltimore, along with Hoeing and Arraez and each other in Miami, deepening ties.
“When you get traded to a contending team, you have a lot of responsibility because they believe in you and need your help,” said Pérez, who landed a World Series ring last season with the Rangers. “I’m not putting pressure on me because I know what I can do, but at the same time I have to be my best when the ball is in my hand.
“And I feel like I was here before. I see faces I’ve played with before. They made me feel at home. When you come to a new team and feel that way, you feel comfortable.”
The Padres did not chase down big-name starters like Garrett Crochet or Tarik Skubal. Then again, nobody did.
Instead, they bought from the Dom Perignon shelf of relievers and found a wait-and-see starter who just might give them a chance. The wagon they’ve hitched themselves to is more substance than spotlight.
That could prove wise as the calendar melts.
“It’s not like we’re going to be able to run those guys out every day,” Niebla said. “We ran into that with (relievers Adrián) Morejón and (Jeremiah) Estrada and (Robert) Suarez at one point. Now we have more.”
Tilt-the-balance more? Quite possibly.
“Massive potential,” Adam, who is not a free agent until 2027, said of the team he’s joining. “Seeing guys clap as they run off the field after a sac fly (like Jackson Merrill), I love it. Everybody’s out there to do whatever they can.”
Adam kept rolling.
“You just love seeing it as a player, teams going for it,” he said. “They’re going all-in. They’re doing whatever it takes. They’re getting 47,000 (fans) a night. They’re trying to win now.”
There’s little doubt about that, which has made all of this so impressive. The Padres are not only surviving the injury and off-field losses of Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish, they’re thriving.
They’ve won 11 of 14 since the All-Star break, mopping up five straight series wins.
“Yes, we have a chance. A big chance,” Pérez said. “I like the way that we’re playing. We’re going to be fine. We just have to go do our thing.”
Sometimes, moms know best.
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