Padres General Manager Search Expands to Red Sox Nation

Another day, another Padres GM interview

The Padres currently have no general manager at a crucial time in the season to have one with the trade deadline approaching July 31st.

Tuesday, Peter Gammons reported that the Padres were going to interview Red Sox Assistant GM Mike Hazen.

The Padres certainly appear to be going it in a thorough fashion, interviewing everyone from internal to Arizona to former Yankee executives and now moving on to Boston.

As reported by Corey Brock back on June 22nd, Hazen was an initial short-lister, so the interview isn’t a huge surprise. Padres’ CEO Mike Dee worked with Hazen in Boston, and Hazen would become another of a number of younger general managers.

Dee said then that “It will be someone with a near-mid-long term vision of what we want to be as an organization,” Dee said. “Moving forward, we’ll have a lot of structure. We will hire great baseball people. We want baseball people with baseball experience to make baseball decisions for this decision.”  Whether that was the most obvious statement of all time or a slight to the previous regime is open to debate. Certainly Mike comes from the defending World Series champions.

People cannot forget as well, that while the Red Sox did of course win the World Series last year, that was only after the biggest collapse in MLB history in September of 2011, and a horrible 2012 under manager Bobby Valentine. As Hazen said then in this article by Nick Cafardo, his goal in running a baseball team was “…to develop players into the farm system that can go up and either become starters or fill vital roles on your team. We have to be committed to that and make sure our people are doing the best they can to put the players in a position to perform.”

Sounds like a good plan to me.