Padres’ former manager, ex-slugger reunion hints at a bigger player-dev direction

If you only read the headline, you’d file it under “fun Padres nostalgia” and keep it moving.

Bud Black is back. Wil Myers is back. Two familiar faces, two new titles, one easy emotional reaction: This rules.

But the more you sit with it, the more this feels like something else. It’s a front office telling you, pretty clearly, that the Padres are trying to win the “boring” way too. With infrastructure and coaching touchpoints. 

San Diego announced Wednesday that Black has been hired as senior advisor to baseball operations, while Myers joins as a special assignment coach in player development. 

Padres’ Bud Black, Wil Myers reunion hints at a bigger player-development shift

Black’s return is fascinating because it’s not packaged as ceremonial. He called it a “wide-ranging” role, and he described it as something that touches basically everything: baseball operations, Craig Stammen’s staff, player development, scouting — the whole machine. 

Black was the Padres manager from 2007-15, still second in franchise history in managerial wins behind Bruce Bochy.  He also just happens to be a guy A.J. Preller fired in 2015 — Preller’s first full season running the show — and now the two are re-joining forces like adults who understand baseball timelines move fast and grudges move slow. 

Black’s recent experience isn’t theoretical either. He managed the Rockies for nine seasons before being dismissed early in the 2025 season. Now he’s back in San Diego as a sounding board type. That doesn’t sound subtle, given the Padres’ current setup with Stammen now managing the club. 

Then there’s Myers. His role is where the “player-development priority” angle stops being a theory and starts feeling like a mission statement.

Myers will be working mostly on the Minor League side, traveling to affiliates about once a month, acting as a resource for hitters and coaches.  And he wasn’t vague about what he wants to help with: he specifically mentioned cleaning up “wasted swings” during cage work and BP.

Myers never did the formal retirement tour, but MLB.com notes he essentially finished his career after the 2023 season, spent two years at home in North Carolina, and hadn’t considered coaching until Preller invited him to instructional workouts in Arizona last September.

And if you need the reminder of why Myers still matters to this fanbase. He spent eight seasons with the Padres and totaled 771 hits and 134 home runs in San Diego.

The sneaky context here is that Black and Myers returning together ties right back to the beginning of the Preller era. Myers arrived as part of that 2014-15 overhaul, and MLB.com frames it as the start of the most successful era of Padres baseball, with four playoff appearances in the past six seasons. 

There’s definitely nostalgia in the room. But it’s also the organization acknowledging that “Padres baseball” isn’t just about acquiring talent anymore. It’s about sustaining it. Developing it. Squeezing more readiness out of the pipeline so the big-league roster doesn’t always need a jolt from outside. You need a system that keeps producing answers.

And bringing back Bud Black and Wil Myers in these specific roles sure looks like the Padres trying to build exactly that.