Why the Padres must keep A.J. Preller and Mike Shildt right now

This is the rare moment when the obvious answer is also the right one. The Padres don’t need to tear out the wiring; they need to stop flipping breakers. Retaining A.J. Preller and Mike Shildt isn’t a punt on accountability — it’s an investment in the one competitive advantage San Diego has struggled to build for decades: continuity with a plan.

 The franchise finally has a front office and dugout that understand each other’s tempos and a roster core that’s lived in high-leverage baseball for multiple seasons. Swapping leadership now would be change for the sake of optics, the kind of sugar rush that wastes a year while everyone relearns each other’s language.

Padres should double down on stability with Preller and Shildt

Start with results, not vibes. Since Shildt took over in 2024 (after Bob Melvin bolted to San Francisco), the Padres have banked 183 wins in two seasons and made the postseason both years. That includes a Wild Card win over the Braves, a hard fall in the NLDS to the Dodgers, and a tough Wild Card loss to the Cubs in games that matter, not theory. 

Zoom out further and it’s four playoff trips in six seasons for a franchise that had only two postseason berths in the entire 21st century before 2020. That’s not a ceiling worth defending — it’s a floor worth solidifying. You don’t pull up the foundation because you’re angry the roof leaked in October.

Here’s the organizational math. Preller is entering the final year of his deal; Shildt has two years remaining after last winter’s extension. That asymmetry spooks people because it screams “one of these guys is on the clock.” Flip the framing: it actually creates a pressure-tested year for the baseball ops group to finish what it started without detonating the dugout. When the GM/POBO’s horizon is shorter than the manager’s, the two either fracture or fuse. The Padres’ last two seasons say fuse — Shildt’s game-to-game pragmatism has paired with Preller’s talent acquisition to produce win-total stability (including 93 wins in 2024, the second-highest in club history). That balance is fragile; you don’t casually swap out half the equation and expect the answer to hold.

And you can’t fake the cultural piece. Shildt’s track record predates San Diego — he steadied St. Louis on the fly in 2018, shed the interim tag, and took the Cardinals to three straight Octobers. In San Diego, he inherited a clubhouse with expectations and noise, then made it boring in the best way: bank the wins, absorb the injuries, rinse and repeat. Preller’s job is different but complementary: keep the pipeline moving and the 26-man flexible enough to adapt. When those approaches align, you get a team that doesn’t collapse when the calendar flips past Labor Day. The last six years, contending essentially every season, tell you plenty is already working.

No one inside the building is pretending otherwise about the bar. Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune shared some of Owner Peter Seidler’s words that set the tone:

“While we have made the postseason in four of the last six years and had two consecutive 90-win regular seasons for the first time in franchise history, we fell short of our goal to win a World Series Championship,” Seidler wrote. “Our elimination in the Wild Card round was a disappointment and exposed areas where we must improve. As we look ahead to 2026, our goal remains the same, but we need to get better to accomplish that goal. The process of getting better will begin immediately as we perform a thorough review of our organization with an eye towards improving and winning our first World Series Championship.”

Good. That’s the right level of urgency. But “get better” doesn’t mean “start over.” It means sharper self-scouting, cleaner bullpen planning, smarter run-prevention choices, and a bench that fits October pitchers instead of April dreams. Those are operational tweaks you make with a stable chain of command, not a job search. 

If you want to change the Padres’ story, change the October details, not the authors. The recent baseline — multiple playoff berths, back-to-back 90-win seasons, a working partnership between Preller and Shildt, suggests the franchise finally climbed out of the boom-and-bust cycle that defined too much of the past 20 years. The path from “good” to “champion” is narrow and unforgiving, but it’s straighter when the front office and the dugout speak the same language.