Dee will let Preller run Padres baseball

Even many of the Passive Villagers -- also known as staunch Padres fans -- strongly questioned the team’s recent hiring of A.J. Preller as its latest general manager. On my surprise scale, the arrow didn’t move.

The expected minor backlash came not because he’s five years short of turning 21 twice, but mainly because they saw the move as a sign CEO Mike Dee and owners Ron Fowler and Peter Seidler will manhandle the controls of the baseball ops vessel and Preller will swab the decks.

Dee, a very smart guy and more given to smile than pout, doesn’t bristle much, but he came close to it when I mentioned this to him the other day. I didn’t tell him I believed it, because I don’t -- why bother to spend so much money on a figurehead few outside Latin America know anyway? -- but Dee, about to depart on a trip to Europe with his family, remained calm, his packing apparently finished.

“Not a chance,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m back to being CEO. It’s A.J.’s ship to run. And he’s already running it. I’ve stayed out of all his meetings since he got here. I talk to him at the end of the day.”

As it should be. Besides, if you look at this hire, it was not the safe play. One of my old bosses always told me: “You’ve got to dare to be great.” Best advice ever. Best advice anyone can get.

Many people wonder what kind of GM Preller, despite is 16 years of MLB experience at many levels, will be. And there’s that blemish with the Rangers, when he supposedly broke rules signing a Latin American player. He was suspended, apparently. He says he was cleared. Who cares?

I don’t mind a slice of unscrupulous. I like pirate movies. Al Davis won three Super Bowls playing maverick. If the Padres have somebody in charge who will bend a rule now and then, he certainly won’t find himself alone in the room. Preller doesn’t intend to keep up with the Joneses, but stay a furlong ahead of them.

“A.J. sees things through a mature, informative lens,” Dee said. “He has a blank piece of canvas. He and his team will drive baseball decisions. We embedded his philosophy when we hired him.

“He believes in waves, waves of talent crashing ashore, and the guys who don’t make it wash away, then others keep coming. We’re not about one or two years; we want to do sustain it. He said you’ve got to have five or six prospects at every level, and that appealed to us; it was the best direction to go. He’s not afraid to make mistakes.”

I don’t know A.J. Preller. But if that’s how he feels, you’ve got to like his philosophy. Keep pushing it until you get it right.

“He’s a really competitive guy; you can see it by the way he goes about his business,” Dee added. “(Former Padres President and Dee mentor) Larry Lucchino always said: ‘Follow your nose,’ and that’s what we did with A.J. There’s always a risk whoever you hire. We’re playing high-stakes poker, with over $100 million invested in baseball operations.

“A.J.’s unfairly stereotyped as a guy who can only focus on team scouting. I took a step back and looked. He is experienced in all phases of the game, beginning with the league office. The footprint of his experience is so much greater than the other candidates.

“I really believe we have a chance to shake the ground with this guy. We’re not going to be a passive, sleepy franchise. Ron, Peter and I will see to that. I don’t think A.J. would have taken the job if he expected anything else. It’s like David and Goliath, with the Dodgers and Giants in our division, the big spenders. He likes that challenge. We’ve just got to give him a big enough slingshot.”

And what of manager Bud Black? Buddy already has survived three general managers, and most GMs like to have their own “guy” running the field.

“It will be A.J.’s call on Black,” Dee says. “But I don’t anticipate a change happening there. He likes Buddy.”

If A.J. Preller doesn’t plan to remove his manager, then he already has one thing right.

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