Three Padres to be thankful for this Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Today is a day where we eat a lot of food and watch football but before that happens, let’s talk some baseball first. Specifically, what we are thankful for Padres-wise.

To be clear, I am thankful for many players on this team but I wanted to narrow it down to two in addition to a front office member. Here are three Padres I am thankful for:

Fernando Tatis Jr.

I could go on and on about this guy. He’s made me and I’m sure thousands of Padres fans smile while watching him play. I know that he’s become a little bit more smart with the way he plays the game but it was so refreshing to see him sprint down the line on every single play before 2021—even when it was an easy ground ball to shortstop.

He does things I can’t even imagine doing athletically and if the Padres win the World Series one day, he is going to be a big reason why. Oh, and we get to watch him play in San Diego for the next 13 years! Here are some of his highlights:

Joe Musgrove

Musgrove grew up a Padres fan in El Cajon going to games and idolizing Jake Peavy. Now, he is wearing Peavy’s number and is pitching for his hometown team. I am thankful for Musgrove because he delivered something that seemed impossible: a no-hitter. On April 9, 2021, he gave me a sense of what it might be like to win the World Series because all I felt when Jurickson Profar caught the final out was pure joy. Thank you, Joe, for a memory of a lifetime.

A.J. Preller

I also want to thank the man who brought in Tatis and Musgrove, and that would be A.J. Preller. Have I wanted to kick Preller out of town sometimes? Of course, especially when he hired some guy named Jayce Tingler before the 2020 season instead of Ron Washington. But it’s hard not to be thankful for him right now.

He was the one that has made the Padres into a contender. He was the one who acquired/signed Musgrove, Tatis, Manny Machado, Jake Cronenworth, Wil Myers, Blake Snell, Yu Darvish, Mike Clevinger, Trent Grisham, Austin Nola, and Bob Melvin, among others. He was also the one, along with his amateur scouting group, that brought C.J. Abrams, Robert Hassell III, Luis Campusano, and MacKenzie Gore into the farm system, who all look like they should have an impact on the Padres major league roster in the future.

If it wasn’t for Preller’s out of the box thinking, we probably wouldn’t be in a position to contend for a long time going forward. I also should thank ownership—Peter Seidler and Ron Fowler—for allowing Preller to spend money in free agency, which has resulted in the signings of Manny Machado and Eric Hosmer (yes, I know he isn’t great anymore, but if he wasn’t a Padre, Machado wouldn’t have taken the Padres as seriously in free agency).

Let me know which Padres you are thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day!