Padres owner denies report that Machado, Hosmer lobbied for Tatis over dinner
The San Diego Padres appear to be a team prepared for the future, but Manny Machado and Eric Hosmer are apparently ready to win now.
Machado and Hosmer set up a meeting with Padres executive chairman Ron Fowler before the season began to propose that 20-year-old shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. open the year in the majors, ESPN's Jeff Passan reported Friday.
"At some point, if you're not spending the most money you can, at least get the best guys in the organization," Hosmer said in March, according to Passan. "We're spending the money. And the kid (Tatis) is a big leaguer. I hope he breaks (camp) with us."
However, Fowler refuted the players' version of the story on Saturday and explained that the decision to break camp with Tatis had nothing to do with any kind of meeting.
"There was no dinner," Fowler told Dennis Lin of The Athletic. "There was no request for a dinner.
"This is something that (general manager) A.J. (Preller) and I had been talking about at, let's say, 40,000 feet, for quite some time. What's going to happen in baseball, what's going to happen in terms of the minimum three years of (salary arbitration), and do we think it's going to change. This goes back to the 2016 collective bargaining negotiations.
"And I feel that not only are we seeing things change in terms of free agents, but people are signing long-term extensions. I think there's a lot of the environment that's going to change before the 2021 negotiations for 2022 and beyond."
Tatis - who many believed would have his service time manipulated in a similar way to some of his rookie counterparts - was announced as the Padres' Opening Day starting shortstop, becoming the youngest player in more than 20 years to start the first game of the season.
By kicking off the campaign with Tatis in the majors, the Padres forfeit their ability to ensure an extra year of control before he reaches free agency.
Tatis is 3-for-6 with a double, walk, and a run scored in San Diego's first two games.