Many of A.J. Preller's peers were enraged by his actions in 2016, when, under Preller's watch, the San Diego Padres generated two sets of medical records on each player and withheld relevant information in trade discussions. Major League Baseball rendered an unprecedented month-long suspension of Preller, and in the aftermath of that decision, some of his peers predicted the Padres general manager would get an earful of wrath at the annual general managers meetings, when the executives from all 30 teams get in the same room.
But the mob response to Preller never developed. Commissioner Rob Manfred spoke sternly to the group about cheating, and whether Manfred displayed enough emotion to satisfy Preller's peers, or there was a cooling of tempers, or because nobody summoned the courage to tell Preller what they thought to his face, the anger never translated into a group confrontation.
It might be that the same thing will happen with Houston Astros GM Jeff Luhnow, who has infuriated his peers with what they believe to be brazen disregard for the rules against electronic surveillance before offering an explanation that few -- if any -- believe.
"We were playing defense," Luhnow said. "We were not playing offense."
Officials from the Boston Red Sox and other American League teams chortled over those words in conversations with each other; one evaluator indicated he had heard from close to a dozen teams that they, too, had concerns about the Astros and what they perceived to be illicit behavior.