San Diego Padres Trade Tree

We know that Kevin Towers has been a very active general manager over the years, making quite a few more trades than average for a major league baseball team. Here's a little diagram I put together, a so-called "trade tree". It is not exhaustive, but rather tracks as far back as possible, via trades only, from three current members of the Padres (Chris Young, Terrmel Sledge, and Adrian Hernandez) who were acquired in early 2006.

It's quite amazing that starting from just that one trade, the players involved go all the way back to 1976 - that's thirty years of continuity through just trading!

Finally, a few interesting things of note:

• All the trades involving this particular tree are present. Some of the players (such as Doug Brocail and Phil Plantier) were acquired again by the Padres, but not as part of this specific trade tree.
• One player, Craig Lefferts, actually appears twice in this trade tree! After the Pads traded him away in 1987, they re-signed him as a free agent in 1989 (and proceeded to trade him away again in 1991!)
• Both MLB players named Greg Harris appear in this trade tree. The ambidextrous one was acquired for Al Newman in 1984, while the other one was drafted in 1985 and then traded in 1993 as part of the deal for Andy Ashby.
• There are a heck of a lot of good players on this list, including some MVPs (Ken Caminiti, & Kevin Mitchell, e.g.), some Cy Young winners (Rollie Fingers & Mark Davis, e.g.) and some Hall of Famers (Fingers, and Ozzie Smith).
• There are also some guys who went on to manage, including Jerry Manuel and Bob Geren, who was traded shortly after being drafted in 1979 and will manage Oakland this coming year.

Without further delay, here is the San Diego Padres Trade Tree: