After Josh Byrnes was fired last June 22, a lot has been speculating who will be replacing him.

Good news as Padres now has hired a new GM for the team and it is none other than A.J. Preller. Preller has built up quite a reputation. He is known as a hard-working, hard-charging scouting and player development executive the last 10 years with the Texas Rangers.

During his introductory speech he lamented that it is "intriguing to me that the Padres have had some tremendous players over their history, some All-Stars, some Hall of Fame players, some good clubs, but have never won a World Series."

For the record, Padres has played during the 1984 and 1998 World Series but unfortunately lose both times.

According to Preller "It's a challenge for everyone in the organization, something to look forward to. ''You talk about it all the time: You want to play on the big stage. The big stage is not Lake Elsinore, the big stage is not for our prospects to get to El Paso, or our prospects to get to Petco. The big stage is not to get to the big leagues. The big stage is playing in the World Series, with the whole world watching."

But Preller rather had a competition for his position with the Padres. Among them are assistant GMs Mike Hazen of the Boston Red Sox and Billy Eppler of the New York Yankees, and Kim Ng, senior vice president for baseball operations for Major League Baseball.

Accordingly, the Padres want stability. Preller is the team's fourth manager and they are on their third ownership now.

Preller said that he has heard people describing him differently like "as this maverick out in the middle of nowhere, doing my job. The biggest thing is, can you connect people. That's what we did with the Rangers and that's what I want to do with the Padres."

But the GM of his former group, Rangers GM Jon Daniels, only has good words for him describing him as "'about as well-rounded a candidate as you could find'' and ''a tremendously talented talent evaluator."

Daniels added "''That's probably one of the most unique skills in the game. But I think what that misses is just how gifted he is at kind of building a staff, hiring people, creating a philosophy and getting everyone to buy in and feel good about it. He's done an amazing job here the various departments that he's run. So I think on a big-picture scale that he'd be a tremendous hire as a GM."