Preller: Pham deal 'final details' still remain

December 10th, 2019

SAN DIEGO -- Late Thursday night, the Padres and Rays agreed to a deal sending outfielder to San Diego.

A day later, both clubs announced the trade -- with and headed to Tampa Bay in exchange for Pham and .

Those announcements seemingly made the deal official. But evidently -- in the Padres’ eyes, at least -- that wasn't quite the case.

San Diego general manager A.J. Preller said his team’s medical staff is still working through Pham's medical evaluations. The holdup appears to be a right elbow injury Pham sustained toward the end of the 2019 season.

"When we made the deal with the Rays, we put a couple different contingencies in," Preller said. "We're still working through some final details but hope to have some clarity on that within the next 24 hours."

While the Padres still have their concerns about Pham’s injury, the Rays believe there is no issue with the trade, which is why the two teams announced the deal on Friday.

Rays general manager Erik Neander said Monday that the club acted properly with the trade negotiations and believe that Pham’s offseason rehab is according to schedule. Neander also said that the team has already publicly welcomed Hunter Renfroe and Xavier Edwards to the organization and will continue to move forward in the offseason.

“It’s final,” Neander said. “The deal is out there and certainly, Tommy had an injury at the end of the season, but like I said, his rehab was progressing how you would expect it to at the time of the deal, and we have every reason to believe that [Pham’s] offseason was going the way that we expected it to go and wish him nothing but the best.”

Multiple sources within the Padres organization expressed a belief that the deal would get done as planned. Preller himself even seemed to indicate as much.

"When we made the trade, we made the trade with the players that were involved," Preller said. "I don't expect anything to change between now and when we move forward. We've got to just finish the process."