1981 Non-Expos Ended Up As Padres’ Future

The National League’s two 1969 expansion teams, the San Diego Padres and the Montreal Expos, took different courses. In the 1968 expansion draft the Padres sought younger talent while the Expos went after older, more proven players.  (The shoestring budget of the C. Arnholdt Smith years kept the team in the prospect stage for longer than General Manager Buzzie Bavasi had planned.)

In the first decade of the teams’ histories, the Padres never escaped the second division of the National League West — in fact, they were not to do so until their 1984 pennant — while the Expos toyed with the National League East title on occasion. The two 1969 expansion teams shared two of the top three spots in the 1977 Rookie of the Year voting (Andre Dawson, Gene Richards) and the top two spots of the 1978 Cy Young voting (Gaylord Perry, Steve Rogers).

By 1981 the teams were at opposite ends of the success ladder. The Expos would win the National Leagues Eastern Division, the only title in the team’s history, while the Padres would take disadvantage of the split-season format to finish in last place twice in the same year.  Yet 1981 was the turning point which catapulted the Padres ahead of the Expos over the next decade — or appropriately hurled the Expos below the Padres.

Despite the success of the Expos on the field, the 1981 drafts were a disaster for the Expos, while the Padres were successful in signing June 1981 picks Kevin McReynolds and Tony Gwynn.  (Gwynn, drafted in the third round, was passed up earlier because of fears that he might play professional basketball; the outfielder/guard decided, however, that he had more of a future as a third-round baseball pick than as an eight-round NBA pick.)

A few of the Expos’ 1981 draftees would have an effect on San Diego – some on the Padres.  The major signee of the Expos, a second baseman from San Diego State, was traded to the Padres in December 1983, never played for the Padres in the Major Leagues, but was traded back to the Expos in the summer of 1984 for one of the relievers who kept the Cubs in check during the 1984 playoffs.  One signee played two years for the Padres before a trade led to a Cy Young Award winner.  Another was traded to the Padres in the 1989 stretch run.

One failed Expo signee was the “brother” of a future Padres pitcher.  And the most notable of the Expos’ unsigned draft picks had a brother who excelled in another sport at San Diego State University. The Expos’ successful signee was Al Newman, taken in the first round of the secondary stage of the June draft.

After three years in the Expos’ organization, Newman came to the Padres with Scott Sanderson for Gary Lucas in a three-way trade – Sanderson immediately went to the Cubs for Carmelo Martinez, Craig Lefferts, and a minor league third baseman.  During the 1984 season the Padres traded Newman for Greg Harris (the first of three pitchers with that name who would play for the organization); Harris proved to be a successful set-up man in the Padres’ time of need that October.

The Expos’ 25th-round pick in the June draft was Gene Walter, a left-handed pitcher from Eastern Kentucky.  Walter waited another year to join the pros; in the June 1982 draft he was the Padres’ 29th and last pick and to this day the lowest Padres pick to make the majors.  After joining the big league team in the summer of 1985, Walter played the entire 1986 season with San Diego before going to New York along with Kevin McReynolds and another minor leaguer for five players. 

One of those players was Kevin Mitchell, who was a disappointment in San Diego but was traded in July 1987 to the San Francisco Giants for relief pitcher Mark Davis, whose 44 saves in 1989 earned him the Cy Young Award. The Expos’ fifth-round pick in the 1981 June draft was Wichita State first baseman Phil Stephenson. Stephenson was drafted by the Oakland A’s in the third round of the June 1982 draft, and after his tenure with the Cubs went to San Diego in late August of 1989 along with Darrin Jackson and Calvin Schiraldi in exchange for Luis Salazar and Marvell Wynne. Although Stephenson played behind Jack Clark and Fred McGriff at first base, he was able to spell the sluggers and make a contribution of his own when he played.

The Expos’ third-round pick of the January 1981 draft was first baseman-outfielder Glenn Davis, one of two unsigned future major leaguers in that draft from Middle Georgia Junior College (the other was second baseman Jeff Treadway, the Expos’ 18th and final pick of the January draft). Davis was a juvenile delinquent in his adolescence before living with a more stable family, unrelated but with the same last name.  To this day Davis and 1987 Padres pitcher Storm Davis call each other brothers, even if they didn’t become brothers until high school.

In the eighth round of the 1981 draft, the Expos’ chose a right-handed pitcher from Damien High School in Claremont, California.  The pitcher decided to go to college, specifically the University of Southern California, where he played the position at which a throwing arm is least needed, and in the June 1984 draft was taken in the first round by the Oakland A’s. 

After a silver medal in the 1984 Olympics and two years in the minor leagues, he became a star with the Oakland A’s, dispatching the A’s other first baseman to the Padres in exchange for the above-mentioned Storm Davis. His brother, after a year as a thrower in Iowa, transferred to San Diego State to get his throwing opportunities with the Aztecs’ football team.

After sitting out a year because of NCAA transfer rules, Dan McGwire became the Aztecs’ starting quarterback and, along with running back Marshall Faulk, led the Aztecs into the 1991 Freedom Bowl. Although Dan McGwire’s contribution to the record books is as the quarterback of the highest-scoring non-winning team in an NCAA Division I football game (the Aztecs twice scored over 50 points without winning in McGwire’s career), Mark McGwire holds the Major League record for most home runs by a rookie, and sabermetric projections indicate that Mark McGwire may become one of the leading home run hitters of all time.

The Expos’ future would surely have been different had they signed Glenn Davis, Jeff Treadway, Nelson Santovenia, Phil Stephenson, Mark McGwire, Marvin Freeman, and Gene Wailer in 1981. As it turned out, that would not have been good news for Padres’ fans.