NOTE: The was copied from San Diego Union-Tribune digital version, so no links to article.
"Apart at the seams" by Kevin Acee, San Diego Union-Tribune 9/20/2021
Some in Padres organization believe struggling team needs new voice, greater influence in manager’s office
ST. LOUIS
The Padres began a road trip Sept. 10 with a fighting chance and ended it looking like they were fighting with themselves.
The shouting match in the dugout Saturday night between Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. in itself was not the problem. But it occurring, several people in the organization said, is a product of one of the Padres’ most pressing issues:
Manager Jayce Tingler does not possess the sway to have quashed a situation that had been brewing for weeks.
How much of that falls directly on Tingler and how much is due to a distrust between players and the front office is debatable. And it really isn’t important. Regardless, the Padres have some fixing to do.
Machado, a veteran who has acknowledged learning from his own mistakes as a young player, stepped in Saturday in a moment in which he felt the team’s young superstar needed to be set back on track.
In this instance, Tatis had become incensed at a coach telling him essentially what Machado then told him — to pick his head up and get on the field and do what he’s capable of because the Padres needed him.
These things happen in a long season, especially in the heat of a playoff chase gone off the rails.
Multiple people inside the organization said the situation with Tatis has been building for weeks, as the 22-year-old has grown increasingly frustrated with the team’s postseason chances slipping away and his being unable to lift the Padres on his shoulders. He was talked to by a veteran player about his brooding on at least one occasion before Saturday.
There are differences of opinion among some of the team’s on-field personnel. But one thing virtually everyone agreed on in the hours after Saturday’s mini-brouhaha was that it was culmination of an issue a stronger manager would have taken care of weeks ago.
There are some in the organization who believe this is an example of why the team needs a new voice and a greater influence in the manager’s office.
Again and again, people in and around the team have said for weeks, the Padres need an experienced manager who commands the respect of players such as Machado, Tatis, Eric Hosmer and others.
The sentiment Tingler was not the leader they needed or wanted has been growing in some corners of the clubhouse for a while. With every loss, it seems more likely it will happen.
Even some of those who just last week questioned whether General Manager A.J. Preller would fire Tingler, his friend and the man he hired just two years ago, say the continued cratering of a team that so much was expected of demands change.
Whether Tingler has been a solid in-game manager is not the issue, said people familiar with Preller’s thinking.
But the GM is on record several times during his tenure saying he believes the role of coaches and a manager is to get the most out of players.
The Padres falling from 17 games above .500 and seemingly in command of a playoff spot on Aug. 10 to 76-73 and 3½ games out of the National League’s second wild-card spot after a weekend sweep by the Cardinals may have forced Preller’s hand in that regard.
As late as last week, there was sentiment among many in the league that the Padres remained a superior team with a better chance to go further in the playoffs than any of the other contenders for the final playoff spot.
The Padres felt that way as well. They believed since the start of the season they were building toward a strong finish.
Even as this trip dawned, however, their failure to live up to expectations seemed to have the team in about as dark a place as a contender could be.
The Padres were one game up in the wild-card race when their series at Dodger Stadium began on Sept. 10, but even then some inside the clubhouse were essentially lobbying for Tingler’s dismissal no matter how the season ended.
While they insisted they had not thrown in the towel — and there were examples that seemed to support that contention, as well as evidence on the scoreboard that indicated they had all but given up — it was clear for some time that a malaise had infected the clubhouse.
Any discord was hopefully explained away for a time as a product of frustration and blame shifting that surfaces on every team not quite playing its best as crunch time nears.
“Winning fixes everything,” several people said all through the final two weeks of August and early in September.
By the time the Padres were swept in Los Angeles at the start of the trip, fewer people were saying it. And those who were did so with less conviction.
Winning two games at the end of their series in San Francisco had their spirits up. They briefly saw through the fog a path to the postseason.
But they knew they needed to take at least two of three here. No one denied that. Many said it outright.
The extent of the team’s off-field issues is not clear, and only an indistinct line can be drawn when attempting to discern the effect those issues have had on performance in games.
But conversations with more than a dozen people — in all levels of the Padres organization and others around the team and throughout the league, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity — make it clear that the atmosphere has grown increasingly uneasy.
There is a disconnect between the front office and clubhouse that stems, at least in part, from moves made and not made and one move that was attempted at the trade deadline.
Tingler, never a choice that excited many veteran players, has seen his influence over the team further abate as the losses have mounted. Where Tingler’s standing was at first enhanced by his having been the choice of Preller, players’ inability to separate manager from management has put Tingler in a further bind.
“There is no trust,” one player said recently. “You want to know people have your back.”
That player was far from the only one to allude to a lack of trust.
Tingler said, “I do” to both the question of whether he felt he had the respect of the clubhouse and whether he had enough separation from Preller to properly do his job.
Asked if he was surprised whether those questions would even have to be asked, Tingler replied:
“When we’re struggling and not playing the way we’re capable of, as a manager I have responsibility for it. I love our players. I think they play their asses off. I’m never a guy who is going point a finger at anybody, except a thumb at myself, when things aren’t going right.”
It is important to note that, as is the case in virtually every circumstance like this, not every player is in agreement. Some are equally frustrated by what they see as excuses being made by teammates for poor performance.
“It’s been addressed,” one veteran said.
Whatever level of antipathy that may have existed, however, it was exacerbated at the trade deadline.
Players were disappointed the Padres did not acquire help for the starting rotation. Moreover, there was great consternation that Preller tried to deal Hosmer and that there was a lack of communication surrounding that potential move.
Some also expressed confusion over the lineup crowding created by the addition of second baseman Adam Frazier, especially when the team already had an All-Star at the position in Jake Cronenworth.
Several people volunteered that Hosmer, who declined to speak for this article, has seemed to go out of his way to not make his involvement in trade talks an issue.
There is an attempt under way internally to discern the actual problems from the portion of dissatisfaction and finger pointing fueled by frustration. There is still a hope, however small, they can avoid what would arguably be the most disappointing season in franchise history.
“We continue to focus on qualifying for the playoffs and playing through October,” Preller said.
Fixes to the roster will have to wait until the offseason. Considering Preller’s history, there is little doubt moves are coming. That is considered especially likely since such heavy investment has been made already that the feeling is the team can’t stop building now.
Multiple team sources said October will bring further changes to the coaching staff, adding to the one made in August when pitching coach Larry Rothschild was let go.
The decision of whether Tingler stays or goes, according to people familiar with how Padres Chairman Peter Seidler operates, will be Preller’s alone.
The path forward could be complicated by the relationship between the two, as it has complicated the current situation.
There was a strong conviction within the organization that the Padres needed an experienced manager after the firing of Andy Green in 2019. In the end, however, Preller was given the green light to hire Tingler. The two were close from their time with the Texas Rangers. Tingler, about to turn 39 at the time of his hiring in October 2019, was a highly regarded coach but had never managed in the major leagues.
The thinking by many in and around the team is that someone as respected as three-time World Series winner Bruce Bochy, who sources say is open to managing again, would get the most out of the Padres, the team he led from 1995 to 2006.
However, no one familiar with the inner workings of the Padres is convinced Preller will fire Tingler or replace him with an experienced manager.
However, it is Preller who built the team and hired his manager. It is Preller who in February received a contract extension that runs through 2026.
The Padres are supposedly in the beginning of a championship window. It is Preller who has to do the work to make sure that window doesn’t shatter.
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