Former Padres Staffer: Environment Around Team Is 'The Most Toxic'

The San Diego Padres have some serious issues.

Ken Rosenthal and Dennis Lin of The Athletic spoke to over two dozen people around baseball, including current and former Padres employees, who spoke about "deep cultural issues that start near the top of the organization and, in some cases, filter down to the players."

Per that report:

"One player called the season an 'institutional failure.' Multiple members of the team spoke of a persistent atmosphere of pessimism as the Padres watched their season slip away. And while numerous people downplayed or rejected rumors of a dysfunctional clubhouse, the overall environment around the team garnered less positive reviews."

"'It's the most toxic,' one former staffer said."

It is hard to conceive how a team with the talent of the Padres, loaded with superstars like Juan Soto, Fernando Tatís Jr., Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts, Josh Hader, Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove and Blake Snell, among others, could find itself just 73-78 on the season, 20 games back of the NL West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers.

So what exactly happened?

One player told Rosenthal and Lin that the strained relationship between manager Bob Melvin and president of baseball operations and general manager A.J. Preller was "unfixable."

Other figures around baseball described Preller as a micro-manager; as someone whose core philosophy was to out-work everyone else, even if it led to burnout for those working under him; and as someone whose team-building approach came down to "get a bunch of athletes and we're just going to out-athlete the other team and out-ability the other team," per a former team staffer.

And the message coming from a number of people within the organization was that Preller and Melvin were regularly on different pages.

"If nobody's on the same page and you're getting two stories from two different people, there is not trust there," one player told The Athletic. "The players are going to feel like, well, who can I confide in? Who can I talk to?"

And according to both The Athletic's report and a bombshell report from Kevin Acee of The San Diego Union-Tribune, there is a lack of coherent leadership within the clubhouse from a player perspective.

Both reports suggested it was less an issue of players getting along or liking each other, and more an issue of several players with leadership qualities simply not stepping into the role of team leader, though Machado is considered the central clubhouse presence.

It hasn't helped that injuries affected the pitching staff and that the Padres are a shocking 6-22 in one-run games. But all of the various issues have contributed to an air of almost-apathy around the team, a lack of fire and cohesion that has kept the team from ever fighting out of the hole it dug itself.

The Padres have too much talent to be this mediocre. Perhaps next season, better fortune in close games will see them return to the postseason, like 2022's run to the NLCS. But it's clear that changes are needed in San Diego, at perhaps every level of the organization.