The Day After Padres Chairman Ron Fowler Calls His Team Pathetic, They Lose The Largest Lead In Franchise History To The Mariners
If you missed this story yesterday, you can check it out here. But here’s what San Diego Padres chairman Ron Fowler said in the fallout of James Shields getting his shit rocked for 10 earned runs in less than three innings on Tuesday.
“It’s been embarrassing. I don’t know how else to put it. I think our performance on the road trip, 1-7, is pathetic. This baseball experience has been very frustrating, very embarrassing. To have a starter like (James) Shields perform as poorly as he did yesterday, I think is an embarrassment to the team, and an embarrassment to him.”
I saw the video of the Padres players in the clubhouse being asked about what they thought of Fowler’s comments, and I was pretty disappointed with their response. I understand that they obviously weren’t going to push back or say anything outrageous in defense of Shields, or even themselves, but there was a lot of tongue-biting going on. You never want to bite the hand that feeds, but you’ve gotta have your teammate’s back in a situation like that.
Calling Shields an “embarrassment to the team” for one bad start was taking it way too far. You can defend your teammate without disrespecting the chairman of the team you play for at the same time, simply by saying something along the lines of, “Shields had a bad outing on Tuesday, but I think he’s been pretty good for us this year outside of that start.”
But, if you can image, the Padres’ verbal response to Fowler’s comments weren’t nearly as bad as their on-field response. Oh, you thought we were pathetic and embarrassing before? Watch this. The Padres held a 12-2 lead over the Seattle Mariners, who are a pretty damn good team this year, after 4 innings. Then, out of nowhere, the Mariners scored five runs in the sixth, and nine runs in the seventh, and would go on to win this game 16-13. It was the largest deficit that the Mariners have ever overcome in their team history, and it was the largest lead that the Padres have ever lost in their team history.
Honestly, I feel bad for the Padres. If this were a team like the Dodgers, the Yankees or the Red Sox, nobody would feel bad if the chairman of the team called them out for being pathetic or embarrassing after performing poorly, because they have high payrolls and high expectations. But nobody expected the Padres to be good in 2016. They were expected to suck, and they do. It’s gotta be really embarrassing for the Padres players to get called out by ownership for being pathetic, only to sink to a new low. #PrayForThePadres