Executive Chairman Ron Fowler is the unscripted, unrestrained and unwavering voice of the plan the Padres began selling to ticket holders Wednesday night.

The late-afternoon gathering at Petco Park started as a “town hall” meeting for fans following the dizzying selloff of recent months.

The huddle behind the third-base dugout crackled, though, as Fowler and the franchise detailed reasons to peel the house down to exposed nails and studs.

In Fowler’s mind, the Padres hoping to earn your dollars next season and beyond will ditch the drama and dirty the uniforms. To his thinking, those Padres will embrace effort and eighty-six entitlement.


“I’ll be damned if we’re going to pay high-priced talent to sit on their butts and not perform,” Fowler said.

In Atlanta, which picked up slugger Matt Kemp, they’re likely to call it thin skin from a former employer. In Chicago, where the White Sox plucked pitcher James Shields, it might sound like a seller’s sour grapes.

× Matt Kemp traded to Braves

In San Diego, though, Fowler’s calling it a future reshaped between the ears as much as the baselines.


Earlier this season, Fowler criticized Shields ($75 million contract and all), saying he upset the MLB Players Association in the process. On Wednesday, he took aim at Kemp — on pace for 100 RBIs while admitting in a letter on The Players’ Tribune that he had built a reputation for “being selfish, lazy and a bad teammate.”

Kemp thanked San Diego and its fans, but the breakup will be remembered for a comment to an MLB.com reporter in Atlanta that he had “never really played in a baseball town before.”

“We made a conscious decision to ship them out because we want people that are prepared to improve,” Fowler said. “If you’re making a lot of money and you think you’re already there, you’re not going to get better.

“… They had a bad attitude. You saw Kemp’s letter. Talk about a bunch of b.s.”


Fowler, no one’s word-mincer, complained about players he felt were sometimes inclined to simply show up: “Most of ’em are gone, thank God.”

That, in a no-nonsense nutshell, is what the Padres are selling to fans.

You might not know the names in 2017, but you’ll smell the sweat and sense the progress. The plan always has been to build depth, the sales pitch goes, even as the Shields-Kemp-Justin Upton stab at bottled lightning fizzled.

“That was a bad experiment,” Fowler said. “The chemistry wasn’t there. But we took a run at it.”


To the Padres credit, they listened Wednesday. They made ticket holders feel heard, valued and important. They opened the books, discussing how the millions were being spent.

When the team said it would read submitted questions, the skeptic in you wondered if the team would edit out the edginess and angst. It didn’t. The 350-or-so ticket holders pulled no punches.

The first question to Fowler, President Mike Dee and General Manager A.J. Preller: When will we stop trading our big-league talent?

The next: Any current players whose jerseys are safe to buy?


The next: When do you expect the team to compete at a championship-level caliber?

The next: Why should we renew (tickets) for a stream of minor-league players?

The next: Will there be a discount on season tickets?

No tomato cans there.


Preller said the team has no reason or plan to peddle in player-churn long term. There simply wasn’t enough legitimate talent in the organization, he argued. The weeding-out process has accomplished its weeding, essentially.

× Jabari Blash’s first career HR

Dee said the minor-leaguers of yesterday can be the big-leaguers of today after a 12-3 win against Milwaukee: “Jabari Blash (homer) was a major league player on the field today. Ryan Schimpf (named N.L. rookie of the month for July) is a major league player.

“I’d like to tell you we’re breaking up the ’98 Yankees, but we’re not. This was a team that underachieved. Let’s get some younger, hungry players in here that you can be proud of that lay it on the line.”


The answer that likely fell most flat came from the refreshingly honest Fowler, who blunted any consideration of a price decrease as the Padres retool. Cutting even a negligible amount would illustrate to the “we’re all in this together” crowd that, well, they’re truly in it together.

Dee, meanwhile, earned applause for sharing that the team is reworking the new ticket-exchange policy that frustrated many fans — including a sparkplug of an attendee named Lydia who yelled, “It sucks!” The new policy, Dee said, will include 10-, 20- and 30-game packages to create more flexibility on games and nights.

He collected more support for spilling that the team will return Friday night start times back to 7:10 p.m.

But the baseball product, ultimately and understandably, constituted the bottom line.


If recent weeks amounted to organizational surrender, as many fans stubbornly maintain, there’s a number to consider. The franchise will spend more than $80 million on international signees and amateur draft selections this year — shattering the franchise standard.

That smells like building more than banking.

Whether it’s successful or not remains to be seen. Whether it’s sellable or not remains to be seen, too.

But the Padres placed their front-office chins in harm’s way. They listened.


And that’s a start.

On Twitter: @Bryce_A_Miller