Their long irrational nightmare is over.

The way it ended provides promise for the Padres. At least for those who are capable of sticking around.

In the latter days of this stretch of 28 games that featured 23 contests on the road, multiple players were made to understand once again that their time in the big leagues could be dwindling if they didn’t get back to doing as they were instructed.

There was a different manner – an edge, even – to the way manager Andy Green and some coaches interacted with a number of players throughout this six-game road trip that concluded with Sunday’s 4-3 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks in 16 innings.


It was similar to a tack Green had taken earlier in the season — one that prompted fairly widespread improvement for a period.

And the method was backed this time with the impetus of clear urgency, as the organization is intent on seeing some prospects play in the majors, perhaps as soon as shortly after the All-Star break.

For someone to come, someone has to go.

Green was not interested in talking about specifics when asked Sunday about the subtle-yet-serious shift in approach.


But neither did he deny the significance of his words from a day earlier when he lamented his team’s horrid approach at the plate during Friday’s 3-1 loss to Zack Godley and the Diamondbacks, which continued what has been a regression in plate discipline shown by a number of players.

“There are points in time you feel good about what is going on,” Green said Saturday after the Padres lost for the 14th time in 18 games. “But a few weeks in a row now, we’ve found ourselves outside the strike zone entirely too much. We want to be aggressive as a team. We want to be aggressive in a defined space, though.”

At varying times and to varying degrees, Hunter Renfroe, Christian Villanueva and Manuel Margot, in particular, have struggled chasing pitches outside the zone – or at least outside their zone of probable success.

The Padres coaching staff wants those players to be part of the team’s future, when it envisions being good. But for that to happen, they need to see consistently what has so far been fleeting improvement.


“To each individual it is probably something different,” Green said Saturday. “I look at Travis Jankowski and Carlos Asuaje as guys who know what it means to be aggressive in a defined space, who are attacking pitches you want them to swing at. It’s been a challenge for a lot of other guys to do that. The reality of winning baseball is you swing at strikes and take balls. That’s decades old.”

Over the next two games – yes, even in a 20-5 loss on Saturday – there were signs the talking-tos had an effect.

The Padres made Robbie Ray throw 96 pitches in 4 1/3 innings Saturday and Zack Greinke 94 pitches in 4 1/3 innings on Sunday. In doing so, the Padres collected 10 hits and seven walks off the two Arizona starters.

“That’s going to lead to winning baseball,” Green said after Sunday’s game. “That’s going to lead to more than three runs a lot more frequently.”


In particular, Margot appeared to have gotten the message. After going 5-for-41 over the previous 11 games, he was 5-for-6 on Sunday.

“Very stubborn as a hitter,” Green said. “Swinging at the pitches he wants to swing at. His zone was a lot smaller than it had been.”

Stubborn hitters are what the Padres are trying to build. This is something that has been preached — a lot — since before spring training began.

The offense put together a stretch, at the very least from late May to mid-June where batters were seeing more pitches and getting on base far more than they had been. That included, as much or more than anyone else, Renfroe and Margot. But both had swing more freely and irresponsibly of late.


In an 18-game stretch beginning May 28, the Padres hit .261 as a team with a .321 on-base percentage. However, over the 18 games leading into Saturday those numbers were .225 and .290.

“I don’t necessarily think we’ve made strides in that area,” Green said Saturday. “And we need to make strides in that area. … It’s just a reality. We talk about it. And we just talked about it as a team a bit ago. If you want to play wining baseball and you face Zack Godley, you don’t chase two-thirds of your pitches outside the strike zone. You just don’t win baseball games that way. It’s time to start stepping up and changing that profile. We’ve talked about it. We need action at this point.”

kevin.acee@sduniontribune.com