Outscored 25-2 on the road in the opening series of the 1974 season, then-Padres owner Ray Kroc had had enough when called out his team’s “stupid ball-playing” over the microphone during the home opener. Forty-two years later, Executive Chairman Ron Fowler had a bit more juice behind his appraisal when he took to the team’s flagship radio station Wednesday to label these Padres “miserable failures” and single out the latest effort from the franchise’s richest free agent signee as “an embarrassment.”

“I’m a very competitive individual,” Fowler said Wednesday during an interview on The Mighty 1090. “I think I’ve won a lot more than I’ve lost in my life. This baseball experience has been very frustrating, very embarrassing.

“The performance by our team (Tuesday), I can understand how Kroc would have grabbed the microphone. It’s that frustrating.”

Fowler’s remarks greeted a team returning from a 1-7 road trip that sunk the Padres a season-high 13 games below .500, the last of those games a 16-4 laugher that ended with a backup catcher and utility infielder combining for the final frame after James Shields started the game with 10 runs allowed in 2 2/3 innings.


“To have a starter like Shields perform as poorly as he did (Tuesday),” Fowler said of last year’s $75 million signee, “is an embarrassment to the team, an embarrassment to him.”

Hours later, the Padres began an eight-game homestand answering for their owner’s frustrations in the clubhouse and then answering on the field in a 14-6 win over the Mariners. Pouncing on a team that substituted right-hander Felix Hernandez (strained calf) with left-hander James Paxton, the Padres scored six runs in the first inning and collected two home runs from Wil Myers, Adam Rosales and Alexei Ramirez – two for him – on the heels of Fowler’s harsh remarks.

“I guess I shouldn’t have given up 10 runs; I guess I was the guy,” said Shields, whose ERA rose from 3.06 to 4.28 after his last start. “I’m sure it was more about the frustration of our team losing. I’m frustrated myself. Obviously, I’m not happy with my game (Tuesday). I don’t know if it’s an ‘embarrassment to me,’ but I’m not happy with it. …

“He can say it on the radio, but we’re just as frustrated in this clubhouse.”


Added manager Andy Green: “I think the first thing that comes to mind is his passion, his desire to win, his desire to have something here that the city can be proud of. I think we all share that. I think every single one of us wants to pour everything out to win a game every single day. … But when you’re in that clubhouse, the last thing you can allow is the level of frustration to impact your play. If you carry that burden on your shoulder, it becomes harder to perform on the baseball field.

“That’s when you start seeing the snowball effect.”

Like the 1974 version, these Padres were swept by the Dodgers to start the season.

Only they were outscored 25-0 this time, have been shut out an MLB-worst 10 times to date and rank last in the majors in batting average (.226) and on-base percentage (.283) in a season devoid of any of the optimism that followed a hectic 2015 offseason that injected the organization with star power in the form of Shields, Myers, Matt Kemp and Justin Upton.


They’ve since won just 43.7 percent of their games, although Fowler seemed to absolve Green’s two months in the organization in Wednesday’s assessment.

“It’s on the player(s), but the organization has to accept responsibility for probably having the wrong players,” Fowler said. “We don’t have a team out there right now that is competing effectively. We’re doing everything we can going into the draft and looking at international signings to get some guys who can get us there.

“But in terms of the manager and coaching staff, we’ve got as good a group or a better group than I’ve seen. They’re doing what they need to do. Part of it is on the players. But our job is to get the right players who can be motivated and determined at game time. Right now, we’re not doing it. That’s what frustrating for all of us.”

That sentiment was echoed throughout the clubhouse Wednesday and into the front office as personnel up and down the organization’ echoed Fowler’s sentiment, as surprising as it was to hear to some.


“Hey man, that man writes the checks,” Melvin Upton Jr. said. “I hadn’t really ever dealt with that (sort of criticism from an owners), but guys want to win. That’s the bottom line. No matter what was said, we know we have to find a way to win.

“We’ll take care of what we need to take care of in-house.”

While Kemp – who is making $21.75 million each of the next four seasons – declined to comment specifically on Fowler’s remarks, he, too, acknowledged a frustrating month in which the Padres lost 18 of 29 as he fashioned a .561 OPS in another dismal May.

“I wish I could be playing better,” said Kemp, who leads the Padres with 10 homers. “I know what I’m capable of doing. I had a good April. A bad May. It’s a new month and hopefully a better outcome this month.”


He added: “What we’re doing as a team is not cutting it, but you have to play better.”

That’s a broad, short-term fix.

In the long view, the Padres have placed an emphasis on adding foundation-building talent through next week’s amateur draft and the upcoming international free agency period, both of which figure to weigh heavily in the evaluation of General Manager A.J. Preller’s role in the construction of a team that as far as “winning and losing,” Fowler said, has “been miserable failures.”

“Ron is passionate and wants to win as much as anybody, and we want to do it for him,” Preller said late Wednesday night during a break from preparing for a draft in which the Padres own six of the top 85 picks. “I don’t blame him for being frustrated with the team not playing well, and after a tough road trip, we all feel that.”