NOW OR NEVER

After years of stockpiling minor league talent, the Padres cashed in prospects as they set their sights on winning in 2020.

- JEFF SANDERS

Padres executive chairman Ron Fowler’s big league team had just finished its ninth straight losing season when some of the Padres’ most devout fans sidled up to him at Petco Park.

The organization’s two-day prospect showcase, now an annual event, served as the backdrop for a gathering with the Padres’ most active followers on social media a day after the end of the 2019 season, but the present state of the big league product tugged at Fowler’s patience.

A second manager under his watch had been fired just nine days earlier. The off-the-cuff stream of consciousness that poured out of Fowler that last day in September—“heads will roll, beginning with mine”—echoed the frustration he relayed years earlier on a radio program while criticizing pitcher James Shields. That served as the prelude to using a chunk of money owed to the team’s highest-paid pitcher to acquire Fernando Tatis Jr., then a 17-year-old shortstop who had not yet made his pro debut.

Yes, general manager A.J. Preller was still arranging a future built around youngsters like Tatis, Chris Paddack and a wave of talent still on the rise, but no one ever said the waiting game was easy to see through to the end.

“The fact that we played (.347) baseball after the All-Star Game was absolutely unacceptable,” Fowler said on Halloween at new manager Jayce Tingler’s introductory press conference.

“I watched the team on the field. You saw the team on the field. We were an embarrassment the last three or four weeks of the season and we’re not going to do that.

“If we don’t perform better in 2020 and 2021, we will make changes. That’s absolutely it. A.J. knows that and is comfortable with it and I think so is (Tingler).

“We have to win—and we have to win now. That’s the expectation.”