The San Diego Padres held a team meeting following Wednesday’s 6-1 loss to the Seattle Mariners, which completed a two-game sweep.
“Unacceptable,” Padres third baseman Manny Machado said of the club’s performance, according to Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The team mustered just one run on two hits against Mariners right-hander Emerson Hancock, who was making his MLB debut.
“I mean, he made some good pitches,” Machado said. “We just couldn’t capitalize on it. But yeah, we’re way better than that, than what we did today.”
The Padres entered play Thursday at 55-60 and trail the Miami Marlins by 4.5 games for the final wild-card spot in the National League.
Padres outfielder Juan Soto took aim at the club’s inconsistency after a fourth straight loss.
“We’ve got to play as a team,” Soto said. “We’ve got to go out there, grind every day. Grind every at-bat. … It’s been really inconsistent. Some days we do, some days we don’t. We gotta do it every day. Days like this series, we just give up. Like literally, we just give up instead of keep grinding, keep pushing. We’ve got to forget about yesterday and keep moving.”
The Padres came into the season with World Series aspirations on the heels of a splashy offseason and a run to the NLCS in 2022. San Diego has the third-highest payroll in MLB at nearly $253 million.
