SAN DIEGO — Rod Barajas was at his daughter’s soccer game in Del Mar on Saturday morning when general manager A.J. Preller called to say that Andy Green was out as manager of the underperforming San Diego Padres.
“I jumped in the car and came over straight to the field, and he asked me if I wanted to take over for the last eight games. And I said, ‘absolutely,”’ Barajas recalled a few hours before beginning his stint as interim manager against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Green was fired about 12 hours after one of the Padres’ most embarrassing losses this season, which seemed to sum up their second-half collapse.
Barajas, a former big league catcher in his first season as bench coach, managed many of the current Padres players in Triple-A, winning three straight division titles and one Pacific Coast League title.
After signing Manny Machado to a $300 million deal and putting top prospect Fernando Tatis Jr. and right-hander Chris Paddack on the opening day roster, the Padres showed promise early and were 45-45 at the All-Star break.
But they’ve played poorly since, losing Tatis — by far their most exciting player — to a stress reaction in his back in mid-August and tumbling to 69-85. The Padres have lost eight of their last nine, including an ugly, mistake-filled 9-0 loss to Arizona on Friday night.
They became the first team to change managers this season.
“We feel like we’ve got a young talented group that has a chance to be competitive,” Preller said. “We made some progress in the earlier part of season, but as the second half went on we didn’t see the team getting into a spot where we could see continual improvement.
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