The San Diego Padres relieved skipper Bud Black of his duties Monday while elevating bench coach Dave Roberts as a provisional interim manager.
Roberts said he would put his hat in the ring for permanent field general as the club seeks a replacement for the rest of the 2015 season.
Padres General Manager A.J. Preller said, “I will try to make the call here pretty quickly.”
Asked how Black took the news Monday morning, Preller said, “He’s a true professional. He took it the way I thought he would. Obviously, I’m sure he didn’t agree but felt like — for the good of the organization — he wasn’t going to make an issue.”
To fill the manager slot, the Padres will interview a “handful of guys internally,” Preller said at a news conference Monday afternoon at Petco Park.
Preller said the remainder of the season will be in the hands of what he called an interim manager — “with the chance to show he is the guy we’re going for.”
Preller confirmed that Pat Murphy, now the manager of the Padres’ Triple-A affiliate, the El Paso Chihuahuas, is headed to San Diego to be among those interviewed.
Earlier in the season, San Diego’s administration office didn’t allow Murphy to leave the organization to take the Brewer’s head bench coaching job under Craig Counsell. That created speculation about whether the organization was grooming him to be Black’s replacement.
Roberts said that he too will talk about the manager position with Padres general manager after Monday night’s game.
“It’s definitely something I have aspired to,” Roberts said, but “I didn’t envision it under these circumstances.”
Preller said no one game or incident caused the decision, but rather a frustration with inconsistency of play.
“I had a sense the way things were playing out that it was sufficient time to make the call,” he said. “There’s still a lot of the season left. There’s a lot more to be written on the Padres season.”
The general manager said he was not blaming Black or anyone else specifically for the Padres performance so far, but going forward he wanted to see some “quality winning baseball” and the team to be a playoff contender that plays with “some edge and some fight.”
“I’ve seen a lot of that in spurts this year, but I want to try to see more of that,” the general manager said.
With fewer than 100 games to play in the season, Preller said it felt like the right point to make the decision.
“I wanted to see in the last two weeks how things played out,” he said. “Ultimately, last night I just felt comfortable making the decision.” The Padres lost to the Dodgers 4-2.
Preller admitted that the Padres have been internally looking for a “possible fit for next year” for manager for the past eight months, and decided they wanted to “jump start” the team now for next year.
Asked why Black wasn’t replaced before the start of this season, Preller said, “Buddy has a lot of good qualities, and I wanted to give him an opportunity to work with a team that potentially had a little more talent to see if he could profit with that kind of club.”
Roberts said he was “surprised and emotional” about Black’s firing. Asked how the team took the news, he said: “They were surprised, but a lot of guys have played a lot of years in the big league and understand the nature of this business.
“They all respected Buddy.”
Roberts said he spoke to Black after the veteran manager was given his notice, calling him unemotional and “very stable.”
“It’s only natural, when he’s been here so long, that he felt there was some unfinished business, and he really believed in this group of guys and to not be able to see it through” disappointed him.
Was the coaching staff aware of Black’s job was in jeopardy?
“Speaking from a coaching side,” Roberts said, “I think that Buddy kept a lot of that away from us. We were just focused on the day-to-day. I really don’t know how much it weighed on Buddy. … but he obviously knew that expectations were high.”
What did Roberts want his players to know going forward?
“We’ve all got to look at ourselves in the mirror and be accountable,” he said. “We have to keep our focus and not let things that are out of our control distract us.”
The Padres are 32-33, third place in the National League West, five and a half games behind the first-place Dodgers and four games back of the Wild Card.
Black was hired in 2006, compiling a 649-713 record during his time at the helm. He was named 2010 National League manager of the year after leading the Padres to 90-72 record, the most wins by San Diego since a franchise-record 98 in 1998.
Dave Roberts has been a coach with the Padres since 2011 and played with the team in 2005-06.
— City News Service contributed to this report.
