Padres News: Justin Upton on Why It Went Wrong…

The Padres Justin Upton was interviewed by Marty Caswell of the Mighty 1090 the other day and had some interesting things to say. He talked about the firing of Bud Black, all of the new players for the team, Matt Kemp, free agency, and how the Padres did not measure up to high expectations the club had going into spring training.

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On the Padres why it didn’t work: “We just didn’t play very well during the middle part of the season. You can look back and say we lost Wil Myers, Brandon morrow, we had some injuries. Those things were hard but in the end we just didn’t play very well together.”

Upton dismissed the idea that the team didn’t click together, but talked about when the team hit tough teams it challenged them. He said they did gel after the All-Star break but by then it was too little too late.

Caswell then asked about the big player press conference and asked if Upton thought that the Padres had the right pieces to make a run to win the division. “Yea, I think so. Looking at our roster we could have done better than we did but those things happen….It just didn’t work out for us.”

Caswell also brought up the past and the firing of Bud Black early into the season. After all, though Black has been the Padres manager since 2007, he had only been the manager for a majority of the revamped roster since Spring Training started in March or in the case of Craig Kimbrel since the start of the regular season. Was the timing bad and did it hurt the team? “Being a new guy here in the Padres organization I think it did take a toll on the team. The new guys were just getting used to him and changing faces it took time to regroup and get behind Pat…”

Naturally, that question led to asking how well did interim manager Pat Murphy control the troops?

“Murph has done what he could to help the team and at the end of the day we just didn’t get it done on the field.” Not the most resounding vote of confidence from the Padres star player.

Going for the positive angle, Upton was then asked about what good signs he saw this year?

“A lot of guys in this clubhouse made strides towards becoming better and to be competitive day in and day out. I think as a whole as a team we know what it takes to win ballgames – we just didn’t do it consistently enough.”

Next it was asked what it was like being able to play with Matt Kemp this season: “Matt is a competitor and you can see from his second half he still has a lot left in the tank. He’s a leader and it was special to play with a guy who is that elite of a player.”

Last Justin Upton’s impending free agency was brought up. He mentioned that of course he loves San Diego (how can you not?) but that he would look at a lot of factors when deciding where to go next year:

“Decide where I want my family to be for X amount of years. I can’t worry about it right now and for the future I don’t know what is going to happen.”

It was a great interview from both Upton and Marty Caswell, as Upton can look back early on a season that went awry. The full video interview can be found here:

Padres News: Justin Upton on Why It Went Wrong…

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