Padres open manager search as two former interim managers meet in the NLCS

If you’re looking for irony, it’s playing on national television this week. As the Padres launch another manager search, two of their former interim skippers, Dave Roberts and Pat Murphy, are across the diamond from each other in the NLCS. Roberts, who wore the interim tag for a blink in 2015, now helms the Dodgers. Murphy, who finished that same Padres season after Bud Black’s midyear exit, just guided Milwaukee to the league’s best record in 2025. Their duel is a reminder that San Diego’s dugout once held voices who later became October fixtures, just not in brown and gold.

That juxtaposition says something hard but useful about the Padres’ last decade. Since Black’s departure, San Diego has cycled through seven managers: Roberts (one game), Murphy (interim), Andy Green, Jayce Tingler, Rod Barajas (eight games), Bob Melvin, and Mike Shildt. The revolving door never allowed a single vision to compound year-over-year. While the roster grew more star-studded and the payroll more aggressive, the most important throughline — how the Padres prepare, decide, and adjust from March to October, kept changing uniforms and voices.

Padres manager search starts amid NLCS duel of two ex Padres interim skippers

The turbulence didn’t happen in a vacuum. Reports of leadership strain and cultural inconsistency surfaced as early as 2023. Questions about whether the club had a durable “winning language,” whether player dynamics were aligned with front-office priorities, and whether day-to-day processes could survive the inevitable stress of a 162-game grind. The Padres’ underperformance that year gave those questions teeth; chemistry and cohesion became as much a storyline as OPS and ERA.

Shildt’s tenure seemed to quiet the noise. Two postseason trips in two years suggested a stabilizing effect, a dugout cadence players could trust. But his abrupt retirement reopened familiar doubts. If steadiness at the top can’t be guaranteed, what keeps the blueprint from fraying when the schedule tightens and the stakes rise? The answer has to come from the next hire, and from the way San Diego structures power around that hire.

That’s the real work of this search: not just picking a name, but choosing a model. The Padres need durable alignment between the manager, the pitching group, and the front office, clear decision rights on bullpen lanes, communication that travels cleanly from El Paso to Petco, and a shared in-game vocabulary so the plan doesn’t change with the day’s lineup card. Locking in Ruben Niebla’s role and philosophy, then hiring to complement it, would turn a churn narrative into a continuity play.

There’s also a market reality to consider. Free agents don’t only sign to numbers; they sign to environments. Uncertainty at manager can complicate target fits and timelines. A swift, coherent hire, one that players and agents can see and understand keeps the Padres competitive in conversations that will define 2026.

The NLCS won’t be decided in San Diego, but it can still teach the Padres something. Roberts and Murphy illustrate what happens when a franchise commits to a dugout identity and lets it mature. The Padres’ opening is a chance to finally do the same — choose clarity over churn, process over personality, and a manager who can turn a talented roster into a seasonal habit of winning.