Spurned Padres managerial candidate takes high road on Craig Stammen question

He could’ve gone scorched earth. Nick Hundley poured time, trust, and a full blueprint into the Padres’ managerial process, only to watch a familiar face from across the table emerge as the final choice. The reveal that Craig Stammen — who’d sat in on interviews with candidates, including Hundley — would be the one leading San Diego into 2026 practically begged for backlash.

Fans and observers didn’t have to squint to see the storyline: inside guy sits in, inside guy walks out with the job. It felt strange. It felt layered. It felt, to a lot of people, like something that might not sit right in most clubhouses.

Hundley isn’t pretending those optics don’t exist. He just refuses to weaponize them.

Nick Hundley refuses to fan flames over Padres’ Craig Stammen decision

Instead of lighting matches, Hundley has taken the high road, making it clear he holds no resentment toward Stammen and refusing to feed any narrative that this was some kind of betrayal. 

There’s no doubt he wanted the opportunity. But he’s also been around this game long enough to understand how front offices operate, how plans evolve, and how quickly “advisor in the room” can become “name at the top of the board” if the right people believe in you. In Hundley’s telling, this isn’t a scandal; it’s a business decision that just happens to land in a gray area fans love to pick apart.

Hundley has openly acknowledged that from the outside, the process is going to raise eyebrows. Stammen participated in the interviews, gathered information, listened as candidates laid out their blueprints for the Padres’ future, and then wound up in the manager’s chair himself. That’s not nothing.

But rather than twist that into bitterness, Hundley frames it as an unusual set of circumstances more than a malicious setup. This is a sport where relationships, trust, timing, and internal evaluations all blur together, and sometimes that produces outcomes that feel off-kilter without being outright wrong.

What cuts through for Hundley is the way Stammen handled it once the dust settled. After the hire, Stammen didn’t duck the awkwardness. He called Hundley directly and apologized for how the situation unfolded. It didn’t change the outcome, but it did make one thing clear: this wasn’t some ex-teammate happily sliding a knife between the ribs. It read as respect. A recognition that Hundley had poured time, thought, and credibility into the process, and that he deserved to hear it straight from the source, not piece it together from tweets and push alerts.

In the end, Hundley’s response says as much about him as it does about the Padres’ decision. He’s disappointed without being bitter, honest without being inflammatory, candid about how “weird” it looks while still giving Stammen credit for owning his side of it.