Padres News: Juan Soto Calls Out Teammates for Giving Up

There's a spark missing far too often for these Padres.

The wheels are falling off the wagon for the Padres. All the good vibes and confidence displayed by the team months ago at FanFest in early February is long gone. Instead, when the players talk these days, it's a blend of cliches and frustration. 

For Juan Soto on Wednesday night, it was more frustration and disappointment.

Following a painful 6-1 loss to the Mariners in Seattle, Soto called out his teammates for not playing complete ballgames.

"We've got to play as a team. We've got to go out there grind every day. Grind every at-bat. ... It's been really inconsistent. Some days we do, some days we don't. We gotta do it every day. Days like this series, we just give up. Like literally, we just give up instead of keep grinding, keep pushing. We've got to forget about yesterday and keep moving."

Via San Diego Union-Tribune

The Padres have lost five of their last six games to fall back to five games under .500 and 4.5 games out of a Wild Card spot. The club is closer to the basement dwelling Rockies than the West leading Dodgers.

There was a long players only meeting held after Wednesday night's loss and the sentiment from it is that this club still has faith in its ability to get up off the mat and go out there and fight.

“It’s never too late, man,” Xander Bogaerts said. “We’ve all been preaching that we’re going to get on a run, and we haven’t so far. All of the guys in this room still deeply believe that it’s going to happen."

The Padres are off on Thursday before starting a key series with the Diamondbacks in Arizona over the weekend. There's still hope in the Friar clubhouse. There is still a twinkling of those good vibes from February here and there. But there are also only 47 games left on the schedule.