Mike Shildt left Padres, ‘made a decision to go home’ in part due to ‘inability to please everyone’

Mike Shildt was worn out and made the decision to leave his job as Padres manager in order to focus on his mental and physical well-being.

Mike Shildt had worn out many members of the Padres’ coaching and support staffs, as well as others around the organization.

Both things are true at the same time, and that’s what makes his decision to step away on Monday so complicated.

“One of the reasons I am going to leave is a frustration with the stress and the inability to please everybody,” Shildt said. “… I made a decision to go home because of this. I’m tired of dealing with it.”

Shildt was responding to the Union-Tribune on Tuesday regarding questions about his management style based on the complaints of a number of people who worked with him the past two years.

Nearly 20 sources — 12 of them who worked with Shildt on a daily basis during the season — have in recent months characterized Shildt as unyieldingly demanding of his coaching staff and the team’s support staff and as having a tendency to micromanage and possessing a quick temper that is easily triggered by questioning or feedback.

In a nearly two-hour conversation on Tuesday, Shildt repeatedly declared he is proud of his accomplishments and how he conducted himself and said more than once that he is “walking away with my head held high.”

He was taken aback by the depth of some grievances about him and disputed that he had acted inappropriately, though he did not deny he was aware of a certain level of discord. He almost exclusively attributed that to some staff members not being on board and/or not knowing what it takes to be part of a championship effort.

“I have to accept that as a part of being a manager in the major leagues,” he said of the inability to make everyone happy. “But it’s one of the factors in my decision to no longer do that — along with the other stresses that come with (the job).”

The choice

Both Shildt and the Padres maintain that his retirement as manager was solely his choice.

Shildt said he is being paid through the end of October. While the financial terms of his contract are not known, numerous people in the industry said he forfeited at least $4 million by walking away from the final two years on his contract. The 57-year-old Shildt, who is unmarried and has no children, said he is financially set.

Shildt explained in an open letter to fans announcing his retirement and earnestly put forth in subsequent conversations that the job took an immense toll on him.

He sounds genuinely and overwhelmingly relieved by his decision to leave.

Some in the Padres organization feel the same way.

Asked during a Zoom call with media members on Tuesday morning about any conflict between Shildt and other members of the organization, Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said: “There’s always going to be tension in a high-performance atmosphere. There’s always going to be disagreements. I think that’s healthy. That’s the nature when you spend 180 days with the same people.”

Reached later Tuesday, Preller declined to elaborate on his comments or his relationship with Shildt.

He did in the call with reporters praise Shildt’s passion, devotion and work ethic.

“We’ve had a lot of success here in terms of winning games,” Preller said. “And I think (that is due) in large part to the job Mike has done as a manager, our coaching staff and our players, and Mike leading that pursuit.”

Preller’s comments regarding his relationship with Shildt were nuanced in a manner befitting the situation.

The Padres intended to retain Shildt for 2026,  multiple team sources said. And there is no evidence that anything that happened in the nine days after the Padres lost their Wild Card Series against the Cubs prompted Shildt to notify the team of his retirement on Saturday.

Preller on Tuesday referred to Shildt’s retirement being “more of a surprise than a shock,” in part because of conversations between the two at season’s end about Shildt being burnt out.

Even before that, however, Shildt sticking around for the duration of his contract seemed far more in question than would be assumed for a manager who led his team to successive playoff appearances.

Shildt said he had been contemplating stepping away since late in the season, and had all but made up his mind to retire when the Wild Card Series ended.

Whatever unknowns remain, the reality is the path that led to Shildt’s early departure was months in the making.

Highly successful

By virtually every account, including in the estimation of his detractors, Shildt is a top-flight game manager and maintains an excellent relationship with his players.

Besides the fact that players have routinely praised him for the level of preparation and the fact that he cares for them, the evidence that they respond to his leadership is clear.

Shildt went 435-340 as manager of the Cardinals from 2018 through 2021 and Padres the past two seasons. His .561 winning percentage is seventh-best among men whose managerial careers extended past 1951. His teams went to the playoffs all five of the full seasons he managed.

When his 2019 team advanced to the National League Championship Series, it ended the Cardinals’ three-year postseason drought. The Cardinals made the postseason the year after his departure, but have missed the playoffs each of the past three seasons.

When Shildt was hired by the Padres in November 2023, they were coming off a highly disappointing season in which a star-studded roster that commanded the third-highest payroll in the major leagues missed the playoffs.

The relationship between manager Bob Melvin and the front office (and Preller in particular) was dysfunctional, and there was a measure of disunity in the clubhouse. Team chairman Peter Seidler died eight days before Shildt was introduced as manager.

Players immediately and repeatedly praised Shildt for empowering them with a new leadership model for governing the clubhouse and getting the team to buy into an ideal of “togetherness” while playing fundamentally sound baseball.

With a payroll that was some $90 million lower than the previous season, the Padres won 93 games before losing to the Dodgers in the National League Division Series in 2024. Payroll was back up to ninth-highest in the majors in ‘25, and the Padres won 90 games before their postseason ended after three games at Wrigley Field.

“We’ve done a lot of winning in the last couple years with Mike as our manager,” Preller said Tuesday. “So I think everybody respects that.”

Shildt does want to eventually work in baseball again, though not as a manager. He said player development is where he hopes to land at some indeterminate time.

Players have always been his mission.

“I do this for the benefit of the players, and I take seriously that I’m part of the caretaker of the player’s career,” he said. “One of the reasons I’ve always had a healthy relationship with players is they know I care about them more than I care about my own career. … I have a responsibility that I and the staff are going to be prepared for the players individually and collectively to make sure we’re organized and prepared for them to have the best chance to be successful so they can have prosperous and rewarding careers.”

Different place, similar story

During spring training in 2022, his first as an adviser with the Padres, Shildt reflected on what led to his being fired by the Cardinals five months earlier.

“I do recognize I care too much,” Shildt said then. “… And so I held accountability to these departments that I didn’t have the autonomy for, and that’s what rubs people wrong. … I know what togetherness looks like. I know what a respectful, accountable conversation looks like. The fact of the matter is nowadays, you can’t have as many accountable conversations.”

He said he “wouldn’t push as hard” if given another opportunity to manage.

“It’s a fine line,” he said. “Because every night is a thin-margin competition, and I respectfully held people accountable.”

The past two seasons have provided clarity on just what winning on the margins means for the highly detailed, highly organized Shildt.

And the two years appear to show he did not alter the way he dealt with the people who worked under him.

The issues that surfaced in San Diego were virtually identical to the issues that several league sources said led to Shildt’s abrupt dismissal in St. Louis following a 90-win season in 2021 and three playoff appearances in three seasons.

Shildt acknowledged Tuesday that the things he was hearing were “eerily similar in the two places I’ve managed.”

The Cardinals have only ever said publicly that Shildt was fired due to  “philosophical differences.” A half-dozen sources, including current and former members of the Cardinals organization and two people who were part of front offices that considered interviewing Shildt in the month after he was fired, said some Cardinals coaches and others threatened to quit if Shildt remained.

That did not occur in San Diego, though multiple coaches indicated they would leave if they found opportunities elsewhere.

Shildt said he has received nearly 1,000 text messages, including an abundance of positive feedback from players, staff members and others in the organization, upon his retirement announcement.

In the course of reporting on Shildt’s relationships with people in the organization, multiple people said they held Shildt in high regard and had never had a negative experience with him.

A couple staff members who acknowledged Shildt pushed extremely hard and that there was discouragement among a number of coaches also said they strongly believed Shildt’s only goal was for his coaches to be the best they could be.

One coach who did not appreciate how Shildt treated him acknowledged he had become a better coach in large part due to Shildt’s demands and feedback.

The Padres’ 2024 and 2025 coaching staffs were largely made up of men who were either relatively new to the major leagues or had not previously coached in the majors. Shildt felt he needed to be more involved than if he had more veteran coaches, several people said.

“I’m secure with who I am and how I’ve treated people,” Shildt said. “I’m not perfect. Yes, there have been hard conversations to hold people to a standard for their job security and their future and our obligation to the organization and the clubhouse and the community.

“Both my managerial tenures, I have had to have difficult conversations for the greater good of the organization … And I did it very well, and I did it respectfully. And we were successful. We won baseball games, and to win is ultimately my job.”

Shildt, from the start of his time in San Diego, was concerned with leaving a legacy by helping to foster a culture of growth along with success. It was also a priority for him, several people said, to make coaches’ families feel welcome and appreciated. He spoke often of being a force for good in a world beset by negativity.

Last offseason, as part of a staff gathering, he asked coaches to submit to him their career aspirations so that he could know how to best help them achieve those goals.

Shildt has on occasion noted that he has held “every job in a clubhouse,” something he considered a badge of honor.

Shildt is one of eight MLB managers ever to have not played at any level professionally. But he is often referred to as a baseball lifer.

That life in the game began at 8 years old, and by 10 he was a clubhouse attendant for the Double-A Charlotte O’s. He coached at the high school and college levels, was a minor-league coach and manager and then a major league coach and manager.

He had long talked about only wanting to stay in the job long enough to build up a staff and influence a culture positively.

He maintained Tuesday that all of his dealings as manager of the Padres were for the “greater good of others” and that a part of his hurt in knowing people had complained about his style was that he always had people’s backs.

“I can accept I had a high standard and I held people to a high standard for the betterment of the players and organization,” Shildt said. “That’s my job. I am completely aware I challenged the staff.”

His methods

Shildt helped make the Padres better. Everyone said that.

No one said the team would be better without him, though plenty were looking forward to the opportunity to do so.

What is clear is that there is a disconnect between what Shildt and others he has worked with in San Diego and St. Louis feel is an appropriate management style.

No one has ever questioned Shildt’s drive to win. His intentions are not really even an issue for many of his detractors. His methods are.

What was striking was the consistency in the assessments of those who had incurred his wrath. (The people who spoke for this story were granted anonymity in order to speak freely and, in many cases, because they were not authorized to speak publicly.)

Shildt largely left governing of the clubhouse to players and made it a priority to exhibit patience and deference to them. He was,  according to several people, often the opposite with his coaching staff and members of the support staff. Those people said that would sometimes happen within a matter of seconds, as he berated a staff member before walking out into the clubhouse with a smile on his face.

Three players were asked about the working relationship between Shildt and his coaches. Two acknowledged at least some knowledge of tensions but said it had no effect on the team’s performance.

But the coaching staff’s morale was routinely described as low.

Throughout this season, people in the organization said, tensions rose as Shildt became more demanding and seemingly entrenched in his beliefs about how the team should be run.

As the Padres continued to win, sources said, those below and above Shildt were reluctant to push for his ouster or even complain too vociferously. However, it remained a persistent topic among many of them even as they also sought to remain focused on their jobs.

Some coaches also resigned themselves to simply surviving because there is not an abundance of major league opportunities. Multiple coaches said they wanted to win and felt the Padres afforded that chance and they wanted to be part of the realization of a goal. They also said their love for the players kept them around.

The Padres enlisted people internally to work with Shildt regarding his penchant to snap at colleagues and even superiors who he perceived were questioning him, according to multiple sources. The plan for the offseason was for there to be more discussions and work done regarding his interactions with staff and media.

To some extent, it was his interactions with the media that shone a light on Shildt’s behavior.

People all over the organization regularly tuned in to watch Shildt’s postgame news conferences. Their curiosity was not so much about the manager’s insight into the game as much as what happened when the manager was questioned.

Shildt treated many queries as if they were personal attacks. Even innocuous questions could cause him to lash out, either acting as if the question had no basis or causing him to rail against perceived slights.

What unfolded in the interview room would be viewed by those who worked for and with Shildt with head shaking and sometimes with gallows humor.

Their dismay was not just that the organization’s most forward-facing employee, the only one required to speak publicly hundreds of times each season, came across as defensive and combative.

It was, they said, a reflection of how Shildt often conducted himself behind the scenes.

Many in the organization spoke over the past several months of repeated angry outbursts and what were painted as unproductive and destructive communication tactics. Shildt often made employees feel silly for suggestions or what they deemed helpful information, but he then would sometimes complain that they had not prepared him for situations.

Some veteran coaches lamented that the coaches lower on the totem pole bore the brunt of Shildt’s vexation.

Others spoke of Shildt believing he had communicated to a coach what he wanted out of a drill or a player. Sometimes, they said, it was not communicated in a way that was clear, yet Shildt would berate the coach when something was not done the way he thought it should have been.

Multiple witnesses to these tirades independently offered virtually identical accounts. Details of certain instances are being withheld to protect the anonymity of those involved, including some who did not speak for this article.

But it was not just those below him that were subject to Shildt’s indignation.

On more than one occasion, according to multiple sources, Preller would tell a colleague he was going in to talk to Shildt about a topic and then joke that he would be prepared to “duck.”

There were, according to several people, tensions between the two. And Shildt told some people he did not feel supported by the front office in some ways. Others characterized that as untrue and said Shildt often appeared to want it both ways — to have the front office involved in certain situations and to not interfere in many other instances.

In his Tuesday morning call with the media, Preller characterized their working relationship as positive and productive. Shildt has publicly maintained the same.

No apologies, regrets

It cannot be discounted the negative effect that expectations — internal and external — had on Shildt.

He often seemed bothered by what was written and talked about in the media and on social media. He even acknowledged that he internalized many comments and compliments from fans as a further imperative to win a World Series.

Shildt said he received death threats late in the season. And he routinely brought up to people in the organization and to media members about how people outside the organization perceived him and the job he was doing.

Shildt spoke over the past three days of a routine that for 220 days a year — from the start of spring training through the final out — involved him waking up, working and going to bed. He fretted about virtually every detail of his job and other people’s jobs. He felt compelled to pick up the slack for any staff member he believed was incapable.

Shildt spoke the day his announcement was made public of feeling “free” and having “no regrets.”

Over the past two days, several people in the organization spoke to the dichotomy of truths regarding Shildt and how his tenure ended.

Shildt wrestled to some extent with the same thing as he spoke on Tuesday.

“I acknowledge and won’t apologize for having high standards,” Shildt said. “I own that. I had to have hard conversations with players and staff. And of 80 people in a clubhouse, a high percentage of those, I was able to partner with and work toward a common goal. And clearly that was effective, as reflected by our record on the field. There are going to be people who are going to push back and you’re not going to please. And after trying to partner with people, I had to hold people accountable. I understand people don’t like that. … That standard is very high for me, and I take it very seriously. To the point of burnout.”