Offered a chance to respond to harsh criticism from Padres co-owner Ron Fowler, Braves slugger Matt Kemp declined to comment on Friday before his team faced the Cardinals.
The Padres traded Kemp to the Braves last weekend. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Fowler, during a meeting with Padres fans Wednesday night in San Diego, said that Kemp and other players the Padres recently traded "had a bad attitude."
“I’ll be damned if we’re going to pay high-priced talent to sit on their butts and not perform,” Fowler said, according to The Union-Tribune.
Fowler added that a letter Kemp posted on The Players' Tribune web site is "a bunch of b.s." In the letter, Kemp expressed his excitement for joining the Braves while thanking San Diego fans.
Kemp wrote that he “had begun to lose some of my love for the game” and acknowledged that he had “gained a reputation for being selfish, lazy and a bad teammate.”
“While I may not agree with all the criticism I received in the past few years —and while I believe that a lot of it was unmerited — I take full responsibility for my shortcomings,” Kemp wrote. “And I promise you, Atlanta: Those days are gone.”
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