Padres controversy erupts after longtime San Diego radio host gets fired

One Southern California radio host believes another might have gotten fired at the behest of the Padres.

John Kentera was let go from Audacy-run station 97.3 The Fan in San Diego, the flagship radio station of the Padres, last week.

Longtime San Diego sports personality Scott Kaplan speculated on his own YouTube program that Kentera’s propensity to be critical of the Padres factored into The Fan’s decision.

“I have no insight of any kind. I don’t know anybody who works at that radio station, but here’s my thought,” Kaplan started, as covered by Barrett Sports Media.

“I’ll bet you that Coach Kentera was so tied in with (former Padres manager) Bob Melvin… And I’ll bet you that coach was so blunt with his criticism of the Padres — and I saw people accusing him of being a racist on Twitter, because he’s not into the Caribbean style of play and bat flipping and whatever. He’s an old white guy. What do you expect them to do? Love that? He’s an old-school kind of coach.”

“My guess is there is no program director at this radio station that makes that decision,” Kaplan continued.

“Too big of a decision. And I would bet you that the corporate company in New York is like ‘We don’t care. We don’t care about this guy. He barely makes any money. We don’t care.’ I would bet you the Padres were like, ‘Hey, he was tied in with Melvin. He was very, very critical of our organization.

“And guess what we want? We need people who are cheerleaders. We need people to support our product.’”

The Padres organization disputed the remarks.

“The claims made by Scott Kaplan were baseless and false,” the team told The Post in a statement. 

“Station management of 97.3 The Fan is solely responsible for their programming decisions, and the Padres provided no feedback on their lineup change.”

After Kaplan’s comments went viral, a source with knowledge of The Fan told Awful Announcing that “the decision was not about any influence from the Padres, but rather the station wanting to modernize its lineup,” and that the move was “the station’s decision alone.”