SAN DIEGO — Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” was playing in the home clubhouse at Petco Park when it finally opened to the media after Wednesday’s 4-3 defeat by the Royals. The players on a $250 million team had just held a closed-door meeting in the wake of a series loss to a rebuilding club with one of the league’s lowest payrolls (and one of its worst records). The Padres have been a difficult watch for weeks, and the organization’s best-compensated employees began sensing it themselves long before the boos that could be heard throughout an excruciating afternoon.

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“You can feel the angst from the fans, and we feel it,” Matt Carpenter said. “It’s just a very unhappy time in the clubhouse and anyone following the team. You know, we haven’t been able to execute like we were hoping we would at this point. So something’s got to get done.”

What can be done outside of the walls surrounding Carpenter and his teammates is not entirely clear. Despite the Padres’ record — 20-24, good for fourth place in the National League West — sweeping personnel changes do not appear imminent. The franchise is on its fifth full-time manager since general manager A.J. Preller took over in 2014. Not including advisors and other support staff, the Padres have employed almost three dozen coaches since Preller’s first full season overseeing the franchise in 2015. Many more prospects have been traded out of a farm system that now offers limited help at its upper levels. (The organization’s already-questionable depth thinned a little more Wednesday when catcher Pedro Severino exercised an opt-out in his minor-league deal.)

So, even as the flaws in an expensive, star-studded roster have become glaring, people throughout the sport can agree on at least one thing: A quarter of a billion dollars should buy you much better than fourth place. The people occupying Petco Park’s inner sanctum feel it more acutely than anyone else. The boos that rained from the stands Wednesday were simply another reminder.

“It’s not like we’re playing any better to deserve better. We’re not. And it will continue until we start playing better,” Xander Bogaerts said. “So we got to clean it up in all aspects of the game. All.”

Fernando Tatis Jr. on the boos at Petco Park today: "The way that we're finishing the game, I would boo ourselves too."

— Dennis Lin (@dennistlin) May 18, 2023

San Diego’s ninth loss in 11 games brought another bevy of indictments. The Padres tallied eight hits, nine walks and 12 runners left on base. They went 2-for-9 with runners in scoring position to improve their season average in those situations. They scored a run on a balk as the youthful Royals, for the third day in a row, tried to gift them a win. They repeatedly squandered such generosity while continuing to place inordinate pressure on their pitching staff.

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The Padres have already played 23 games in which they scored three or fewer runs. They have lost 21 of them. The Royals, by comparison, have played 22 such games.

“The way that we’re finishing the game,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said, “I would boo ourselves too.”

In the aftermath of another embarrassing loss, the players on the team with the majors’ third-highest payroll sought to take accountability with their words. Multiple veterans described a disconnect between the club’s pregame preparation — “That’s been on point,” Bogaerts said — and its in-game results. They also agreed it was past time to merely keep talking about doing better.

“Swinging at a fastball middle-middle, you can’t control if you’re going to hit it out or you’re going to pop it up,” Bogaerts said. “But there’s a lot of other stuff that you can really control in this game, and those are the ones that we need to be pinpoint on.”

“I think that you just got to start seeing just committed better at-bats all the way up and down the lineup,” Carpenter said. “We’re not executing well enough. That’s reality. And there’s an element to the game of baseball and in this job — good teams, they execute. So we got to find a way to do it.”

“The expectations for the team, I think, have been in the wrong place if that makes sense,” Joe Musgrove said. “I think the expectations need to be on the quality of work and the expectation of what you’re bringing to the team every day. You know, making sure that you’re showing up and doing all these things right to be your best on the field. The expectations shouldn’t be that we’re going to kick everyone’s ass every night and that we’re going to win 115 games. The expectation is for us to show up, do the work that we need to do and then let it all translate out on the field.”

Musgrove, a leader of the pitching staff and the entire clubhouse, suggested a way for the Padres to relieve some of the pressure that has evidently begun to smother the team.

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“We talked about just getting out of here a little bit maybe, getting together as a group outside of the field,” Musgrove said. “You want to have fun as a group and we haven’t had a whole lot of fun around here lately.”

Thursday night might bring some opportunity. Virtually the entire roster is expected to attend the Padres’ second annual Dinner on the Diamond fundraiser event at Petco Park. Musgrove pointed out that, with players spread out among separate tables, it likely would not be the best opportunity. “We’ll take some time on the road,” Musgrove said. “We got some off days coming up. We’ll try to get together and have a little bit of fun.”

In the meantime, the pressure isn’t going away, especially because the Padres may have to navigate the coming days or weeks without their other main leader. After Wednesday’s loss, manager Bob Melvin said that further imaging on Manny Machado’s left hand — X-rays were negative after the third baseman was hit by a pitch Tuesday — had revealed a small fracture in one of the metacarpal bones.

“We don’t think it’s an (injured list) situation, but we’re going to probably go through (Thursday’s) off-day, see how he feels and see where we are on the weekend,” Melvin said.

Machado, for his part, said he intended to return as soon as his body would allow, “if it’s two days, or if it’s a week or two weeks or six weeks or whatever it is.” He noted he had never broken a bone before. Asked about the boos that rained from the stands, he offered an answer similar to what he had said over the weekend, after a sweep by the Dodgers.

“I don’t blame them. We’re not playing well right now,” Machado said. “There’s an expectation that we had coming into the season, and they expect us to go out there and win every single game. I think collectively as a group we’ve got to go out there and be better as a group. We’ve got to trust the process. Things really aren’t really rolling our way right now, at all.”

Machado was a spectator himself Wednesday, his left hand immobilized by a brace. And although he has been one of the Padres’ most disappointing performers this season, he watched as their flaws only grew more glaring, particularly at the bottom of a top-heavy lineup. Trent Grisham struck out in all four of his at-bats, seeing a total of just 15 pitches. Austin Nola went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts, dropping his average to .151, the third-lowest among major-league hitters with at least 100 plate appearances.

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The Royals, meanwhile, held San Diego to three runs while pitching a bullpen game. Kansas City’s relievers had entered the afternoon with the fourth-highest earned-run average in the majors. As Bob Marley’s voice drifted through the clubhouse, reassuring its listeners that things were going to be all right, the Padres again found themselves fielding questions about their underperformance. And again, merely talking about what they could do to be better.

“We just got to win,” said Nola, who caught an uncharacteristic start from Yu Darvish in another loss. “There’s no excuses. We got to come out and play harder, play with more intensity, and we can’t get outmatched by the other team when it comes to the effort and what we bring every day.

“As you could see today, they outplayed us and it definitely is a wake-up call.”

(Photo of Fernando Tatis Jr.: Orlando Ramirez / USA Today)