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The Padres started this season off as bad as possible. They actually set a record for most consecutive scoreless innings to open a season. That's so bad it's impressive. The rest of the National League West has also been pretty bad. Recently, all five teams were at or below .500. That's no longer the case, but that's partially because they started playing each other again.
The Padres had a brief stretch where they were the only team in the division to have a winning record over their last 10 games played. Some people (mostly John Gennaro), started to get optimistic about the team. Most of those people are already breaking ankles jumping off the bandwagon after they lost their last two games. Broken ankles or no, this is the right call. This team is bad and their underlying statistics back up their bad record. They're not simply unlucky.
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They're probably not a 55-win team, but I don't think anyone ever thought they could be that bad anyway. They're also probably not a 71-win team (which is where they recently peaked). This is a bad team, but that's okay because that's where they're at in the rebuilding cycle. They just need to get younger and actually spend money on amateur talent this summer. Will they? Hopefully, but who knows?