The Philadelphia Phillies announced on Friday that Pete Mackanin will not return as the team’s manager for the 2018 season, and will instead move into an advisory role in the front office.
I think the Phils are making a good decision by shaking up the coaching staff. While Rhys Hoskins has made the last month and a half bearable, the fact is that very few players developed positively under Mackanin this year. Odubel Herrera, Maikel Franco, and Cameron Rupp all either regressed significantly or failed to take steps forward, while guys like Jerad Eickhoff and Vince Velasquez failed to make improvements in the pitching staff.
This isn’t all Mackanin’s fault, but the expectation was that the Phils were taking some steps forward, and should have been better than a bottom-three team in the major leagues.
It’s just hard to justify returning a manager that came close to losing 100 games. Plain and simple, its just time for a fresh voice from outside of the organization, which is something that has been overdue by about half a decade for this franchise.
The change at the managerial position will represent the first time the Phils have gone into an offseason looking to fill the role with a guy not previously involved with the organization since the end of the 2003 season when the team would eventually hire Charlie Manuel to replace Larry Bowa.
Since then, the Phils have twice fired their manager and replaced them for multiple years with the guy who took the interim tag. Ryne Sandberg, who ranks up there with former Sixers’ disaster Eddie Jordan as one of the worst disasters this town has ever seen, took over for Manuel as the team’s interim manager before taking on the role permanently. And Mackanin would eventually replace Sandberg halfway through the 2015 season before being granted the job on a full-time basis by management.
The pressure is now on General Manager Matt Klentak to start kicking this rebuild into high gear. With pieces like Hoskins, Nick Williams, and Aaron Nola, along with a plethora of money to spend in free agency, the Phillies shouldn’t have trouble luring a pretty well-qualified candidate to town.
Galvis, Hernandez, Altherr, Herrera, Nola, Morgan, Knapp all progressed. This is continued cheap shot lazy fandom instead of thought out journalism
Ok, let’s look at these one at a time.
Not sure where you see some great improvement in Galvis and Hernandez…they’ve been exactly what they’ve been in the past. Competent starting infielders. But neither guy has been exceptionally better than they’ve been in the past. Galvis has always been a .250-hitter with a little bit of pop. Hernandez, always a guy that has hit for average. What they did this year was nothing new. Just because a couple guys didn’t go backwards doesn’t mean they improved…because it isn’t improvement. They’ve just maintained what they’ve done in the past. Credit to them for that. If you want to stretch it, fine, credit Pete for those two not regressing.
Adam Morgan and Andrew Knapp progressed? Into what exactly? Morgan was an absolute gas can almost every time he was asked to pitch in a situation other than garbage time. Yeah his ERA has gone down significantly, but the majority of his appearances came as a long reliever when the team was already hopelessly behind.
Knapp has looked OK. Maybe he’s a nice second catcher? But again, its not like came here and tore it up throughout the year, he couldn’t do enough to outright beat out Cameron Rupp for the full-time role, so again I’m not sure what improvement you’re looking at there.
So you have Adam Morgan as your new Clay Condrey, and Knapp a solid bench piece. Terrific, why isn’t Pete getting manager of the year considerations?
As for Herrera…yes, his second half was much better than his first. But look at his body of work for the entire year. He was so bad over the first three months of the season, he was VERY close to getting sent to the minors. He hit his way out of it, but the boneheaded mistakes were still there in the field, on the basepaths, and his stupid bat flipping antics. His average is down, his walks are down, he’s hit more doubles, but again I’m not sure that you can say he’s developed from what he was when he first got here.
As for Nola? I would credit his season much more towards him being healthy finally as opposed to Mackanin developing him. And obviously that’s not to say Pete had nothing to do with it at all, but it’s obvious that health was the primary source of Nola’s issues last year.
And look, this sounds like I’m piling on Mackanin, but I’m really not. No one is saying that he was a god-awful manager. He’s certainly head and shoulders better than Ryne Sandberg. But it wasn’t an unreasonable expectation that this team should have been better than a 65-win club.
And given how this team has had more than one instance of a highly-rated prospect coming here and not delivering on potential or regressing after they initially come up (Franco being the poster child of this), it’s time for a fresh voice. Pete had his chance for two and a half years, and the bottom line is that they got a look at what he could do with a team comprised of mostly young players, and decided he wasn’t good enough to be the guy moving forward.
They have a nice young core with Hoskins, Williams, Alfaro, Altherr, Nola, etc. They need to try and find a guy that can make sure these guys continue to move forward, there’s too much at stake for these guys to fail.
In the last couple of years galvis has gone from a barely serviceable utility guy to a potential gg Ss, leader, and solid pro. By the way you talk the manager is responsible for regression in players but the players are responsible for growth… can’t win.
Bottom line Pete was retained to keep the ship steady during tough times. The team never quit, played hard through the bad times, learned to be professional etc. players matured and for the most part got better. On to the next chapter. He was never going to be the guy at the helm when they started winning…the GM wants his own guy for that as it should be.
Herrera hitting 290 top five hitter in baseball since June and that’s called regression
Who I don’t want them to hire as manager is Ruben Amaro —
Who I would hire is Raul Ibanez, I think he does a decent job at ESPN.
Who I think they want is current Oriole manager Buck Shoewalter.
Who probably deserves the job, Juan Samuel.
Who I think they hire is their double A and Triple A manager Dusty Wathan.
I think they hire a nerd… young and analytical guy.
Not sure how a guy at espn is a candidate? This in the city where an OC with one team is not qualified to be a HC…. duh.
Buck is Petes age and there is no way
Sammy is possible given the Latin players…. dunno a thing bout triple A guy
My bet is some nerd we don’t know