Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Safe for now, Mackanin needs to rediscover himself
WASHINGTON >> Pete Mackanin was 40 games under .500 as the Phillies manager, and Matt Klentak knew what would happen if that became 41, or 42, or 50. He knew there would be a hashtag. Maybe it would have been FirePete. Could have been MackMustGo. It might even have been something clever. But it was going to happen. There was bound to be a discussion about the Phillies changing managers, and it was going to grow, and sports-talk hosts looking for an easy eitheror would have manufactured sides and pretended to care about one or the other. So that’s why, with little warning the other day, the general manager exercised the Phillies’ option on Mackanin through 2018 and extended it through 2019.
“Pete is the manager,” Klentak said. “There’s no time frame on that. This is not a temporary thing. Pete’s the manager.”
Mackanin is the manager, but in sports only the owners are not employed on a temporary basis. Everyone else can be traded or cut or fired or demoted. It will be Mackanin’s turn eventually. It’s basically why he has wondered out loud who will be managing when Mickey Moniak, the No. 1 overall pick in the last baseball draft, eventually winds through the minor league process to Citizens Bank Park. It’s just not going to happen this season, and probably won’t happen next. So the topic will be tabled for a while, even if that table is still accompanied by a warm seat.
Thus, the question: What must Mackanin do to win an even longer commitment from the Phillies, who despite the big news of the week will allow him to enter next season on another expiring contract?
Klentak has not unfolded such an outline. But if he did, it would begin with the order for Mackanin to do what he does best and be refreshingly frank.
After Ryne Sandberg quit two seasons ago — eerily, his record at the time was precisely 40 games under .500 too — Mackanin represented a critical voice at a time in Phillies history when it was necessary.
Though Charlie Manuel had his own, legendary way of making his points to players, he rarely had to do more than stroll the lineup card to the umpire. He was blessed with Hall of Fame candidates. There was no reason for him to call out a player in a postgame interview. But after that came Sandberg, a disaster of a manager for one reason: He was terrified of his players, who made him look foolish, with even such an embodiment of mediocrity as Kyle Kendrick emboldened to smear him with criticism.
Initially, Mackanin was different. Though he was never outwardly grumpy or unnecessarily bossy, he was the first to publicly nudge Cesar Hernandez on a regular basis, critiquing the infielder’s plate approach, wincing at his baserunning. And Mackanin’s early treatment of Ryan Howard, a statueeligible franchise legend, was as necessary as it was welcome: Hit left-handed pitching, Mackanin kept saying, or hit the bench. He was a lifetime baseball man, in his 60s, and he saw what the Phillies needed and was not above saying it out loud.
But as his contract grew closer to expiration, Mackanin seemed to soften. Where once he would gently scold players even after victories, recently he had been absolving them after losses. By last week, after a 1-4 homestand, it was almost as if the entire operation were trying to recapture the Sandberg era. In one room, Mackanin was stressing how well the Phillies were playing despite having lost 10 of their last 12, while in the other, 39-year-old renta-reliever Joaquin Benoit was blaming his failures on the coaching staff.
Maybe Mackanin truly believed that the Phillies were better than they’ve shown and he had little reason to holler. But the situation was deteriorating, and Klentak was forced to move. The GM could have fired Mackanin, though it would have been at a personal cost. Klentak and his boss, Andy MacPhail, have been around only since 2015, but their project has not exactly plowed forward.
So what was changing managers going to achieve, other than to reduce the buffer between the front office and the on-field failure?
Klentak could have kept Mackanin employed and waited to exercise the option. Yet he was within hours of that becoming such a day-to-day debate that it would have affected a clubhouse where Benoit had just thrown out the ceremonial first manager-snipe.
The Phillies believe they have a championship-level nucleus growing in the minors. And there was no coincidence that they sent Dusty Wathan, 22 years younger than the 65-year-old Mackanin, to Allentown this season to grow with that group. But it is too soon to promote Wathan or many IronPigs. So, Klentak will wait.
Pete Mackanin did not deserve to be fired. But doesn’t necessarily deserve the chance to manage the Phillies once the farm-grown nucleus had developed and John Middleton began to spend. That has to be earned. And it can’t be earned by a .429 winning percentage.
So he has had a reprieve. He earned that much. To earn another one, he needs to do better. And he has shown before that he can.