Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Phils may not need more changes to compete
Don’t expect 2020 contenders to regurgitate 2019 failures
PHILADELPHIA >> Take a pencil, scribble a line through the record. Take it, shred it, forget about it. Look at whatever happened to the 2019 Phillies and assume that something went very wrong. Assume many things went very wrong. Many things did.
Forget it all, the failure of a noble project that should have yielded better than an 81-81 record.
Forget it. Reset the table. Return to the starting gate. Try it again.
In 30 days, pitchers, catchers and too many Phillies who tried to act like pitchers and catchers will reassemble in Clearwater, Fla. for the do-over. The best reason to believe that it will unfold better for them this time is to ask one question: Was everyone so wrong?
Were the writers and analysts wrong when so many of them predicted excellence for the Phillies last season? Were the players wrong, too, when they said the same things? Were the Washington Nationals, who would wind up winning the whole thing, that wrong when, before the Phillies’ first visit to Nationals Park, acknowledged almost to a man that Bryce Harper’s new team would be tough to beat?
“It’s a pretty good time to be Bryce Harper right now,” reasoned Nationals’ All-Star relief pitcher Sean Doolittle. It looked that way. It should have been that way. It wasn’t that way, and there were reasons. And one reason, above the rest, was an ill-constructed coaching staff overseen by the wrong manager for the wrong city at the wrong time.
While Gabe Kapler had his strengths, among them a brilliance in lineup-construction based on tenthlevel baseball reasoning, he lacked the one thing that separates the ordinary managers from the greats. He did not, no matter how often he would argue otherwise, inspire all of his players to play as if a pennant were on the line. If anything, he was considered an annoyance, an inconvenience, a reason for too many players to spin on their chairs and turn toward their lockers whenever the manager would stroll through the room, perhaps with some unwelcome advice.
Kapler’s outer office, where his coaching staff toiled, was a sink hole of incompetence. A team that would try to win with a largely unproven pitching staff would trust a 38-year-old pitching coach, Chris Young, who lacked every reasonable credential for that position at the major-league level. The hitting coach was John Mallee, a newer-age thinker who had his players thinking too much. So baffled were the Phillies by Mallee’s demands that John Middleton, not really a baseball man, rightly ordered him off the property at midseason and asked Charlie Manuel to restore some sense around the batting cage.
This year will be different. Though Joe Girardi, like Kapler, does a large part of his managing from a stack of computer printouts, he is anything but a clubhouse push-over. He will not uncork embarrassing post-game press conferences and excuse players striking out. He will not expect slogans, scrawled on the clubhouse whiteboards, to help.
And here’s recommending he take a fungo bat to that clubhouse smoke machine. In front of his players. And on TV. Live.
Girardi’s pitching coach will be Bryan Price, 57, a former manager of the Reds, a former pitching coach for the Mariners and Diamondbacks. He may succeed. He may not. But he will not be characterized as unqualified. Manuel, having deserved a less-stressful semi-retirement, stepped aside as planned.
Joe Dillon, 44, is the new hitting coach. He was the assistant hitting coach last season in Washington. A World Series championship earned him the promotion.
In the room, things will be different. That will begin with the essential swap of Cesar Hernandez, a dour, self-centered ultimate loser lacking any baseball instinct for former Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius, a noted leader and in-room inspiration. Maikel Franco is gone, and he could hit with some power and field at a phenomenal level. But no fewer than three managers, each with a different style, found themselves exasperated by the guy. Why make Girardi become the fourth?
Though the Phillies weren’t “a little stupid” with their offseason spending, as Middleton proudly proclaimed a year earlier, they were not cheap, the way they used to be cheap. They sprung for Gregorius, who played for and impressed Girardi in New York. They supplemented Aaron Nola at the top of the rotation with strong-armed free-agent Zack Wheeler, who struck out a buck-95 hitters for the Mets last year.
So the Phillies took what they had, added a good starting pitcher, upgraded the clubhouse leadership structure, hired a real pitching coach, hitting coach and manager, and barely lost anything.
Their lukewarm 2019 season is fair reason to doubt that they are any closer to the top of a division dominated by the Braves. Rhys Hoskins needs a bounce-back season, but Dillion can help. Andrew McCutchen, though 33, had more than ample time to recover from serious knee damage, will re-inject his professionalism into the mix and be the leadoff hitter Kapler deserved. Jake Arrieta, a legendary competitor, has had time to recover from manageable elbow surgery and could be a useful No. 3 starter. Zach Eflin and Vince Velasquez, whose natural pitching gifts were never in question, will benefit from the addition of Price. So run it back. Let Harper continue on his path to the Hall of Fame. Plant McCutchen at the top of the order for 150 games. Enjoy J.T. Realmuto in a contract year. Watch Scott Kingery and Adam Haseley continue to become stars. Benefit from Gregorius’ power, as a hitter, as a leader. Appreciate that Girardi is a decorated, proven manager. Rely on the laws of average that the bullpen cannot be as decimated by injury as it was a year earlier.
Then, once more, ask: Was everybody so wrong about the 2019 Phillies?
If they weren’t, then toss it all out and try again.
To contact Jack McCaffery, email him at jmccaffery@21st-centurymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery