Mackanin’s rebuilding project is crumbling around him
PHILADELPHIA » So on the afternoon of the season’s 65th game, in the third year of the Great Rebuild, Phillies Project Manager Pete Mackanin decreed a new phase of construction...
Back to the drawing board?
“We’ve got to be better,” Mackanin said prior to Thursday’s home-and-home series wrapup (finally) against the Boston Red Sox. “We’re finding out this year again who’s going to be here in the future. And they’ve got to do better than that. Those numbers don’t lie.”
Start all over again? As in, trade everybody like they did two years ago, play the scrubs and the callups and keep talking about the future?
Such restarts aren’t easy to do, especially when you’re starting over with essentially nothing, anyway.
For supporting evidence, the numbers Mackanin was referring to were almost mind-blowing: Five of his offensive regulars have on-base percentages better than .300. Five. And of those five, one is a new regular (Daniel Nava), while another (Cesar Hernandez) will be on the disabled list at least until the All-Star break.
This is just another statistical indicator the Phillies can’t easily produce runs. Of course, just one look is all it would take to see how deep this team has regressed into what is still being referred to in the clubhouse as “a slump.”
Slump? This is a collective collapse.
Heading into the game against the Red Sox, the Phillies had lost eight straight games. And 23 of the last 30... And 34 of the last 44... Overall, they had won fewer than a third of their games, on a priceless pace for about 109 losses. That would only tie the mark for second-most losses in franchise history, but hey, if they try hard, the record is 111. Go team. You don’t have to break your memory banks to come up with the last time talk of three-digit season loss totals dominated the Phillies conversation. It was just in 2015, the year of the Great Selloff, when the remnants of a onceproud championship franchise went to hell ... and to Texas, L.A., and Washington.
But in getting rid of the bulk of old-guard players, a certain spunk was unearthed in the Citizens Bank Park clubhouse. Oh, they were bad, but they managed enough spirit and overachieving performances from young hopefuls like Maikel Franco, Cesar Hernandez and Freddy Galvis to somehow avoid the century losing mark, finishing 63-99 that season.
Not quite historically bad, but still their worst finish in 46 years.
But that came with a cache of prospects to ease the pain, and everyone knew that while it would take time, it was only going to get better from here.
Indeed it did the very next year, as the Phils had a fast start, then “slumped,” and would finish 71-91. But the prospects moved up a collective level, everything looked good, a few free agents were signed ... this was not a contending team, but the 2017 Phillies certainly appeared to have the stuff to get their Great Rebuild on level ground, just as the Project Manager said they should.
So they went into battle against the Red Sox and pitcher Chris Sale Thursday, and the Phillies found themselves 22 games under that .500 level they had projected to see earlier in the spring.
The Great Rebuild has gone kaput, which is probably why Mackanin’s new projections call for a Great Restart.
Or at least a pretty good reboot in the...
“There’s still a lot of season left, and I’m hoping that these guys show progress and improve over what they did last year,” Mackanin said. “We haven’t been playing up to where I thought we would be playing at this point. But I think we’re better than what we’re playing. My projection was play .500 as we go through the first part of the season, and watch the players develop and get better and learn from their mistakes and move forward, and so far this hasn’t happened.
“Certainly I’d rather be a little further along than we are right now. Numbers mean something.”
So does show-and-tell. These first several weeks of the season haven’t been historically bad, either. Just mathmatically embarrassing.
But mere numbers can’t completely capture the offensive ineptitude and sadness of the starting rotation.
They’ve had some injuries, but not a whole lot of them. And the ongoing saga of Franco’s Flop of a season has shown occasional signs of turning around, like the way he had four hits Tuesday in Boston, which came, of course, in a losing effort.
So maybe the restart is quietly beginning, after all?
Odubel Herrera and his dead batting eye came alive just in time to avoid being sent to parts unknown in the minors. It’s also helped that Aaron Altherr is on the fast track to becoming a very good hitter now, and that Howie Kendrick came off the injured list to provide a boost.
But none of that is enough to balance the usually awful starting pitching, no matter how good young Nick Pivetta (7 innings, 4 hits, 0 runs, 2 BB, 9 Ks) would look on this Thursday night against the Red Sox.
“We just need to hit better (and) pitch better ... there’s no denying that,” Mackanin said.
But what lies does he tell himself to get to sleep at night? Or to muster the courage to start another workday?
“I just wake up and my wife tells me, ‘You better win today, Pete,’” Mackanin said with a wry grin. “Right now my job is to handle the 25 players that I have. I want them to know I have confidence in them. I’m not going to talk about who I’d like to see come up and take their place.
“All I can do is encourage them, (tell them) they’re going to get better, because they’re my 25 players.”
Twenty-five players. Most of them can’t get on base even one-third of the time that they come to the plate. All of them have gone through more than two months of the season without winning one-third of their games.
Suffice to say the numbers are stacked against the Project Manager.
No wonder he wants to start all over again.