Mackanin’s mission: Exorcising Herrera’s basepath demons
PHILADELPHIA » Pete Mackanin had just laid out his latest plan in the ongoing effort to burn through the inner fog plaguing Odubel Herrera. It wasn’t much of a different methodology on this Wednesday than the last time.
Be patient. to talk to
Keep trying him.
Keep your fingers firmly crossed while biting your tongue clear through.
And if all that doesn’t work...
“And then I beat him up,” Mackanin cracked.
OK, so the lessons learned from the Billy Martin Managing School have unfortunately passed us by, and Mackanin is thus forced to go with the softhand approach to try to get inside the seemingly soft head of their best position player. This time Herrera failed to run out a dropped third strike. Last time it was trying to steal a base against his manager’s wishes. The time before that he ignored the leaping gesticulations of third base coach Juan Samuel.
On the bases, it’s like Herrera is possessed by an unseeing, unknowing and certainly unthinking mental intruder.
Think about the importance of this managerial mission. How to conquer the internal demons or environmental misfortunes or whatever the hell is at work in keeping a player who is as close as a star as this team has out of trouble on the basepaths and out of the team doghouse?
My advice: Google the daily press reports accompanying the early career years of Eric Lindros and Allen Iverson and, to a lesser degree, Scott Rolen, and learn from the research. Then hope you fare better than other South Philly coaching caretakers of the 1990s did.
At least Herrera’s travails have more to do with his erroneous ways on the field than going awry off it. But it’s time for Mackanin to make sure the Herrera saga doesn’t grow into a rotten rerun of talented Philadelphia players knocked off course by an inability to communicate with the coaches.
For his sake, Mackanin should hope he can do just that. If not, it might be a matter of when rather than if Herrera makes a departure. That won’t be before the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline. It might be during the offseason. It partly depends on how Mackanin handles Herrera from here on in, and might also depend on whether Mackanin survives the offseason as the Phillies manager.
The odds are trending against him right now on that latter matter, which has nothing and everything to do with the ongoing Herrera issue.
And so the soft sell again be employed.
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Mackanin said of his prized problem pupil, “when you think about it, his peccadilloes haven’t been as frequent as they have been in the past. He still has a few.
“(But) he’s going to get where we need him to be.”
For the most part, that means out of trouble, and for Herrera, trouble usually finds him somewhere on the basepaths.
He was pulled out of Tuesday’s game three innings early amid a double-switch by the manager, then was pulled into Mackanin’s office for a nice talk. He emerged with the knowledge that he wouldn’t be starting Wednesday’s game against the Astros, but only partly because of that little ol’ not running to first base thing.
“We’ve got four outfielders we have to play,” Mackanin said, noting the expedited return to the lineup of Aaron Altherr, who came off the disabled list as fellow outfielder Daniel Nava was going on. “He’s one of them, so I’m going to give will him two days; today and tomorrow (a scheduled offday Thursday).
“Good chance for two days off. He’s been playing every day.”
And he’s needed to talk to the manager too much.
“It’s the manager’s decision,” Herrera said of his latest benching. “There’s no trouble at all; no problem at all. He told me what I needed to hear, and he made his point across, and it went well.”
Herrera had run out of turn before, giving both manager and teammates alike cause for concern. But it was on June 21 that Herrera encountered a real problem while going from first to third on a Freddy Galvis double down the line in left.
It should have put two runners in scoring position in a tied game with one out in the ninth. Instead, Herrera got pumped up on the paths and ignored thirdbase coach Samuel’s stop sign ... almost barrelling over Sammy and managing to get thrown out by 15 feet in the process.
The Phillies, who had blown a five-run lead in the game, would lose in extra innings.
Mackanin benched him for that play, but about four nights later while on the road, Herrera was thrown out trying to steal. It was subsequently reported that Mackanin fined him, because apparently he’d flashed the no-go sign.
All of which makes moments like these a little tough to take, a little too gray-hair inducing for the manager.
Of course, when it comes to treating a problem player, Mackanin would never take his comic coaching instincts seriously. Especially when it’s become clear again this year that Herrera is simply too valuable to not treat with a limitless supply of patience and a fine pair of kid gloves.
Perhaps it was no coincidence that Wednesday’s daily Phillies game notes listed an item on “Most WAR Through the First Three Seasons of a Career.”
Mike Schmidt is considered the All-Time Wins Above Replacement king for the Phillies, registering 11.7 for the years 1972-74 on a Baseball Reference scale developed decades after he supposedly did it.
Second on the list was Rolen, at 10.9 for 1996-98. And No. 3?
Whoa-dubel was a perfect 10 for 2015-2017.
Ah, but what good is sabermetrics when it so goes against lack of common sense?
As good as it has to be when a young general manager like Matt Klentak was reared in the Moneyball age.
Mackanin might look like an old-school guy, but credit him with having a handle on how important analytics are around here now.
“You know what, I don’t want to talk about what he said or (did) last night,” Mackanin said of Herrera. “I’d rather talk about the fact he’s hitting the (stuffing) out of the ball and he’s playing well. I’d like to put this in the past and move on from here. That’s what I’d like to do.”
For now, it’s all he can and should do.