MacPhail: Money will be spent on fans
PHILADELPHIA » Phillies team president Andy MacPhail met the media Tuesday, dressing up his special guest appearance in the Citizens Bank Park media room with a pointed explanation ... of why he felt the need to be there in the first place.
“I don’t know whether to be frightened or flattered,” MacPhail said to no snare drum rim shot while assessing a dozen or so media spectators. “You know, I think it’s important for an organization to deliver a consistent and disciplined message to our fans via the media. And that’s why I’m a big believer that the person responsible for their department should speak on behalf of their department. That’s why Matt (Klentak) does all of the baseball ops stuff. And then as other events arise, we would assign what we think is the appropriate person to talk about whatever that particular subject matter happens to be.” And as for MacPhail? “It seems to be completely fair and appropriate that a few times a year you get to ask questions of the president,” he said. Thank you Mr. President! “If you are the president of baseball operations you are essentially responsible for the baseball operations,” MacPhail said. “This role is different . ... You are tasked with overseeing both the baseball and the business side and reporting to ownership. And there is a pretty big distinction.”
So as for those baseball matters, MacPhail feels it necessary to put a bit of distance between him and general manager Matt Klentak, and that included the decision to replace Pete Mackanin as manager, the question of who would replace him, and also that dangerous territory of actually upgrading the Phillies’ starting pitching in the offseason.
That’s a mission that would frighten and maybe even flatten the common baseball executive.
“We get inundated with stories across the game about how everybody is looking for starting pitching,” MacPhail said. “Just get two quality starters, and we’ll be all
set. Well, you might as well look for a unicorn at the same time. It’s tough. You don’t want to be paying for past performance.”
So such mundane matters will be tasked to the 37-year-old Klentak and however many of his several assistants wants to throw ideas or critiques or words of support at him.
“One of the things that I am the most pleased about with Matt is the quality of people that he’s brought into this front office,” MacPhail said. “They are going to assist him in that (manager’s) search. He is not going to be in there alone.”
As for MacPhail, he’ll tackle the big jobs — such as explaining to the owners and the media how an offseason rebuild of the stadium rather than the team makes the most fiscal sense for the club. He illustrated this with a four-part verbal power point that made eyes glaze over across the room.
Please follow along for this crib notes version...
“As a team president, there are four different things that are always sort of competing for your resources,” MacPhail said. “The biggest is your player payroll. That can take the lion’s share of your revenue and this franchise has been no stranger to having a top-five payroll. I don’t anticipate that we’re going to be there next year. It’s not because there isn’t a will to do it, it’s just the composition of our roster is very young. They haven’t reached their earning potential yet.
“The second thing that sort of tugs at your resources are the security and the maintenance of your ballpark. We are the oldest park in the National League East, which is a bit of a surprise. So we plan on redoing the field next year. We’re going to put in a new PA system. We’re going to add new lighting. And then we’re going to explore and add different security enhancements, which unfortunately in this day in age are required of us.
“The third is upgrades to the fan experience at Citizens Bank Park. Those are essential. We think we have some very exciting things on the horizon. I can’t be as detailed as I’d like to be because we haven’t secured the necessary government approvals in some cases to do all the things we want.”
Government approvals? Cool. And No. 4? “The fourth thing, which I think is critical and important for us, is that we have to invest in different initiatives,” MacPhail revealed. “We have to always keep an eye out as to what our competitors are doing and how we can improve. Just like we have to do better — and Matt is going to make this a focus — in how to put analytics into our player development.”
Oh no, baseball’s A word.
MacPhail went into detail explaining how the Phillies have been working hard upgrading their analytics department, taking it from a one-man room to a group of 14 employees now. And then he got into “sports science,” which previously was only a coined term in these parts by the 76ers, who are several years into a project to put five bionic men on the floor at the same time. The science of sport is is now lamented by the Phillies’ president as an area in which his club has a lot of catching up to do.
As for the remainder of MacPhail’s 40-minute media meeting ... oh yeah, the manager stuff.
Matt Klentak’s decision to fire — sorry, ‘transition’ — Mackanin into a “special advisor” role was the GM’s call, MacPhail proclaimed. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have anything to say about it.
“I probably spent more time with Matt talking to him about sort of the ramifications of his decision as anything,” MacPhail said. “I told him that this is going to confuse people. ‘You just extended the guy when we stunk four months ago and now we’re getting better and you make a change? You’re going to have to explain that.’
“I also told him the media is going to be surprised by some of this. And my experience would tell me that media does not like to be surprised. They get pretty angry when they get surprised.” Oh. Hey, darn right. Actually, the shelf life of managers and coaches in any and every sport is pretty much about three or four years. After that, it’s all about how long it takes before the general manager starts feeling a lot of pressure ... especially from the team president’s office.
Because, after all, that’s where all the big decisions are made.