Kapler’s ‘even keel’ style is a classic
Honest Gabe
WASHINGTON » Gabe Kapler’s father played and taught classical piano, showing how one note can blend nicely with the next, and that only when they call come together can they become a masterpiece.
“An educator,” Kapler was saying Sunday, before the Phillies played the Washington Nationals. “I learned a ton from him.”
His first season as a majorleague manager was nearly half over, and his team had won its last four series. And that was Kapler in the early evening, in consultation with ESPN talkers, explaining how the Phillies had become successful enough to be flexed into a Sunday Night Baseball opportunity to be treated as a contender.
It’s June, not September. The Phils were in second place, not first. But, well, there was something about the moment that yelled vindication.
“Externally,” Kapler said, “people might feel that way.”
People feel one way one day, another the next. People wanted Kapler gone after yanking Aaron Nola too early on Opening Day, and then for brandishing a new baseball vocabulary, using terms like “profiling” to explain lineup cards and pinch-hitting decisions.
But in less than three weeks, all of baseball will be back at Nationals Park for the All-Star Game. And there, at least one discussion will rage: Who is the Manager of the Year in the National League. Gabe Kapler … take a bow. There is time for that to change. But when the topic arose in casual pregame conversation Sunday, Kapler neither dismissed the idea nor began to hand out campaign buttons. All he knows is what his father, Michael, who is 79, once taught him: Stay calm.
“He is a very-even keeled person,” he said. “There were never a lot of highs and lows from my dad, and he was the strongest male influence in my life. I feel the same way. The things that are happening around me or around us are happening around us and not in front of us. We just stay even. We don’t ride ups and downs.”
Long as a baseball season is, it sometimes can pass with odd swiftness. The Phillies entered the game Sunday at 41-33, and thus with a guarantee that they would have a winning record at the 81-game halftime. And that will be another of baseball’s standard checkpoints passed. The Phillies will have survived Memorial Day and June 1. They will be OK on July 1, and should be fine on Fireworks Night. From there, it will be the AllStar break, the trade deadline, September 1 and the stretch.
If they play as they have, they will contend.
If they contend, Kapler will be a Manager of the Year favorite.
If he wins Manager of the Year, the same people who were quick to haze Charlie Manuel, Doug Pederson, Brett Brown and others will wonder how they never learn to let things evolve before unloading with the full social-media assault.
“I’m actually not surprised at all at how we’ve played,” Odubel Herrera said. “As a matter of fact, I think we should have a
better record. We have lost a couple games that we should have won. We’re playing as a team. We are playing with good chemistry. We’re well-prepared. So I am not surprised. We should be better actually.
“The manager is a big part of it because makes the movements and he keeps us together. But we are unified. We are ‘one’ here. We have good chemistry. I feel we have a really solid team here.”
Kapler stations his infielders in positions they were never trained to play at the highest professional level. His batting orders are not always predictable. His bullpen has let him down too often, but that’s not his fault. But the most difficult thing for a manager to achieve is to have his players work hard to make him look good. The best example of that in modern Phillies history was how the 1993 National League champions worked for Jim Fregosi. Kapler’s team shows some of those characteristics.
So there the Phils were Sunday, on a four-series winning streak, in the earliest stages of an N.L. East championship race, and gradually becoming legitimized.
“I think that every series that we win, it’s less of an ‘If they keep this up, it proves they are good’ kind of thing,” Kapler said. “And with every series we win, we feel more confident that second-half development leads us into the playoffs. That’s how I am thinking about it. We have young players on our roster, right? A lot of 25, 26-year-olds, just off the top of my head, Seranthony (Dominguez), (Edubray) Ramos, (Victor) Arano, Scotty (Kingery), just to name a few. Nick Williams. If they all do what their natural curve should do and get a little bit better in the second half, theoretically we are developing team that is getting better.
“So I can see us getting better in the second half.”
The Phils had the game left in the Washington series, then would return to Citizens Bank Park for a week of visits from the Yankees and Nationals. So, as his father once taught Kapler, tunes can change.
“There’s going to be another stormy stretch of baseball,” Kapler said. “And when that comes, we’ll stay the course and stay even.”
So far, that’s been the right note to strike.