Unlikely Nava worthy of longer look
Through a firsthalf of a season where the Phillies struck out more than 700 times, Pete Mackanin had asked, and had ordered, and had suggested, and had hinted that something had to change.
Then he tried something else. He tried plopping Daniel Nava at the top of his lineup.
“That’s,” Mackanin said Thursday, “what we are looking for from everybody.”
So it had come to that, a half a dismal season over, another still to tolerate: A 34-year-old,
fifth-team major-league veteran with a history of knee trouble emerging as a human, in-house tutorial for batter’s-box behavior.
“He’s done everything well for us,” Mackanin said. “I’m going to try to use him more.”
For a utility player who’d agreed to only to a one-year minor-league contract, Nava has been one of the Phillies’ few successes in a season where there had expected to be more than a few. By the time he arrived at Citizens Bank Park Thursday for a game against Pittsburgh, he was hitting .313 and slugging .430 He’d reached base safely in 25 of the 27 games he’d started, and had three three-hit games, including one Wednesday, mixing in a double and a walk. He had struck out 29 times in 128 at-bats, but he did have a .408 on-base percentage, tops among Phillies’ position players.
So how long can Mackanin deny that Nava is his best leadoff option, even if developing later-career talents was not high on the preseason todo list of a franchise struggling to rebuild?
“I want to keep running (Nick) Williams out there and (Aaron) Altherr and (Odubel) Herrera, obviously. But I want to try to give them a little bit of time off with the All-Star break coming up and just see.”
That’s all Nava asked anyway. He just wanted the Phillies — he just wanted anybody — to see. He wanted them to see, one more time at least, that he could play in the big leagues, and to remember that, at times, he had done so at a high level. Like in 2013, when he hit .303 with 12 home runs for the Red Sox, or like the year after, when he’d hit .270. He wanted them to see that he’d lost weight, and that his repaired knee was operative, Having signed him to a oneyear minor-league contract, the Phillies and manager Pete Mackanin couldn’t have known coming out of spring training that Daniel Nava would be a worthy fillin for any of their starting outfielders or that he would be batting lead-off prior to the All-Star break.
and that he knew how to play multiple positions, and to hit in various spots in the lineup.
“I know I can play in the big leagues,” Nava said. “There was never a question in my mind if I can or I can’t. But opportunity, sometimes, is something that you can’t control too much. In the beginning of the year, I knew my role. Then it kind of changed to where it is now. Hopefully, I have opened up some eyes that I still can play.”
When it all started, Nava was just a body for the Phillies, who were determined to keep their more valued prospects in the minor leagues and hoping to play close enough to .500 to prevent a fan revolt. In Howie Kendrick, Michael Saunders and Clay Buchholz, the Phils had spent roughly $10 million apiece on one-year placeholders, hoping mostly to flip them at the trade deadline for any value at all. Nava, though, would play for about 10 percent of that — $1.35 million … that, along with a chance.
“I signed with them early, so I didn’t even get a chance to get into that process,” Nava said. “There could have been other offers. I never found out, though.”
He made the Phillies’ roster out of spring training, then hit a home run in each of his first two atbats. From there, he continued to thrive, soon bumping closer to the top of the depth chart when Kendrick kept getting injured and Saunders kept failing and Herrera continued to be prone to horrifying slumps. And as the Phillies neared the AllStar break, he was Mackanin’s leadoff hitter, even if he didn’t have the official designation and even if he was likely to be traded before the July 31 deadline.
“If you get at-bats like he gives you from everybody in the lineup, we are a heck of a good team,” Mackanin said. “That’s what it’s all about.”
But is that really what it is all about? Are the Phillies truly desperate to become a heck of a good team in the second half of the season? Or is Mackanin just there to give Herrera chances to play up to the club’s $30 million guarantee, or that Williams develops, or that Altherr continues to grow?
“On the one hand I want these guys to be seen,” the manager said, in a conversation about young players. “But at the same time, we have to win a game here once in a while. I’ve got to take advantage of Nava, who is swinging the bat as well as anybody … better than anybody.”
With that, Mackanin sneaked Nava into left Thursday, at the top of the order, resting Williams. It wasn’t in the Phillies’ original plan. But neither were 55 losses in 83 games.
“Other than being a plus runner,” he said, “he gives you a quality at-bat just about every time up.”
For a manager looking for a way to win, that’s a good way to start.
To contact Jack McCaffery, email him at jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @ JackMcCaffery