Manuel has job to do to fix feeble offense
PHILADELPHIA >> Six years to the day. That’s the last time Charlie Manuel showed up for a pre-game dugout chat as a uniformed, on-field employee for the Phillies.
So this would be a game day unlike any other since then-pressured general manager Ruben Amaro offered up tears while taking the manager’s title away from Manuel. And yet as he arrived on the scene that was so familiar Wednesday, the greeting was still the same.
“What we got?” Manuel asked with a perfect rhetorical twang. “What we got? A different job?”
He’s the old new hitting coach of one of baseball’s worst offensive teams. Or so several statistical categories claim, anyway.
The oh-so enriched Phillies are lagging in the lower-third of the major leagues in almost all major team offense areas, yet their take — apparently, from the clubhouse on up to the owner’s office — is that there’s still time for a turnaround.
That’s why, general manager Matt Klentak said, he saw his 75-year-old “special advisor” as part of the solution, even if Klentak hired him with the caveat that the job is only until the end of the 2019 season.
“Hopefully,” Klentak added, “into October.”
And so a day later, Manuel donned the old uni, and soon would shuffle over to an even more familiar spot, arms up and leaning on the batting cage behind home plate at Citizens Bank Park while his new charges showed their stuff. The stuff that for the most part hasn’t been good enough over the first 119 games.
“I’m excited about it,” Manuel said. “I think it’s a challenge. I’ve never been scared of nothing like that, especially when it comes to hitting. It’s one of my favorite things to talk about. I’m looking forward to it.”
So, too, are manager Gabe Kapler and select players who have weighed in on the firing of former coach John Mallee and the rather stunning temporary promotion of one of the club’s bench bosses of the past.
“Nobody outworked (Mallee),” Rhys Hoskins said Tuesday. “He made sure we were as prepared as we could be. Unfortunately we just didn’t perform the way we should.
“Charlie was around some of the affiliates when I was coming up through the minor league system. He was never really in a coaching role at that point, so my guess is that some of his words were pretty limited; not wanting to step on anyone’s toes . ... Obviously he’s been around in spring training quite a bit. The guy knows hitting. Always has. I’m excited to see what he’s got for us.”
What’s he got? Besides the folksy charm firmly intact, Manuel still has exactly what the Phillies front office feels is needed — not only decades of experience on the art of hitting, but the ability to deliver it with a blunt dose of reality. Yet Manuel said Wednesday he’s going to “ease into” that.
“I don’t think I need to jump right in there and start right off,” Manuel said. “I can kind of ease into things; talk to the guys, and watch them hit. And if I have anything to ask them, I can. I might say something to some of them, some of them, I might not. I don’t know. We’ll go from there.”
This new Manuel beginning comes at an advanced stage of a season that has gone relatively wrong, though. Too many bullpen injuries, too many starting pitching failures ... and those things have only served to magnify the overall ineptitude of the offense.
The Phillies’ lineup has been a cumulative disappointment this season. Since shortly after leadoff man Andrew McCutchen, one of the several marquee offseason additions, went down with a season ending knee injury in early June, the injury coming only about a week after center fielder Odubel Herrera was charged with domestic violence and would thus be suspended for the season, the offense has been mediocre at best.
They have fallen to fourth in the NL East, and are still within arm’s reach of a wildcard, but then, so are several other teams. This is a team still looking to find itself, and the sooner the better.
Maybe Charlie joining the search can help? “I know them,” Manuel said. “I’ve been in spring training. I sit and watch the games every day. If I’m not here in the ballpark, I’m watching them on TV or on my phone. I see most all of their at-bats. I feel like I know a lot about them.
“I like the Phillies. I like the people I work for. I love the fans. I can’t believe how good I get treated here. Like I said, the Phillies pay me. I didn’t feel like I should turn somebody down that wanted me, and I’m already working for them.”
He says he’ll work fine with Kapler, the manager 31 years his junior who said Wednesday, “a lot of (Manuel’s) natural philosophies on hitting are the philosophies we have in place with the Phillies right now, and there’s a lot of synergy there.”
Yet there’s no denying that oldschool Manuel is joining an organization of a young GM with a young manager and mostly young coaches, one that has worked hard the last couple of years to build its analytics department and plot the club’s direction around the data it produces. Analytics? Chuck?
“I don’t think I’ll have any problems. I know what a launch angle is, I know what my version of a launch angle is,” Manuel said. “My launch angle is where I make contact with the ball and where it leaves the bat and things like that. Everyone has a different way of saying things and presenting things. I’m a basic guy and a conventional-style teacher. When I say basic, I’m a top to bottom hitter and I have a simple approach at the plate.”
Manuel indicated that no matter what the data says about players, be they veterans or superstars or young guys just trying to find a niche, he can and will work directly with them. Said Goodtime Charlie: “I don’t think I ever had any trouble communicating with the players.
“I know every swing in baseball,” Manuel added. “Really, I think that. I believe that, definitely. As a hitting coach or as a baseball guy, I think I’m proven and I hope you don’t take that as bragging or anything, because I’m not. Baseball is a funny game and I just happened to land here today. That’s how I look at it. I have a job to do and I’m going to set out to do it.”