While I softened my stance on Kapler, he needs to go. Not just him but nearly everyone including Klentak.

It's easy to point to injuries but we don't know if anything the staff does or doesn't do is a contributor. It's also easy to absolve the coaches from players under-performing but again we don't know their influence.

Something's amiss and without everyday, inside knowledge it's impossible to identify. We only see in-game decisions which may be enough evidence to move on.

Uncle Milty wrote:While I softened my stance on Kapler, he needs to go. Not just him but nearly everyone including Klentak.

It's easy to point to injuries but we don't know if anything the staff does or doesn't do is a contributor. It's also easy to absolve the coaches from players under-performing but again we don't know their influence.

Something's amiss and without everyday, inside knowledge it's impossible to identify. We only see in-game decisions which may be enough evidence to move on.

We don't know anything about what the staff is responsible for but we need to fire all of them?

mcare89 wrote:

Uncle Milty wrote:While I softened my stance on Kapler, he needs to go. Not just him but nearly everyone including Klentak.

It's easy to point to injuries but we don't know if anything the staff does or doesn't do is a contributor. It's also easy to absolve the coaches from players under-performing but again we don't know their influence.

Something's amiss and without everyday, inside knowledge it's impossible to identify. We only see in-game decisions which may be enough evidence to move on.

We don't know anything about what the staff is responsible for but we need to fire all of them?

Exactly. These aren't work-a-day jobs where you keep your position unless you do something wrong.

What aspect of the team has improved over the last 2 years (or since 2015 in Klentak's case)?

Uncle Milty wrote:

kruker wrote:

Uncle Milty wrote:

MoBettle wrote:

Uncle Milty wrote:McCutchen, at least as far as the lineup, is a cop out. There was a regular on the roster who proved he can handle the lead-off spot. Cesar struggled after the broken foot last year but there's every reason to expect an OBP similar to what Cutch provided.

My impression is this staff uses sample sizes that are too small in their decision making.

Cesar has been disappointing too (on top of Herrera’s stuff and Franco being bad) but Cutch getting hurt sort of opened the flood gates in terms of guys that don’t belong in the majors like Williams and Quinn getting regular starts. Especially when guys like Bruce and Haseley got hurt themselves.

I guess it’s sort of a combination of everything though. If any of Cesar/Odubel/Franco have a career year or even just their best past season Cutch isn’t as big of a loss.

I'll disagree with you on Quinn. He's absolutely a regular for someone IF he can stay healthy.

Most of it comes down to handling for me. There's a quick hook for some and undue patience with others.

Going back to last year Franco gets benched quickly when he slumps. Over multiple seasons Cesar posted a .370+ OBP from the lead-off spot yet received limited chances this year. With all the development time he's lost, sporadic starts are probably the worst thing for Quinn. These 3 (and others) were not provided enough patience. I can't help but think some of it is because they're not created in Gabe's image.

Wait.
Not enough patience on Maik? He's had enough MLB at bats that you know what he has at this point sans any Bautista breakout or Brady Anderson diet. That was true enough last year as well. Cesar, I won't disagree, have been a bit surprised to not see him up higher in the lineup. Although to be fair, his baserunning gaffes might make a manager hesitant to put him higher. Quinn, you can argue he's sitting BECAUSE he's constantly been injured. I don't think any of it has to do with whether they're in Gabe's "image" or not.

Yes, Maik's had a lot of ABs but that's not what I mean.

I guess first you'd have to believe, like I do, that these guys need consistent playing time to be their best. You have to face live pitching to
hit live pitching.

When Maik starts to slump, like all players do, he seems to lose starts much sooner than others. (I had some numbers on it last year but I'm not going thru game logs again.) I think it was a misstep to keep him mostly buried in the 8 hole this year when he was tearing the cover off the ball. There's no way opponents were going to let the 8 hitter keep beating them.

I just find it hard to get up in arms about a guy with a career 2-4 WAR who has gotten about 500 PAs a year not playing consistently enough. If he has a short leash, I think it's on him at this point. I think he is what he is. And if he's losing ABs sooner than others it might have to do with things other than his not being in "Gabe's image," namely that they had someone in Kingery the last two years who hadn't had the same amount of playing time yet who they thought could play the position and they wanted to see what he had.

Uncle Milty wrote:

mcare89 wrote:

Uncle Milty wrote:While I softened my stance on Kapler, he needs to go. Not just him but nearly everyone including Klentak.

It's easy to point to injuries but we don't know if anything the staff does or doesn't do is a contributor. It's also easy to absolve the coaches from players under-performing but again we don't know their influence.

Something's amiss and without everyday, inside knowledge it's impossible to identify. We only see in-game decisions which may be enough evidence to move on.

We don't know anything about what the staff is responsible for but we need to fire all of them?

Exactly. These aren't work-a-day jobs where you keep your position unless you do something wrong.

What aspect of the team has improved over the last 2 years (or since 2015 in Klentak's case)?

Their win-loss record.

Uncle Milty wrote:While I softened my stance on Kapler, he needs to go. Not just him but nearly everyone including Klentak.

It's easy to point to injuries but we don't know if anything the staff does or doesn't do is a contributor. It's also easy to absolve the coaches from players under-performing but again we don't know their influence.

Something's amiss and without everyday, inside knowledge it's impossible to identify. We only see in-game decisions which may be enough evidence to move on.

Good post.

Uncle Milty wrote:

mcare89 wrote:

Uncle Milty wrote:While I softened my stance on Kapler, he needs to go. Not just him but nearly everyone including Klentak.

It's easy to point to injuries but we don't know if anything the staff does or doesn't do is a contributor. It's also easy to absolve the coaches from players under-performing but again we don't know their influence.

Something's amiss and without everyday, inside knowledge it's impossible to identify. We only see in-game decisions which may be enough evidence to move on.

We don't know anything about what the staff is responsible for but we need to fire all of them?

Exactly. These aren't work-a-day jobs where you keep your position unless you do something wrong.

What aspect of the team has improved over the last 2 years (or since 2015 in Klentak's case)?

Couldn't agree more, this is what I've said about this dynamic almost verbatim since last season. But it's much more significant now.

The argument people always use to keep Kapler and/or Klentak is "it's not his fault, they aren't the ones out there not hitting, it's on the players."

And that's just the entire wrong way of looking at it. If that's the case, no manager or GM would ever be at fault for how their team plays ever. But there's something inherently or systemically wrong with this organization and you need to change something. You can't keep all the variables the same and expect the guys underperforming to magically not underperform next season.

And with most of this lineup under contract, almost this entire lineup will be the same next year. Sans Bohm if he comes up. So it's not like they have the flexibility to change the entire lineup all over again, these are the guys you're stuck with. They need to figure out how to get the guys currently on the roster to start hitting and they've shown they clearly don't know how to make that happen collectively as an organization.

So it's time to look for someone who can. Because even if you upgrade the pitching, that still won't solve the problem that these guys aren't hitting close to the level they're capable of(especially in this new juiced ball era).

2nd year in a row they've spent the most money in baseball. 2nd year in a row they've headed toward a major collapse.

Here, here

Btw, when Milty said "These aren't work-a-day jobs where you keep your position unless you do something wrong."

It's something I hear Joe Giglio say a lot on WIP's Phils post game show when fans call up angry after an embarrassing loss. "What do you want him to do? It's not his fault." And it isn't just him, a lot of the Kapler supporters say that. And technically, he's not wrong in a traditional sense. It's not his fault directly that guys are screwing up and not hitting. But there's a lot of nuance in sports. It's not exactly cut and dry cause and effect. Sometimes certain guys don't respond to certain coaches and managers. It happens all the time. For reasons people like us can't explain, maybe only someone in the clubhouse could and even then maybe they can't either. Maybe it's a philosophical thing they've instilled. Who knows.

But the bottom line is whatever the reason, fault or not, something isn't working, and thus, something needs to change. Frankly, I'm sick of the blame game, pointing fingers. I just want to fix what is broken, too much time is wasted going "It's ____'s fault!" "No it's not, it's _____'s fault!" One thing I think everyone can agree on is we just want a solution to the problem, and since not one fucking person on this planet can point to a logical reason why these guys suddenly forgot how to hit as an entire team, and you can't change the players(as I just mentioned, they're under contract) I see only one logical potential solution remaining. Only a couple things left you can change. Coaching and front office.

I just think a year and a half is a stupidly short amount of time to give a manager before you decide to fire him, particularly when they didn't exactly go into last season with super-high expectations or a payroll befitting a team that was contending, and he has a career winning record. If they came out and won 70 games each year with expectations of far better, sure.

The difference between Kapler's record now and Charlie's record at the same point in his tenure is like six games. If you guys really want to clean house, if you're that sure about it, knock yourself out, but I swear to god if I watch Kapler go on to be Terry Francona 2.0, I'm never going to let any of you forget about it.

Uncle Milty wrote:

kruker wrote:

Uncle Milty wrote:

MoBettle wrote:

Uncle Milty wrote:McCutchen, at least as far as the lineup, is a cop out. There was a regular on the roster who proved he can handle the lead-off spot. Cesar struggled after the broken foot last year but there's every reason to expect an OBP similar to what Cutch provided.

My impression is this staff uses sample sizes that are too small in their decision making.

Cesar has been disappointing too (on top of Herrera’s stuff and Franco being bad) but Cutch getting hurt sort of opened the flood gates in terms of guys that don’t belong in the majors like Williams and Quinn getting regular starts. Especially when guys like Bruce and Haseley got hurt themselves.

I guess it’s sort of a combination of everything though. If any of Cesar/Odubel/Franco have a career year or even just their best past season Cutch isn’t as big of a loss.

I'll disagree with you on Quinn. He's absolutely a regular for someone IF he can stay healthy.

Most of it comes down to handling for me. There's a quick hook for some and undue patience with others.

Going back to last year Franco gets benched quickly when he slumps. Over multiple seasons Cesar posted a .370+ OBP from the lead-off spot yet received limited chances this year. With all the development time he's lost, sporadic starts are probably the worst thing for Quinn. These 3 (and others) were not provided enough patience. I can't help but think some of it is because they're not created in Gabe's image.

Wait.
Not enough patience on Maik? He's had enough MLB at bats that you know what he has at this point sans any Bautista breakout or Brady Anderson diet. That was true enough last year as well. Cesar, I won't disagree, have been a bit surprised to not see him up higher in the lineup. Although to be fair, his baserunning gaffes might make a manager hesitant to put him higher. Quinn, you can argue he's sitting BECAUSE he's constantly been injured. I don't think any of it has to do with whether they're in Gabe's "image" or not.

Yes, Maik's had a lot of ABs but that's not what I mean.

I guess first you'd have to believe, like I do, that these guys need consistent playing time to be their best. You have to face live pitching to
hit live pitching.

When Maik starts to slump, like all players do, he seems to lose starts much sooner than others. (I had some numbers on it last year but I'm not going thru game logs again.) I think it was a misstep to keep him mostly buried in the 8 hole this year when he was tearing the cover off the ball. There's no way opponents were going to let the 8 hitter keep beating them.

Maybe that was true in the past but looking at his game log he played virtually every day for about a month and a half as his OPS dropped from 1.000 to sub .700 http://www.espn.com/mlb/player/gamelog/ ... kel-franco

mcare89 wrote:I just think a year and a half is a stupidly short amount of time to give a manager before you decide to fire him, particularly when they didn't exactly go into last season with super-high expectations or a payroll befitting a team that was contending, and he has a career winning record. If they came out and won 70 games each year with expectations of far better, sure.

The difference between Kapler's record now and Charlie's record at the same point in his tenure is like six games. If you guys really want to clean house, if you're that sure about it, knock yourself out, but I swear to god if I watch Kapler go on to be Terry Francona 2.0, I'm never going to let any of you forget about it.

I know, I hate when people overreact, it’s getting worse than the Sixers thread on draft night

mcare89 wrote:I just think a year and a half is a stupidly short amount of time to give a manager before you decide to fire him, particularly when they didn't exactly go into last season with super-high expectations or a payroll befitting a team that was contending, and he has a career winning record. If they came out and won 70 games each year with expectations of far better, sure.

The difference between Kapler's record now and Charlie's record at the same point in his tenure is like six games. If you guys really want to clean house, if you're that sure about it, knock yourself out, but I swear to god if I watch Kapler go on to be Terry Francona 2.0, I'm never going to let any of you forget about it.

Maybe getting fired contributed to Francona's success after leaving.

Uncle Milty wrote:

mcare89 wrote:I just think a year and a half is a stupidly short amount of time to give a manager before you decide to fire him, particularly when they didn't exactly go into last season with super-high expectations or a payroll befitting a team that was contending, and he has a career winning record. If they came out and won 70 games each year with expectations of far better, sure.

The difference between Kapler's record now and Charlie's record at the same point in his tenure is like six games. If you guys really want to clean house, if you're that sure about it, knock yourself out, but I swear to god if I watch Kapler go on to be Terry Francona 2.0, I'm never going to let any of you forget about it.

Maybe getting fired contributed to Francona's success after leaving.

Or maybe he would have been just as good here if he had a better team. It's impossible to know, but I think a year and a half is too short to get enough information to decide.

mcare89 wrote:I just think a year and a half is a stupidly short amount of time to give a manager before you decide to fire him, particularly when they didn't exactly go into last season with super-high expectations or a payroll befitting a team that was contending, and he has a career winning record. If they came out and won 70 games each year with expectations of far better, sure.

The difference between Kapler's record now and Charlie's record at the same point in his tenure is like six games. If you guys really want to clean house, if you're that sure about it, knock yourself out, but I swear to god if I watch Kapler go on to be Terry Francona 2.0, I'm never going to let any of you forget about it.

If he turns out to be that, sure, I’ll be the first person to, but what are the odds of that? Not just for Klentak but for any manager. The odds are incredibly small for any manager hired to be a HOF manager who wins multiple championships.

Or... you change the front office first(not saying they will, but I want to) and allow them to come in and evaluate and if they decide a change needs to be made, you put your faith in their evaluations.

BatFlipsFTW wrote:

swishnicholson wrote:

BatFlipsFTW wrote:

GrizzledVeteran wrote:

stevemc wrote:

ek wrote:I mean Rodriguez is ok but gimme a break

He is not OK. He stinks. Kapler values these versatile players and I guess Hernandez needs a night off but I disagree with the Haseley move. DFA Rodriguez, put Kingery at 3B everyday and you have Brad Miller as your utility guy. Rodriguez doesn't add value. At this point, Haseley will learn just as much if not more by hanging around the big club and getting MLB experience. They are repeating last year's mistakes with veteran acquisitions mid to late season that stunt the growth of the youth and ultimately don't provide the results.

I'll do one better. Release Rodriguez and bring up Alec Bohm. Make Cesar the utility guy and put Kingery at 2B. Quinn is due to get hurt and Haseley comes up. Here's your lineup:
CF - Adam Haseley
SS- Jean Segura
RF - Bryce Harper
1B - Rhys Hoskins
LF - Jay Bruce/Corey Dickerson
C - JT Realmuto
2B - Scott Kingery
3B - Alec Bohm

At this point, there's nothing to lose.

Might as well.

So, the same lineup as now, except we're going to preemptively injure Quinn, and instead of Kingery adjusting to third base we're going to put the guy who's been learning the position at AA (making an error on one out of ten chances) and slugging at .338 clip away from Reading.

Might as well.

Well that was rather rude. Shame on you.

At least that has guys playing in positions they've been projected for and not whatever the Wheel O'Fielding lands on that day.

Not trying to be rude, although I realize sometimes I don't have to try. My point being Kingery is almost certainly better than Bohm at third right now, and Cesar is almost certainly better than Kingery (who has started only 7 major league games) at second. Haseley has done a creditable job in center, but he's not a real centerfielder like Quinn. So you've substantially weakened the team defensively and probably offensively as well. That's a lineup for when you don't care how many more games you win this year and you're already playing for next year. Fine if you feel that way, but I know I'm not there and I'm sure Phillies are not, nor should they be.

If you look at an organization like the Yankees or Red Sox, teams that consistently win and make the playoffs, if they spent more money than any team in baseball and had 2 straight seasons with a new manager where the team collapsed(assuming for a second that’s what will happen here with the Phils again this season) then I can’t imagine they’d keep the manager. I use them examples because those are typically two of the franchises people use as a model for success.

If the Yankees collapsed and missed the playoffs two straight seasons under Boone while spending more money than any team in baseball he’d likely be fired. Same with Red Sox and Cora. Hell, the Red Sox fired Farrell a couple years after he won a World Series. Organizations like that don’t fuck around and that’s the type of organization I want the Phillies to become. Model yourself after the best. If this season fizzles out I don’t think 2 seasons is too short to make the call that he’s not the right guy. For the record though, I don’t think things will ever truly change unless they change the front office, because I think they will just keep hiring guys who promote their philosophies to baseball, and hitting, which hasn’t gotten the desired results, but that’s just my opinion.

Shadow wrote:

mcare89 wrote:I just think a year and a half is a stupidly short amount of time to give a manager before you decide to fire him, particularly when they didn't exactly go into last season with super-high expectations or a payroll befitting a team that was contending, and he has a career winning record. If they came out and won 70 games each year with expectations of far better, sure.

The difference between Kapler's record now and Charlie's record at the same point in his tenure is like six games. If you guys really want to clean house, if you're that sure about it, knock yourself out, but I swear to god if I watch Kapler go on to be Terry Francona 2.0, I'm never going to let any of you forget about it.

If he turns out to be that, sure, I’ll be the first person to, but what are the odds of that? Not just for Klentak but for any manager. The odds are incredibly small for any manager hired to be a HOF manager who wins multiple championships.

Or... you change the front office first(not saying they will, but I want to) and allow them to come in and evaluate and if they decide a change needs to be made, you put your faith in their evaluations.

Less the specifics of being as successful as Francona (obviously he's an outlier success with multiple rings) but just the general idea of firing a young manager too soon while acknowledging that the team you gave him has massive holes that need to be repaired.

I think there's a cognitive dissonance between thinking that they need to fire Kapler while also pointing out that they have one average or better major league starting pitcher on their roster. He very clearly doesn't have the bullets he needs to succeed.

Believe it or not, I actually subscribe more to the "blow it all up" philosophy than the fire Kapler idea. If you really think a change needs to be made, to me, it's an organizational shift, firing the manager who is clearly acting upon the organization's general philosophy would indicate to me that they're scrambling for answers rather than actually having solutions.

If you're going to fire Kapler, you should fire Klentak as well and honestly probably consider Macphail as well, the organizational structure is linked together with no indication of any dissension that would require a change.

But I would give them another offseason before I make that move. The reality is that this is the first year this team was truly built to compete for any sort of real success, and while it's been underwhelming and a bit of a slog to watch, you know a few things now that you weren't sure about coming into this season:

1) Eflin, Pivetta, and Velasquez can't be relied upon as key major league starters.
2) Arrieta is more of a back of the rotation starter now than a legitimate frontline starter.
3) You're going to need a solution in center field at some point.
4) Kingery is probably a major league regular.

Shadow wrote:If you look at an organization like the Yankees or Red Sox, teams that consistently win and make the playoffs, if they spent more money than any team in baseball and had 2 straight seasons with a new manager where the team collapsed(assuming for a second that’s what will happen here with the Phils again this season) then I can’t imagine they’d keep the manager. I use them examples because those are typically two of the franchises people use as a model for success.

If the Yankees collapsed and missed the playoffs two straight seasons under Boone while spending more money than any team in baseball he’d likely be fired. Same with Red Sox and Cora. Hell, the Red Sox fired Farrell a couple years after he won a World Series. Organizations like that don’t fuck around and that’s the type of organization I want the Phillies to become. Model yourself after the best. If this season fizzles out I don’t think 2 seasons is too short to make the call that he’s not the right guy. For the record though, I don’t think things will ever truly change unless they change the front office, because I think they will just keep hiring guys who promote their philosophies to baseball, and hitting, which hasn’t gotten the desired results, but that’s just my opinion.

Those organizations probably wouldn't "clean house" every 2-3 seasons. Firing a manager is one thing, installing a whole new front office and coaching staff is another.

Ace Rothstein wrote:

mcare89 wrote:I just think a year and a half is a stupidly short amount of time to give a manager before you decide to fire him, particularly when they didn't exactly go into last season with super-high expectations or a payroll befitting a team that was contending, and he has a career winning record. If they came out and won 70 games each year with expectations of far better, sure.

The difference between Kapler's record now and Charlie's record at the same point in his tenure is like six games. If you guys really want to clean house, if you're that sure about it, knock yourself out, but I swear to god if I watch Kapler go on to be Terry Francona 2.0, I'm never going to let any of you forget about it.

I know, I hate when people overreact, it’s getting worse than the Sixers thread on draft night

Korkmaz is basically an early 2nd round pick.