francona, four seasons, zero playoff wins, fired
bowa, four seasons, zero playoff wins, fired
manuel, four seasons, zero playoff wins, ???

wat do u think?

you have three days to vote so take your time and weigh the pros and cons.

Maybe but not for "playoff wins"

yeah who wants playoff wins i mean really

I'd prefer "terrible in game decisions" over "didn't beat hottest team in history"

Manuel should go, all the GMs should go, and the ownership should go. And some of the players.

Manuel should be fired and Gillick's replacement should pick the new manager. Finish the season with an interim manager, although in reality, the season is pretty much finished now. Continuing to dig the hole, with only 16 games to go.

I'd be happy to see Manuel go, but really, he's the least of the team's problems right now. McCain and Palin, oops, I mean Gillick and Amaro need to go.

Utley for player-manager

Crap, somebody help me out. I've checked Sportsline, ESPN and Yahoo! Sports but I can't find Manuel's BA with RISP anywhere. I can't find his ERA either. (where is the eyes rolling emoticon when you need it).

Seriously, like TV said, Cholly is the least of the Phillies problems right now. I don't always agree with his moves but he has pushed the right buttons on this team more times than not during his tenure. Is it his fault Hamels laid an egg on Sunday night? Is it his fault Romero and Durbin can't get anybody out?

i voted yes, yes, yes to firing him. he's not the main problem but i'm tired of his dumbass decisions. i don't think he brings much to the table anymore. new gm, new manager.

the old "he doesn't play the games" excuse. that's so fucking dumb. by that logic no manager should ever be fired.

the team is continually not equaling the sum of the parts. that's an issue that he's somehow skating on.

If they don't make the playoffs, it's probably time for Chuck to just move on along with Pat. New GM, new manager. And hopefully a load of new players.

traderdave wrote:Crap, somebody help me out. I've checked Sportsline, ESPN and Yahoo! Sports but I can't find Manuel's BA with RISP anywhere. I can't find his ERA either. (where is the eyes rolling emoticon when you need it).

Seriously, like TV said, Cholly is the least of the Phillies problems right now. I don't always agree with his moves but he has pushed the right buttons on this team more times than not during his tenure. Is it his fault Hamels laid an egg on Sunday night? Is it his fault Romero and Durbin can't get anybody out?

Thank you.

Geez. What the hell do you people want? He's gotten zero, zip zilch nada, from two-fifths of his rotation for the last month. There's exactly one guy in the lineup, Werth, who's hit better than his career numbers this year. His GM let him down, and his veterans let him down.

This isn't to say he nails every in-game decision, but he gets more right than he receives credit for, and it's very rare that you can fault the effort.

All managers make practically the same tactical decisions, but not all have a solid rapport with their players. Charlie's supposedly great with his players, so to me it's taking on an unnecessary risk to bring in a new manager. Yea he makes some questionable decisions, but his misdeeds aren't egregious, they are usually the result of his unwillingness to defy baseball conventions.

The real blame lies solely on Gillick and ownership. It was clear that this team needed pitching at the break, so instead of making a deal for a pitcher or two that could reasonably be expected to make a positive impact on this team, they traded for one of, if not the, least attractive option on the market. To make matters worse, he probably got fleeced while doing so. Rather than taking a chance on our younger pitching (Happ or Carrasco), they decided it was best to trade for a pitcher with an 81 ERA+. Either take the risk of trading prospects for a legit pitcher or gamble with youth. Instead we traded away youth for a high risk (struggling mightily when traded for) low reward (career 100 ERA+, read average) pitcher.

Gillick has wasted a roster spot on So Taguchi and Bruntlett for 162 games. Sure their part time players, but at a combined 89 OPS+ he could have done better. Neither player offers any particularly valuable skill and neither had any real chance of putting up anything better than a slightly below average season. If the odds are stacked against a player being average, why even take a chance on him? Why do it twice? Did we not learn anything from the Abe Nunez fiasco?

Eaton. The contract. The refusal to admit the mistake. The reluctance to man up and pull him from the rotation before he made 19 starts.

Carlos Ruiz. His recent hot streak has his OPS+ up to 63, yet we didn't hear anything about making a move for a catcher until August. And that was for Dave Ross. Sure this doesn't mean that they didn't check into other options, but we're talking about a player who has spent a significant portion of the season with an OPS<.600. This wasn't a hard upgrade to make and was a possibility that should have been anticipated coming into this season. If you knew coming into the season that you weren't going to call up Marson or Jaramillo and that Coste couldn't be counted on as a full time player, then sign a AAAA player and keep him at Lehigh Valley in case Ruiz couldn't duplicate his below average (but not terrible) 2007 season.

Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but none of these problems were difficult to predict. A preseason prediction that Eaton, Taguchi, Bruntlett, Ruiz, and Kendrick would all be terrible this season wouldn't have surprised one person on this board, yet it apparently caught Gilmarbuckle completely off guard and without any clue on what to do. That's 1/5th of our roster coming into this season that had a minuscule chance of giving us a combined average output.

(to the question, not any of the responses specifically)

Good posts dajafi and kruker....

Gillick has been a massive dissapointment and Amaro or Arb looming as the replacement scare me to death.

Manuel probably will be the scapegoat, but he was given a flawed team again this year and he will probably nurse at least 88 wins out of it again in a pretty competitive division.

Nothing will really change unfortunately. Burrell will be let go and will not be replaced with comparable talent. The pitching will be Hamels/Myers and the 5th Beatles again. Madson will leave and we will probably bring Mesa back to replace him. The offensive load again will be dropped on Utley/Howard and Rollins to carry with the usual black holes of Feliz, Bruntlett, Taguchi, Ruiz, Jenkins allowed to hang around.

Unless the Phillies invest in their market better and generate some new revenue streams, their payroll ceiling will pretty much be only slightly higher than this year and we will not be able to surround the core with better talent and help improve the pitching as we need to.

z ipper wrote:francona, four seasons, zero playoff wins, fired
bowa, four seasons, zero playoff wins, fired
manuel, four seasons, zero playoff wins, ???

I lost track. Which of these firings resulted in us getting more playoff wins?

traderdave wrote:Crap, Is it his fault Romero and Durbin can't get anybody out?

Partially, yes. That's what happens when you use the same 2 or 3 guys out of the pen just about every day... they get tired, their arms go dead, they lose effectiveness. "Partially" because Gillick shares in the blame for the obvious reason... giving Cholly only the 2 or 3 reliable arms.

Cholly won't be back, the new GM will pick his manager. But it would be asinine to fire Cholly today, as it's too late to have any effect on the season.

I actually think he should go, even though I like the big lunk and supported him till this year. He's always made questionable in-game decision and his handling of the staff has been iffy at best. But he was the supposed hitting guru and he kept the team together and upbeat, which I felt outweighed the bad. But this year, the hitting has gone in the crapper and the team has pissed away a lead and they now seem almost disinterested while fighting for their playoff lives.

So at this point, what does the guy do well?

Also, I just remembered the move that turned me on Charlie: the Burrell late game substitution. That's been him, all year. It's been monumentally stupid, and though we don't know how many games it cost them, it certainly bit them in the ass numerous times.