Breaking: Phillies Fire John Mallee, Hire Charlie Manuel

[California_Dreamin]

As a guy who goes back to the days of Paul Owens [he and Gillick were easily the best GM's the Phils ever had] count me as one who thinks this Manuel move to the dugout is not about hitting, its about scouting...scouting what in the heck is going on with this team. Owens did this twice where he went into the dugout, as a manager, to find out what was going on.

He then sent his trusted second in command, Dallas Green, to do the same thing in 1979. I believe this was a Middleton move because he trusts Manuel's word and that Manuel will be letting Middleton know whats happening. If I were Kapler, I would NOT find this move very encouraging, nor should he.

[schillingfan]

Consider me crazy, but I can’t believe our analytic guys are so stupid to have a one size fits all approach to hitting. I understand what stats do, but haven’t a clue how to do them, but I would assume our guys are able to develop formulas that account for types of pitchers and types of hitters, individual players’ sweet zones and lay off zones. It would require data accumulation, i.e., watching film by knowledgeable people who could recognize types of pitches and kinds of swings. It’s really not so different from what good scouts instinctively do. I suspect that the statistics would affirm what our coaches see, but might identify their biases. It doesn’t take a genius to know that a higher launch angle can loft low pitches over infielders ‘ arms vas opposed to hitting the ball off the bottom of the bat yielding a weak grounder. But with a high fastball, you’ll get a pop up. Maybe I’m just blathering but it seems like common sense that statistics should work hand in hand wit h baseball knowledge.

[julio]

Maybe I’m just blathering but it seems like common sense that statistics should work hand in hand wit h baseball knowledge.

It's possible that the issue simply that some managers (coaches) in any environment tend to assume that employees can adapt - sometimes in ways that employees just can't actually adapt. There are a lot of mediocre managers (in the large sense of anybody who manages/supervises other individuals) out there, who never really grasp that it's all about fitting your expectations and demands to the individual's strengths, and minimizing exposure of the individual's weaknesses. There's no reason to assume that Mallee was good at this, and based on the outcomes, perhaps some reason to assume the alternative?

[zambonir]

Of course it's also possible that when you turn over 50% of your starting eight, 25% of it was possibly unsalvageable to begin with, and your manager and most of the analytics infrastructure is only in its second year, it's not going to magically come together in one season. But whatever adjustments could or should have been made (especially after that hot April), obviously weren't.

Realmuto has come around though. And an absolutely horrible month from Hoskins is something he's done every year.