Gabe Kapler Has Been Fired

[flyers19rw]

Regarding the analytics usage by the Phillies. We don't know what data they are collecting. It may be good stuff. However if the manager doesn't make proper use of it, what is its value? If the Phillies don't make any changes in the analytics department, then one could assume that, with the manger being fired, that he didn't make the best use of what he was given.
I don't look at this like the process its been off its wheels. It sounds as if Middleton was concerned about the state of affairs in August. Got rid of Mallee and inserted Manuel to help with the hitting and find out what was going on inside the clubhouse. Based on that feedback as well as that from others, insert players and/or agents, Middleton decided that further changes were merited.
In the end, we have no idea what MacPhail or Klentak's opinions were on Kapler. It has been said that Klentak wanted to retain Kapler. Maybe so and also maybe after meeting with others, Klentak agreed that a change was in order. If Klentak doesn't resign in the near future, a person could surmise that he was convinced bye others that jettisoning Kapler was appropriate. It looks to me that Middleton/Bucks did due diligence here and a collective agreement by management was finalized.

[zambonir]

I guess we can assume Kapler is taking the year off, or will find another job, i.e., no talk of an "advisor" or consulting role. He's already been named as a Giants manager candidate (given Dodgers connections) but I gotta think he's better off chilling as a special assistant somewhere for a year.

(Edit: hadn't seen this Heyman tweet, i.e, "in 2020.")

Jon Heyman on Twitter

When we talk about "analytics" it's a lot of different things. Clearly the manager and coaches did a great job using pitch-framing data this year. They also seemed to improve their defensive approach after having both poor data and poor execution last year. That was due largely to new coaches in the latter case. And I think Gabe's bullpen management (mostly using the data) was probably fine. Where they obviously failed is that neither the batting coach nor the pitching coach had the ability to use data effectively as a teaching tool, or to use it as just one arrow in their quiver. And some players would rather not use it all, which is probably okay (and if it's really not, get different players. Because they are obviously not giving up on the philosophies at the minor league level, and Young is going to continue working for the team too).

I'm inclined to trust what's been reported, repeatedly, for the past week. If it was up to Klentak Gabe would have stayed. There's no upside to him resigning in protest, he'd never get hired as a GM again. His best shot is to go along with what his owner wants (knowing his owner also gives him a lot of money to spend on players) and right this ship. If it all goes perfectly (i.e. a World Series, hitting on some of these prospects) he ends up with MacPhail's job (or that job with another team). If not he's back to being an assistant GM for a while, but why start that now.

(Also if he quit he'd be giving up two years salary. If he gets fired next year he still gets the second year in his bank account.)

[zambonir]

I guess MIddleton basically said he was the CEO, not just an owner, and it will always be his final call to make decisions and determine organizational strategy.

Which is fair enough, just seems like the team President is unnecessary. You have a COO on the business side (which they do) and the GM is that on the baseball side. If MacPhail was a more hands-on baseball ops president like the guys in Minnesota, Chicago or LA (where they haven't had an actual GM this year), different story.

They also confirmed that Klentak and MacPhail would have kept Kapler.

[fish]

They also confirmed that Klentak and MacPhail would have kept Kapler.

And that was the reason for the long wait- that they wanted to keep Kapler, Middleton didn’t, and as a compromise they convinced him to do due diligence and ask around before making his decision. If Middleton didn’t have a moment where he freaked out on Klentak and MacPhail over this I’d be shocked. How can he keep people around he is so obviously not on the same page as?

It’s like Klentak wanted a manager he could control, and Middleton wants a gm he can control.

[zambonir]

Yeah, I give MIddleton a little credit, sort of, for showing deference to his staff. But it doesn't seem like anything was really going to change his mind, and also, who did he really need to talk to that should have more weight than his GM and president? And while it appears he's in charge he doesn't really have any track record of knowing how to run a baseball team, except when it comes to forcing out presidents, hiring new ones who aren't necessarily any better, and now, just doing that job himself. As one of the writers said, baseball teams are not cigar companies.

That he somehow decided the September collapses (both years) were on the manager more than the who was on the roster (especially pitchers) or that this year's September was even especially relevant (they were just a couple of games worse than August, and better than June) seems to be without nuance.

But so it goes. There's no doubt next year will be better. We'll see how much better (or whether the long-term will be).

[allentown]

while it appears he's in charge he doesn't really have any track record of knowing how to run a baseball team

This is undeniably true, but the flip side is neither did Klentak nor Kapler. MacPhail seems so silent and inscrutable that he seems basically a cipher. What does he actually do? Does he feel any urgency to field a team that can progress in the playoffs? I guess I don't understand how he can be pleased with either the state of the organization or the state of the MLB Phillies. I don't see what he sees to indicate that Klentak has improved the organization or that Kapler improved the MLB team's performance. Middleton displays an urgency to win and his action in firing Kapler shows he isn't willing to tolerate a lack of progress. Unlike the Giles-era ownership, he is willing to spend big $ to win.

For a lot of baseball ownership and management, the passion and over-arching goal seems not to be winning in the playoffs, but winning the battle with the players and their union over players' share of revenue. This has been the hallmark of the Phillies for so many of the years I've followed the team. I admit that part of my failure to warm to Klentak is that his formative years were in the Commissioner's office on the labor relations side and that he initially came to MacPhail's attention during labor negotiations. I suspect that his unwillingness to spend Middleton's money is an inside-baseball approach that fears that salaries in general will push higher if teams not already at the door of playoffs compete strongly for FA. They are supposed to follow AF's approach of hanging back, keeping payroll well short of the cap, and wait.

Part of my viewpoint is how I see our society changing in a way which disadvantages the workers who actually develop and make the product sold. There has been a concerted effort to weaken and destroy unions, leading to employers taking a larger and larger share of GDP. In baseball, the product is the players on the field and their manager and coaches. That is what has made baseball great -- what happens on the field and in the dugout. Above that is the big money side of baseball -- a business given huge support (stadia and anti-trust exemption) from the public. This part has always fought fiercely to decrease the power of the players and the players' share of revenue. I'm not sure which side of baseball holds Klentak's greatest passion.

As an engineer who used stats a lot, part of me loves analytics. They are an interesting way to figure out what is actually important to success in baseball. The more political side of me, as well as the watching-the-games baseball fan side of me, sees them as a way to take the thinking side of baseball outside the field/dugout and make players/managers/coaches more fungible and less valuable. It detracts from the game for me. I might feel different if the analytics guys for my team seemed superior to those of other teams, but in reality they seem less capable of improving the product on the field. We've seen a lot of idiocy the past two seasons.

I look at the state of the Phillies minor leagues and I see a below average organization. Following what seems to be Klentak/MacPhail's slow rebuild, husband the money approach, we should have a superior farm system today. That we don't tells me that approach has failed. I think that is the biggest knock on Klentak/MacPhail. I see Kapler as a scapegoat here, as he seems to have managed as he was told to manage. He was robotic for my taste, but the higher ups wanted an inexperienced manager who was willing to follow very detailed orders and be more that a tad robotic.

Middleton knows he has tickets to sell and needs to rebuild his fanbase. What happened at CBP this season did not help that cause.

[andyb]

It’s like Klentak wanted a manager he could control, and Middleton wants a gm he can control.

And that is a process almost destined to failure. The manager is not empowered to make decisions for the good of the team. The GM is handicapped by mandates that don't make sense from above. And everybody does selective moves to protect their job that don't necessarily help the team.

The whole deadline approach is an indication of this. We decided to not trade significant prospects because the wild card was not worth fighting for. We even decided not to spend the extra $12 million we could have under the luxury tax. Remember I think we were still in the second wild card position when all this went down.

Then the manager takes the blame when he does not have the players to compete through injuries in August and September. This is not to absolve Kapler either. The players quit on him to some degree. He had no answer for Hoskins' slump. He sat players at times that seemed to have been orders from on high (a good manager would have gotten more out of Pivetta for instance).

If this is now they want to run a team it bears more than a passing resemblance to Dan Snyder and the Redskins. And that ain't good.

[allentown]

The whole deadline approach is an indication of this. We decided to not trade significant prospects because the wild card was not worth fighting for. We even decided not to spend the extra $12 million we could have under the luxury tax. Remember I think we were still in the second wild card position when all this went down.

We were positioned in the standings to have a solid shot at 2nd wildcard. However, that was a result of what we had done in early season, rather than in more recent months -- the team was fading. I agreed (I still agree) with the decision not to trade significant prospects -- that would be too great a robbing of the future from an organization with an inferior minor league system. There were guys available for just $ or just $ and eyewash minor prospects. We certainly should have helped the pitching by that route. But no, this wasn't the year to trade more top prospects. A good organization hardly ever trades its top prospects, unless its self-scouting says they are unlikely to have plus MLB careers. Eventually, and generally a lot faster than that, the salary cap will strangle a team which cannot maintain a steady stream of cheap, plus, home-grown talent to balance the high salary guys. Trade top prospects and that lack will kill your team. It can fuel a one-year pop-up surge, such as the ones the Marlins seemed adept at, but it is not an approach to mostly continuous success.

[julio]

We were positioned in the standings to have a solid shot at 2nd wildcard. However, that was a result of what we had done in early season, rather than in more recent months -- the team was fading.

I agree with this. People have commented on the "June swoon" above.

The 2019 season turned on June 3rd, in Los Angeles, in the first inning, when Andrew McCutchen's knee blew out. The club never recovered - and I don't fault Kapler, or Klentak, for "doing nothing." They both tried to find a solution, but their efforts failed, repeatedly.

[Philsmania]

Cutch got hurt in San Diego.

[andyb]

Looked it up and we were 1 game out of the 2nd wild card that week. Agree with the June swoon, but we also failed to even attempt to address the bullpen. We at least added some salary in Vargas. We ended up $11.6 million under the competitive balance tax threshold, so that is more than $25 million of pro-rated salary we could have added without giving up prospects in deals similar to Vargas and Dickerson.

We probably would have fell short of the wild card but we did not really try. This is on Middleton and/or Klentak but it is probably one of the major reasons they are firing the manager. This is kind of why I thought none should go or both should go. If Klentak thinks the manager should stay then you either get rid of the whole team or trust your baseball operation for another year.

[julio]

Cutch got hurt in San Diego.

Yep, you are correct. I even went back and looked at the relevant game thread - and just misread it.

Don't get old...

[bkeich]

We will never know the answer to this questions simply because of how this guy acts (properly and honorably), but the one part of Kapler being fired that isn’t getting attention may have been the most important part of the decision.

What did Charlie Manuel say?

He was clearly “planted” to find out what was going on. I suspect his opinion of what he saw was taken VERY seriously, but I doubt we will ever hear what that was.

My guess is this was a bigger part of the decision than our current discussion is giving credit.

[allentown]

That surely is a significant part of it. I think another big part is Young, who was the pitching coach Kapler pushed for.

[flyers19rw]

Andy, I don't buy into the "They did not really try" theme. After Mccutchen went down the Phillies acquired Bruce, Miller, Pirela and Dickerson as well as bringing up Hasely, rushing him through AAA ball, to fill the hole in the OF. To cure the pitching problems they brought Smyly, Vargas, Parker, Vincent, Morin and Hughes into the organization to fill in various holes. (Some of which may have been created by their training/usage by Kapler and Young but that's another subject.)
Now they may not have been who some fans wanted, namely Keuchel, but the FO did make moves to replace the injured or under performing players. If these players weren't sufficient enough, who would you rather have seen them acquire and what would you have been willing to give up to get them?

[andyb]

After Mccutchen went down the Phillies acquired Bruce, Miller, Pirela and Dickerson as well as bringing up Hasely, rushing him through AAA ball, to fill the hole in the OF.

That is not really trying. Miller and Pirela were off the scrap heap. Getting Bruce cost little, same as Dickerson. Morin, Hughes, and Parker were also off the scrap heap.

If acquiring a couple mediocre players by picking up a few million in salaries is trying, why didn't they think of acquiring better players with their money. Haseley was a bit of a reaction to Herrera, but again calling up a rookie who may not be ready smacks of desperation rather than trying. Smyly was free (with a 7+ ERA and really not that good against all but bad teams with the Phillies) and Vargas cost $2 million with little indication he would be good. He was acquired because he might be better than what we had, not because he would be good.

The Braves and Nats both made more significant deals even when you subtract the deals that cost real prospects.

I stand by my statement that they did not try hard. It is a nuanced statement though. I too would not have endorsed trading top prospects. I would have done more though (spend $11 million more, trade a secondary prospect or two). I would have looked for relievers with a salary in the $5-$10 million range that were pitching well that could be acquired for nominal prospects. A half dozen of these types were traded. There were probably 15-20 more that did not get traded. One does not have to name names though for your roster to know the team wasn't trying. Most of their competition added players. They had huge holes and were looking solely at waiver castoffs. That message most likely resonated.

The reason this is important is that we just fired the manager in part because of second half collapses. When your front office doesn't try hard though, the blame should not be on the manager. It should be on the front office or their bosses who prevented them from trying harder.

[zambonir]

I really don't agree with the whole "Charlie was there to take stock of the clubhouse" theory. He was there to get them to hit!

Honestly, if he was even perceived by the players to be there as the owner's spy, then by definition you have already messed up the clubhouse culture and undercut the manager, thereby also making it impossible to objectively evaluate the clubhouse and the manager. And hmmh, perhaps lowering morale at a key point in the season! Personally I think he would have recoiled at being asked to do that, just like he recoiled at the idea that he was there to do Gabe or Thomson's job.

Regardless, my guess is Charlie probably backed Kapler. He's been in the exact same position. I doubt all the players in 2006 would have raved about him, and he was just as unpopular as Kapler too (especially with the loudmouths like Eskin).

Whatever he may have observed or heard couldn't have been a big deal either way, and it's not like he's the guy who would say "this clubhouse is too loose, you need a taskmaster."

Anyway, if it's true, it does not reflect any better on the organization's power structure or decision-making.

[allentown]

Has anyone even suggested that the Phillies problem was that the clubhouse was too loose?
I thought the problem would have been the exact opposite.

[bkeich]

Regardless, my guess is Charlie probably backed Kapler. He's been in the exact same position. I doubt all the players in 2006 would have raved about him, and he was just as unpopular as Kapler too (especially with the loudmouths like Eskin).

Yea, I actually had a sentence in my post like that and deleted it because I thought it would be confusing.

As a member of the coaching fraternity I dont think Charlie would ever undercut or even recommend firing a manager unless the situations were extreme. I dont think that is what happened, I dont think Charlie would have taken the position either if that was the intent.

I do however think that Middleton asked Charlie some very frank, very pointed questions to elicit from Charlie what he saw in his time in the clubhouse. I dont really think Charlie was a spy, he filled a spot in something he excels at that we needed in a short term (hitting coach). But I do think that Middleton expected to get honest answers from Manuel about some things, particularly communications and structure that Manuel observed. I doubt he asked Charlie "should we fire him" because I think we all know what Charlie's answer would be, and I expect Middleton's does also. But I think he did ask symptom questions to see what information he could get, I expect Charlie was honest about his assessment, even if it was a little bias'd to "I wasnt the manager, so I can't really speak to that question" type answers.

Manuel was in the dugout, Manuel is respected. He was asked a series of questions, but maybe not a final answer.

Point of my post was that there were many posts of how/what happened to get to this conclusion, and Manuel's name wasnt mentioned in any of them, and I think that is incorrectly surmising how this went down.

[zambonir]

All of the post-mortems have said Kapler let the clubhouse police themselves, didn't believe in rules, and of course was rarely critical (or meted out discipline). And as a result the players loved playing for him - except that didn't equal results.

I mean, still pretty much conjecture but the theory is they will do the usual see-saw thing, from player's coach to tough guy.

As for Charlie, sure, him being around gave him additional insight and he's still an advisor but it also sounds like Middleton talked to as many as a dozen people, some outside of the organization. I'm sure Gillick was high on the list (that may be who he flew to see). Maybe even some rival owners. I don't really believe he could have learned anything that useful about the clubhouse, good or bad, any more than he learned anything useful about batting practice when he decided to fire the hitting coach. On top of that it seems to me that most of what might be there to be learned would have more to do with the GM, in terms of the failure to have a good process to implementing analytics and teaching.

From what Middleton had to say for himself though, it doesn't sound like anything he heard from anybody was really going to matter. He knew what he wanted to do and much as Klentak might wish otherwise there was no set of facts that could win an argument about the points Middleton found lacking - i.e. that Kapler wasn't loved, that he was the fan scapegoat for the anti-analytics crowd, and that Middleton himself believed the manager was responsible for the team playing poorly in September.

And listen, as much as I don't think that's a correct analysis, if the team had played decently in September Klentak probably could have won the argument. If they'd made the wild card he definitely could have.