Should Kapler Be Fired?

jimbomill 2019-10-07 11:33:15 UTC #261

I'd like to think that the replacement-troika sees in the old troika what we see. Lack of performance. Hence, I hope they see Middleton as an owner who doesn't go for bull crap.

allentown 2019-10-07 12:44:21 UTC #262

Nope, they started two seasons well, but didn't seriously compete for the playoffs. Seriously competing is having a reasonable chance in the month of September. We didn't -- either year. Yes, I thought the Phillies should start spending on significant FA in 2017. As a large market team I think they should have started building up toward the lux cap. If they had done well on amateur talent acquisition and development, this would have been by extending their internal budding stars at the MLB level. They didn't, so that means talent must be acquired on the FA market or in trades to acquire talent largely by also taking on a bad contract. $ have been their only competitive advantage in recent years. I'm not saying they don't have some young MLB talent, like Nola and Kingery, or some quality minor leaguers, like Bohm and Howard, but the teams we need to pass have more talent in both categories. Our 40-man and our talent below Reading are actually competitive disadvantages, because teams like Atlanta and LA have more talent there. Really, the majority of teams have more talent than us in one or the other or both.

Philsmania 2019-10-07 16:50:45 UTC #263

I wonder if a "compromise" will be to spare Kapler for now but not give him an extension.

bkeich 2019-10-07 18:04:55 UTC #264

I seriously doubt a extension is even under consideration unless the team improves. Having a lame-duck manager isnt really a good thing either if it is clear he is going to be fired but they are just giving him another season

allentown 2019-10-07 18:17:56 UTC #265

This gets at my biggest reason for firing at least 2/3 of the troika: it seems inevitable and delaying it just delays the next huge phase of churn, further postponing the team's turn-around. To keep them, I would have to strongly believe that one more year will allow them to get the team where we want it to be, because if we don't get up to about 89 or more wins in 2020, then I think they are gone. I don't see them having the developed skills to get us there. They both seem very intelligent, but are still learning their trade. I think the troika remains out of synch with Middleton and is falling farther and farther behind the turn-around schedule bruited by Gillick. Neither of these is remotely a good thing.

zambonir 2019-10-07 20:36:07 UTC #266

I'm not going to seriously debate the quality of either team - and tbh in my memory the 2018 team was even worse than it actually was - but on 9/1 the Phillies were 2 1/2 games out of the WC (and ahead of every other wild card contender). Last year on 9/1 they were 3 back in the NL East (and had a better record than this year's team). Falling short of your goal in the first year you expected to reach that goal is not in and of itself a fireable offense, especially given all the mitigating circumstances. Collapsing two Septembers in a row might be, but in both cases I think there was a lot of regression to the mean (last year's team was never that good; this year the injuries and Hoskins' slump and Nola's awful finish were big. Some will put those things on the manager and coaching staff of course).

I will grant you the above (and your post) is an additional indictment of the whole operation - while the standings showed a slight improvement and the injuries were a huge factor, at the end of the day the Phillies spent a whole lot of money and changed up a whole lot of players and wound up being worse (than the Braves and Nats) than they were in 2018, and the system doesn't offer more hope than it did two years ago as well. That definitely says fire everyone; not sure it says fire the manager. At the same time, I don't see a path that improves the long-term prognosis - whether they stick with Klentak or bring in a new GM the job will be to double down on the current core for the next two years.

At this point I'm not sure it matters, unless Klentak's job is not actually safe (contrary to the few reports we've gotten). If he keeps Kap and next season fails, he's done. If he gets a new manager and next season fails he's also done. If they bring in Dave Dombrowski or any older, old-school GM, maybe we get a few good years but then it's probably the desert again.

No way they give Kap an extension. As has been pointed out, Charlie didn't get one in 2007 (he also started the season 3-9. Not sure Gabe could survive that). Of course Maddon didn't get one this year and you can certainly argue that didn't help the Cubs' season.

zambonir 2019-10-07 20:43:56 UTC #267

News, ish

Philsmania 2019-10-07 20:44:57 UTC #268

Personally, I don't understand why people insist that there is a stigma for a coach/manager to be on the last year of a contract. If you get the job done, you get rewarded. If you don't, the team looks in another direction. Will players dog it for or not respect a guy on his last year? I don't think so. I suppose you can say there is a potential "distraction" factor for the team but I don't see how that could completely undermine the team.

It does kind of stink though that the best we are hoping for at this point is to find some way to prop open the proverbial window of opportunity for just a couple of years. It looks like the Braves are built for at least the next five and the Nationals for at least another three (particularly if they keep Rendon). And, the Mets are also looking at propping open their window for the same time frame as the Phillies, the next couple of years or so. The competition is fierce. And, eventually the Marlins' rebuilding will start bearing fruit.

phillychuck 2019-10-07 21:17:13 UTC #269

Tommy Lasorda was on the last year of his contract for what, 20 years with the Dodgers?

zambonir 2019-10-07 21:57:07 UTC #270

Yeah, if, in fact, the clubhouse doesn't take you seriously because they figure you won't be back next year, the clubhouse has bigger problems.

Player input is valid to some extent, but I'm not sure how useful it is. I mean, if Hoskins says everything is just great and it wasn't the manager's fault that is admirable but still might not be correct. And if someone like Neshek or Arrieta (let alone Pivetta) decided to air their gripes that doesn't mean they're right either. More importantly, it still speaks to an inefficient and dysfunctional process/hierarchy. Depending on what day it is, the hitting coach, the manager, and now the players all seem to report directly to the owner rather than the two people ostensibly running the team and baseball ops department.

VoteForKalas 2019-10-08 14:14:25 UTC #271

Is Middleton leading the discussions with players? Isn't that usually what a GM does if it happens at all?

Plus we know player input can be flawed; I'm not sure I'd be basing my hiring decisions on that source. Now, I assume it is just one factor in the whole picture, but why does it take multiple weeks to make up one's mind? One would think TPTB would have been evaluating all season long and thinking about their options for months at least.

Philsmania 2019-10-08 14:22:31 UTC #272

Regardless of how this process ends--Kapler stays or Kapler goes--it's been downright embarrassing.

Philsmania 2019-10-08 14:24:33 UTC #273

Many indications are that Maddon to Angels is going to happen.

fish 2019-10-08 15:27:14 UTC #274

I get that Middleton is doing his due diligence but this has every appearance of being indecisive and I did not peg Middleton as being an indecisive guy. It's not as if he couldn't have started to think about this before October 1. If he leaves everyone in place he's going to go from hero to villain in the span of a year. If he's getting feedback from outside the organization he's going to hear critical opinions about the GM and manager. If he asks players for manager feedback, anyone who doesn't pitch may well support him but i'd bet they have opinions about the drudgery of their analytics and being left for dead by management at the deadline.

VoteForKalas 2019-10-08 16:00:05 UTC #275

Absolutely agree....

andyb 2019-10-08 16:47:48 UTC #276

This is how we got all those "gang of 6" decision teams in decades past. I fear we are headed to that as special advisors get inserted in the already muddled decision process.

gmwannabe 2019-10-08 16:52:14 UTC #277

i don't know if this was mentioned before, probably yes, but what about Wathan. was he interviewed when kaplan got the job. i thought he did well and was successful in the minors at reading and Lehigh? he had alot of the younger players with him in his success. never a thought? no trust in him? or he is more "old school" and wants baseball players and not mathematicians.
gm

allentown 2019-10-08 17:14:43 UTC #278

It is indecisive. The whole change in the Phillies organization, since they were considering hiring MacPhail has been extremely indecisive and drawn out, with a lot of management and baseball-side professional churn every season. That I think is partly why we are where we are and largely why I believe MacPhaiil and Middleton are out of synch. I suspect Middleton wants the manager and/or GM gone and what we are seeing play out is a disagreement with MacPhail who wants to keep them both. My concern remains: unless the Phillies win about 10 more games next year, Kapler and probably Klentak will be gone after next season, which is yet another season of churn and with MacPhail's glacia pace of organization (non-player, but I guess that as well) rebuilding, probably several more seasons of churn. We need organizational stability. We should not be making a one-year decision. If this is down to 'gives these guys one more chance', then I think the best answer is to just cut ties and start over with a baseball management side that everyone can let sit in place for at least 4 seasons. The churn of both staff and philosophy is fatal to success as a team. And yes, it is embarrassing. Yes, it is a dysfunctional organization. That Middleton is leading the discussion with players (wasn't it Manuel's job to do that in a casual, very down-low way in-season) tells me he doesn't fully trust Klentak.l

Philsmania 2019-10-08 17:38:19 UTC #279

I think it could be said of Middleton that perhaps owners also sometimes need to have a learning curve. Philadelphia holds up Lurie as the gold standard now but, truth be told, he was very spotty his first five to six years of owning the Eagles. Remember when he was spotted walking into the Eagles' draft war room carrying a could-have-been-plucked-off-the-rack-at-Wawa draft magazine? Or how in his first coaching hire, he insisted that candidates interview with his wife as well (which led to Dick Vermeil pulling out)? And, few would say he got his first big hire (Ray Rhodes) right. By 1998 when the Eagles crashed and burned at 3-13, much of Philadelphia thought he was a joke, a Hollywood producer who didn't have a clue about running any other kind of business and a runaway fantasy league owner. See also Montgomery. When he passed away this past year, he was hailed as a consummate gentleman who ran a classy and mostly good organization. However, that was not the perception of him and the organization during his first five to six years. The way he handled his first big decision (the December '97 firing of Lee Thomas) shocked and appalled many in the industry. And, as recently as 2002, the common perception of the organization around baseball, among players and agents and among fans was that the Phillies was an Ebeneezer Scrooge-like operation that was as mean-spirited as it was miserly. Back then, Philadelphia longed for the then-assumed destined-to-happen day when Comcast would buy the ownership out. Now, it appears that Middleton may be mired in his learning curve. He's created a mess. Will he learn how to clean it up and be a better owner?

As Yoda's Force ghost said to Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, "Failure the best teacher is."

zambonir 2019-10-08 19:31:31 UTC #280

At the rate this is going Wathan will be their only option.

That's just something we said on the board, nobody ever suggested such a thing publicly. But it's just another side of the same coin, i.e. Middleton and the advisers doing the GM or manager's job.

Lots of tidbits here.