Well, I think this has run long enough. The results aren’t going to change much if I let the polling to run any longer. The response in all three polls was similar. Before a hundred votes were cast, the “Go” response for all three was over 60%. Around 200, the percentages held. Saturday, with over 350 votes cast, Klentak’s has dipped below 60%, but MacPhail and Kapler are still over 60%.
I didn’t vote, but if I had, I would probably have said “Stay” for all three. I was not among those who hated the Kapler hiring. I was not invested in Mackinon, Wathan, or any of the older managers who were available. I can’t hold him accountable for injuries or the decisions that shaped his roster. MacPhail turned a of the baseball decisions over to Klentak when he hired Kapler and soon thereafter. I think he has been mentoring his successor and can probably be excused for the decisions of another. That leaves Klentak who has more years left on his contract than the other two. I think he has had a good tenure. The most glaring mistake (IMO) was expecting the young starting pitchers to continue to develop. You should always expect them to all get worse. (Sarcasm) It was unfortunate that the four pitchers couldn’t pitch effectively (Eickhoff, Velasquez, Eflin, Pivetta) and that the guys at Lehigh Valley couldn’t take advantage of their opportunities (Irvin and De Lo Santos). I agreed with the decision to discontinue pursuit for Corbin when the years became too high (remember Lee and Halladay at the end of their contracts?). I wasn’t interested in Keuchel or Kimbrell during the offseason or later. And, I can’t hold him accountable for not making the trades that are suggested here every week. We don’t know that he didn’t try to make trades and the prices were too high. After all that, I can’t see them eating 4 years of contract. I did think Kapler was a goner, but in embarrassing, Phillies fashion they are taking an incredibly, unconscionable amount of time to either fire Kapler or give him a vote of confidence.
Your turn.
BTW, I respect the opinion and appreciate the calm and reasonable interaction of all who comment here. I did not intend to imply otherwise.
Phuture Phillies 
Jim, I understand your point of view with regards to Matt Klentak. However, my issue with him is that after 4 years, you can make the argument that the farm system is really not much better today than when he took over. Some things were out of his control, like Mark Appel imploding then walking away, or Vinny V, who has the talent and the stuff to be an ace, but basically lacks the understanding of how to pitch. However, if you keep drafting pitchers that project to be back end starters, then the results will be a mediocre pitching staff.
Interesting that Indifferent beat out Stay in 2 of the 3 polls.
The top Hitter and Pitcher poll would let me do anything except chose one of the three choices. Jim, how do we write in a candidate? It’s probably me but …
Wouldn’t let me do anything but pick one of the 3 choices. Damn it’s early and a Monday morning to boot.
Sorry. I edited the polls to allow Other answers. My bad. I decided early this morning to do these rather than start fresh on it with a full night’s sleep. They should be okay now.
I think the readers of this site are generally very knowledgeable. Does anyone know what MacPhail does?
I was one of the few who voted stay for the FO. In my opinion, they’ve got a clear plan; one that I agree with. And I think they’ve generally been putting people in place to execute that plan. I give them another couple of years (and one more manager) to get to where they’re planning on going.
But I did say go on Kapler. I think his mistakes have, in general, been overstated. I’m not sure any manager in baseball gets many more wins out of this team than he did. He was not put in a situation to succeed. HOWEVER, and I’ve mentioned this before, his handling of the younger guys is beyond concerning. I doubt there’s much any manager to can do to ruin a veteran player. They know what they need to do to succeed. They’ve been there before. They go out and do their job. But the young guys need guidance and, more importantly, opportunity. They get no opportunity under Kapler. It’s absolutely absurd that Adam Haseley was being treated like a platoon bat the entire year. The kid was hitting over .300 since the end of August. If that weren’t enough to give him chances against lefties, then at the very least he should have been the full-time, 9 inning starter once we were eliminated from playoffs (realistically or mathematically). But he never was. If Kapler can’t make that decision under the BLATANTLY OBVIOUS conditions, I don’t trust him to make it during a playoff run. And we’ll never be an organization that keeps its competitive window open indefinitely if we can never turn to our young guys to take over.
DanK….I more or less leaned to what you say.
I think it is time for a managerial change.
And the MacKlentak team gets at least at a minimum, another year, though their extension I believe is thru 2022….think it was a two-year extension.
now it will get tricky next season if Klentak/MacPhail hire a new manager, then Middleton decides to let them go after 2020…..the new manager will have a new GM/President to wok for, so that becomes a little awkward….especially if the new manager is an older guy like a Maddon/Girardi/Showalter, who like to have their own level of autonomy.
I was indifferent on Kap until I heard Jim Salisbury talk about Buck, Girardi, and some other candidates. I wont be pissed if he stays but I’m more excited for others
I’m still holding out hope, albeit faint, that once Tampa Bay is eliminated by Houston (today?), that Bloom is brought on in a restructured front office to oversee Klentak. Either way, I anticipate Kapler to be gone.
Charlie Morton was again stellar yesterday for the little engine that could…
I beat that dead horse because Klentak passed on him for Clay Bucholtz and all he did was go on to win a WS with the Stros and dominate ever since.
DMAR….hard to believe how he turned it around….first 9 years in the league, a negative.6 bWAR…last three years (ages33-35) 10.7bWAR
I suppose with that in mind…hope should not be loss on VV, Pivvy and Ef
Blaming the non-performing players is more of an excuse and a lazy of not identifying the root cause of the problem. For veteran players like Arrieta there’s no excuse. But for the younger players who underperformed – this should be looked closer, otherwise, the Phillies will make the same mistakes again considering a lot of this players showed improvement from the coaches that this FO just replaced.
I voted stay on MacPhail and Klentak, indifferent on Kapler.
Reason being that I think it’s a year too early to make FO changes. Bad organizations change course too frequently, good organizations stick to a plan and execute it. In my estimation, Klentak should have more than one year to execute the “build a contender” phase.
I actually like Kapler the most of the three, but his future should really be decided by how the players respond to him and we really don’t know that if we’re not in the locker room. There are some signs that they’ve tuned him out, including their embarrassing finish, but we can’t really be sure based on what we know.
Dan, Handzus, Since we all know Mac/Klentak are coming back, and you both are on board with them, what should we look forward to this off season? Are they changing their philosophy about FA Starters? Are they trading the farm for someone? Are they counting on improvements from the same trio, this time with a different Pitching Coach? Is winning this coming season part of the “plan?’
The problem isn’t that you expect all 4 SP’s to get worse. In the case of having a .75 chance of not getting worse, you have a .316 chance of all 4 not getting worse, and a .684 chance of at least 1 getting worse.
That’s not a function of the numbers I picked, or even development and the training staff. It’s relying on too many pieces to work perfectly, and it does not bode well. Just 1 SP last offseason would have helped greatly, or even Keuchel mid season (although I didn’t trust him at all), but nothing happened except picking pitchers off the trash heap, who still became our 2nd and 3rd best pitchers.
That being said, I still voted Indifferent, Indifferent, and Stay to Klentak. He has shown the potential to learn, and let’s not have him learn here just to benefit another team. I’d really like to see a stockpiling of arms, and hopefully this year taught him that.