Old Core, Crotch-Grabbing Closer and Oodles of Losses Demand Phillies Rebuild

Philadelphia fans did not need Jonathan Papelbon to grab his crotch in their general direction the other day, Roseanne-like, to decide that these Phillies are one unlikeable ballclub.   

No, they delivered that verdict long before Papelbon’s lewd gesture, which swiftly earned him a seven-game suspension. Just two seasons after leading the National League in attendance, the Phillies rank ninth this year. No team has suffered as precipitous a decline: Through 78 home dates, the Phillies are more than a half-million fans off last year’s pace, down 579,350, per Baseball-Reference.com.

No other team is close. Texas is next at 378,785.   

The Phillies, through Thursday night’s series finale in San Diego, were tied for 25th in the majors in on-base percentage (.302), tied for 26th in slugging percentage (.364) and 28th overall in OPS (.666). Runs are harder to come by than smiles at Citizens Bank Park, as a team that won it all in 2008 and returned to the World Series in ’09 has become bloated and rusty.

Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley and Carlos Ruiz got big contracts, got old and now need to get gone. Loyalty has backfired on the Phillies, who stubbornly stayed with their core until long after its expiration date. And now they are paying for it.

“Sometimes it’s a tough call to make,” Hall of Fame executive Pat Gillick, now acting as the Phillies’ interim president while David Montgomery undergoes treatment for cancer, tells Bleacher Report. “Actually, our players who have been with us for a period of time have been healthy. Utley, Rollins, Howard. Chooch [Ruiz] was out for a time with a concussion.

“We haven’t scored a lot of runs. Losing Cliff Lee has hurt us, too.

“We’ve got some challenges.”

It has been a rough, rough season in Philadelphia. Montgomery, 68, is especially beloved throughout the Phillies organization and universally liked throughout the industry. He underwent surgery to remove cancer from his jaw in May but continued to work throughout chemotherapy and radiation treatments until diminishing returns caused ownership to call Gillick in from the bullpen and his senior advisor role with the club.

“He needs some good recovery time,” Gillick says. “But he’s doing fine.”

So Gillick, the architect of the ’08 World Series champions, stepped back into active duty and will roll up his sleeves to help clean up the mess. The Phillies have thrown more and more good money around, some $500 million worth over the past three seasons, chasing their glorious recent past.

They are losing ground.

In his first year as manager, another Hall of Famer, Ryne Sandberg, plugs in Darin Ruf, 28, when he can at first, though Howard is guaranteed $60 million over the next two seasons. He currently is second in the majors with 177 strikeouts, and he’s hitting .222 with a career-low .374 slugging percentage.

The manager watches prospect Maikel Franco this month at third and hopes center fielder Ben Revere (.309/.326/.368, 47 steals in 54 opportunities) can continue to refine his game.

“I can say he’s made very good strides in different parts of his game,” Sandberg says of Revere. “I think he’s really improved his stolen-base capability. Maybe there have been times this year where he could have been a little more aggressive.”

The same can be said for general manager Ruben Amaro Jr., who astoundingly allowed the July 31 trading deadline to pass without lighting a stick of dynamite under any part of this roster. Gillick, with increased authority in Montgomery’s absence, since has said that Amaro‘s job is safe for the immediate future. The fans who continue to stay away in droves are outraged.

“One thing is, you’ve got to be patient,” Gillick says. “Sometimes you can’t meet all the challenges at once.

“Let’s put it this way: You have to move cautiously but aggressively. It’s not like you’ve got to take everything down in one fell swoop. You’ve got to plan your way. It takes time.”

Sandberg at midseason made a move toward Ruf, who pounded 38 homers at Double-A Reading in ’12, but Amaro publicly backed the veteran Howard and, well, that was that for the time being. On Thursday, with Howard in a .154 (4-for-26) dive over his past 10 games, Ruf was in the lineup for a third consecutive day.

At one time, outfielder Domonic Brown, 27, was going to be the next big thing in Philadelphia. An All-Star in ’13 who smashed 27 home runs while hitting .272 with 83 RBI, he’s slumped this season to .237 with 10 homers and 61 RBI.

“You can’t expect young people to come to the big leagues and be productive right away,” Gillick says, and while that’s certainly true for younger Phillies such as Ruf, Franco, Cody Asche and Freddy Galvis, Brown has had enough of an audition that it’s probably time to move on there, too.

Rollins, 35, hasn’t played since Sept. 8 because of a strained left hamstring, and his .243 batting average equals his career worst in 2010—though his .717 OPS is up from last summer’s .666. His option for 2015 vested at $11 million in July.

The Phillies also are on the hook to Lee at $25 million for next summer (plus a $27.5 million club option or $12.5 million buyout in ’16), to Utley through ’18 if he hits a series of vesting options (and at the very least, $15 million for ’15) and to Ruiz through ’16 at $8.5 million per year.

Cole Hamels? He signed a six-year, $144 million deal through ’18, owns a 2.47 ERA through 28 starts and is 10.1 innings from reaching 200 for a fifth year in a row. But given the shape this last-place team is in, the quickest reboot might be to deal Hamels this winter for a package of players.

Then there is the crotch-grabbing closer, whose four-year, $50 million deal runs another season (and vests for ’16 with 55 games finished in ’15 or 100 finished in ’14 and ’15 combined).

What all of this is not going to do is reverse the Phillies’ hemorrhaging attendance.

“In Philly, if you don’t win, they don’t come out,” Gillick says. “They come out to see winners. It’s the way it is in Philadelphia. We have very knowledgeable and sophisticated fans, but that’s the way it is.”

Yes, the Phillies have one enormous mess on their hands.

“Ruben has got a pretty good idea of what he wants to do,” Gillick says, a sentence that surely petrifies those knowledgeable and sophisticated fans even further.

“Sometimes you can’t do everything people expect you to do right away,” Gillick continues. “It’s got to be the right deal, the right move.”

With or without Amaro, this much is guaranteed: With Gillick again in a hands-on role, the odds of the Phillies making the right deals and the right moves this winter have increased dramatically.

 

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. He has over two decades of experience covering MLB, including 14 years as a national baseball columnist at CBSSports.com.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball @ScottMillerBbl.

Contract information courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

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Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg Looks Like He Has the Stomach for Phillies Job

Early scouting report on rookie manager Ryne Sandberg: strong leader, terrific with details, excellent with fundamentals, ability to teach old dogs new tricks, weak stomach.

Good thing for the Philadelphia Phillies that the weak stomach part doesn’t extend to the dugout.

The Hall of Famer, who is embarking on the next stage of his career (“Chapter 7: The Cheesesteak Years”), so far seems absolutely fine on the bench, leaning against the railing, writing out the lineup card, pulling the managerial levers during a game and even, when the moment has called for it, staring down veterans like Jonathan Papelbon and Jimmy Rollins.

It’s just the occasional burger that ruffles him, as you might have heard during the recent Shake Shack shakeup, when he noted he had come down with food poisoning and lost six pounds in two days. BURP.

Quiet by nature, you wouldn’t exactly expect Sandberg to wind up as part of a hilarious Jon Stewart tirade, but there he was, as you can see here.

Everyone knew it was going to be a different year in Philadelphia without jolly ol’ Charlie Manuel in charge. Sandberg, who replaced Manuel last Sept. 22, wasted no time in sending that message by feeding the Phillies a steady diet of fundamentals this spring.

“It’s definitely been different,” first baseman Ryan Howard says. “His style is a lot more work-oriented.”

That point was driven home quickly in the spring when Rollins found himself on the bench for three consecutive days because Sandberg thought the veteran shortstop was too lackadaisical during spring camp.

It was underlined again earlier this month when Sandberg called out closer Jonathan Papelbon for being unwilling to pitch for a third consecutive game.

It is not easy to change the culture of an entire club, which Sandberg was hired to do. It especially is not easy for a new manager to redirect a veteran club.

The Sandberg-Rollins imbroglio this spring was reminiscent of an incident early in Bobby Valentine’s one-year disaster with the Red Sox. Early in the season, he called out Kevin Youkilis, and Dustin Pedroia responded with his Shot Heard ‘Round Kenmore Square: “That’s not the way we go about our stuff around here.”

In that case, Valentine was a veteran manager inheriting a grizzled club that had been around the track a few times. And the situation quickly reached the point of no return.

In this case, Sandberg is a new manager working to establish his authority and earn the respect of veteran players who have done things their own way for years. His personality is totally different from that of Valentine, and no two situations are the same. Yet there are similarities, and in this case, the Rollins Moment now is a blip in the past.

“We covered a lot of things in spring training,” Sandberg said when we chatted late last month. “I tried to change the mentality a little bit about stressing fundamentals and practicing at it. So when we get on the field often back at home, we practice fundamentals, we review it.

“The coaching staff I have, which I’m very pleased with, we work with the players to help them stay on top of their game, whether they’re young players or veteran players. I see some of the veteran guys tweaking their games a little bit for better production and, for this stage of the game, what I feel they need to do to be good players and help our team win games.

“And there’s been good response from that.”

Sandberg, who has Larry Bowa as his bench coach and Bob McClure as his pitching coach, is a quiet and thoughtful man. Because he does not carry himself with an aggressive demeanor, it is easy to forget how great his career was and that he’s probably forgotten more baseball than many of those whom he is now managing will ever know.

He did not exactly inherit a powerhouse club (no matter what the Phillies may think internally), so it is difficult to judge his managerial chops on a mere 43 games. This is a flawed team with a bad bullpen, aging stars and health issues, the most recent of which came this week when ace Cliff Lee went onto the disabled list with a sore elbow.

“He had to break the club back down because the club had gotten away from fundamentals,” one National League executive said. “It became a power team, but now it’s not a power team, so he had to change the way they thought of the little things like the hit-and-run, bunting and all kinds of defensive adjustments.”

Whether the Phillies are able to fully adapt given their current roster construction remains in doubt. But that’s a flaw with the roster, not with Sandberg or his expectations. Whenever the Phillies consistently win again, it probably is going to have to be with a handful of different players who can do many of the things Sandberg preaches.

For now, at least, give the Phillies themselves credit for working to adapt. The Rollins thing does not appear to have any lingering effects, and more importantly, the veteran shortstop seems to have changed some of his ways. Notoriously one of the last to arrive in the clubhouse each afternoon, Rollins has moved up his arrival time.

And it is not just Rollins. Things are more regimented, tighter, across the board.

“Ryne has implemented a little more discipline,” reliever Mike Adams said. “He’s a stickler for small things. He makes sure things are organized. He wants everybody on a schedule, to have a routine.

“That’s just his preparation style. He’s really into the small things.”

It’s hard not to admire what Sandberg stands for and what he’s trying to do. From the start of spring training, if a Phillie did a drill wrong, he did it over. There is a right way to do things. And it doesn’t happen by being lazy or sloppy.

“Sometimes in this industry, we forget how important the basics are,” the NL executive said. “If you’re as sound of a fundamental team as the Cardinals have been, it can add two, three, four wins a year. Sometimes seven, eight, 10 wins. Get the bunt down, hit the cutoff man, be in the right location.

“Those things win games. [Sandberg is] very cognizant of what it takes to win a game.”

There’s not much Sandberg misses. There wasn’t when he played in Wrigley Field, and there isn’t from the dugout at Citizens Bank Park. It’s part of what gives him every chance to succeed in this managerial gig.

Why, you might even say the only thing that stands a chance of stopping him is a bad burger. And in the end, he even overcame that.

 

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. He has over two decades of experience covering MLB, including 14 years as a national baseball columnist at CBSSports.com.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball here.

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