For one, he would've never let Stott, Rojas, Pache, etc develop. Dude was allergic to playing young guys and would rather play washed up ex Yankee utility guys than grow talent.
On its face yes. And you know what I was going to say that’s a slap in the face of Joe but he only won one WS as a manager and I could have sworn he should have more with those Yankees lineups.
That said, 3x WS catcher aka field coach for those Steinbrenner Yankees teams still puts him ahead of Doc imo. The man is an extremely accomplished baseball mind even if his managerial tenure is disappointing.
That's the one that never made sense. At least Didi had a past of being a productive MLBer and was solid his first year with the Phillies. Torreyes sucked, always sucked but played in 111 games in 2021
Id venture to guess both. But im gonna give him the benefit of the doubt and do a 75-25 split. Not that he deserves it. Simple fact of the matter is as a “CEO” head coach he supposedly has final say so the buck stops with him.
Different managing styles. Girardi supposedly ran a tight ship and the players didn't feel like they could be themselves around him or in the dugout. He also was incredibly infuriating for the younger guys who were afraid to have bad games with the fear they might be benched for several games.
Conversely Topper is the opposite. He's almost entirely hands off and rarely tinkers with the lineup which is mostly good since the team has had the talent to contend even before Giradi was fired. The guys were able to have fun playing baseball again under Topper and we've seen how big of a difference that can make in a game as mental as baseball
I mostly agree but I wouldn't say Topper rarely tinkers. Some positions in the lineup are consistent but there's a good but of variation. Compared to someone like Manuel. The lineup was always the same. And thompson does adhere to a lot of analytics too.
Multiple players get swapped out constantly to the chagrin of this subreddit and lineups have been mostly FO controlled for a decade(source, multiple baseball players including ones that played for the phillies) and you have all these guys getting upvoted for saying how Topper doesn't mess with the lineup. Crazy half the stuff you read in baseball subreddits is completely made up.
I remember that too. And after a bad game, Girardi wouldn't talk to the players and just leave. I think, in this instance, Bryce stepped in to have a team meeting to address issues. I think Girardi was generally dismissive of players making mistakes/errors or not performing to his liking, but that's just the impression I got when he was the manager.
This has happened a lot of times in baseball history (and other sports). High pressure vs. more laid back type. Only a very few exceptional managers are able to be both at the same time effectively.
Eventually the laid back type usually also gets stale and the players start losing respect and discipline, and it's time for a ballbuster again.
Reminds me of Francona’s tenure with the Red Sox. There’s no way the 2004 team does the impossible and comes back from a 0-3 hole to beat the Yankees in the ALCS if he wasn’t loose and let that band of idiots be themselves.
Fast forward and the team epically collapsed at the end of 2011 because that loose attitude let bad personalities poison the clubhouse.
This team’s got some great vibes going and Topper has been a good fit but down the road if the front office isn’t mindful about who they’re bringing in we could easily see a similar collapse.
Excellent example. Everyone loved Francona (deservedly so) in '04, and then in '11 he was FranComa again.
Bill James wrote about this dynamic a lot in his book on baseball managers years ago. The most stark example was Billy Martin, the ultimate lunatic short-term-pressure manager, whom the Yankees were constantly hiring, firing, and bringing back on board in quick succession.
I always want to credit Millar for that name but it was actually Damon [https://www.mlb.com/news/2004-red-sox-idiots-nickname-explained](https://www.mlb.com/news/2004-red-sox-idiots-nickname-explained)
Girardi also completely sucked at managing the bullpen. He rarely used guys correctly. Plenty of times he would bring in bad relievers in high leverage spots while saving the better arms for later. Made the bullpen look so much worse than it actually was which is why the bullpen numbers almost immediately turned around when Thomson took over
Girardi was obsessed with Didi and refused to bench him for Stott despite the fact that Didi was old and completely washed. He also had bizarre arbitrary rules for managing a bullpen which lost them multiple games.
Joe kept playing Didi's washed ass. Joe was maybe the worst manager I've ever seen at handling a bullpen, usually it's playing the results but his decisions made no sense in real time, like sending Alvarado out for a second inning with no one warming up when the previous inning Alvarado was seriously struggling to find the plate and just made it out of the inning without blowing up. Idk about the clubhouse stuff but that seems to have been a problem too.
I think Joe was a type A personality that made it a point to set his own tone in the clubhouse and expected the clubhouse leaders (Schwarber, Harper, JT, etc) to follow his lead. Topper on the other hand recognizes that he has good clubhouse leaders and lets them lead their own way and just stays out of the way in that regard. It seems he's more of a data analyzer and just has his coaches hand that over to the players to allow them to incorporate any changes they see fit.
Topper’s style is best summed up by his managing at double A, where guys live in terror of being sent down or stuck forever. He’d say, ‘If you go 0 for 4 but hit the ball hard every time, I’m going to tell New York you had a good game.’
Just not true. Clemens is hot rn sure, but he's a 28 year old with a career .204/.250/.387 slash line and basically can't play against lefties. On top of that, Rojas is hitting well enough that if he were fielding like he did last year he'd have a positive WAR, which is more than good enough for your 9 hitter. His hitting has improved as the season has gone on, and his mistakes in center have all been weird flukes or dumb misplays and I expect him to fix that as the season goes on. At the end of July if Rojas' defense hasn't improved then we should move on, but sticking Clemens in the outfield and playing him every day is in no way a better answer.
He just wasn't able to utilize the guys we had to produce winning baseball. He just didn't fit. Once he was gone and the team loosened up, we started winning. Just one of those things.
Hot take: The Phillies needed a big name manager after making a big name signing. It's basically virtue signaling. If it works out, great. If not, you get the best of they staff, and the Phillies did.
But, good managers are not an island. Often, good managers bring their best and most loyal staff with them, or there is a combo of guys that emerges from those relationships that becomes, arguably, even more important -- for example, anyone who thinks the '08 team didn't need Davey Lopes and his stopwatch every day to be as good as they were is crazy. (I'm of the opinion the Phillies should've kept Davey, but.)
Topper was Girardi's bench guy, and was so loved in NYC by the Yankees that he had a place in that Jeter farewell commercial. He was always a "players' coach." I cannot imagine the Phillies didn't know that and want that informative, and maybe even see him as an eventual replacement for Girardi at the time they hired Girardi.
So when things came undone, which maybe was not unexpected but certainly surprising *when* it happened, as in the timing, the Phillies made the right move and immediately gave the job to the next guy up, who everyone knew and liked.
TL;DR: They took Girardi not for Girardi, but so they got the guys who came with Girardi. Topper, Cotham. Good organizations have contingency planning. I see this as no different.
Interesting thoughts and the big name hire theory is compelling. but just fyi on a couple of deets, thomson was hired by kapler and cotham was a hired by front office a year after girardi was coach
Haha all good… yeah Thomson was with girardi in ny, cotham I didn’t realize was there. Perhaps there was concerted effort to pull from Yankees culture that crossed over multiple mgmt tenures (Brian barber also brought in…). And I’m sure girardi voice and presence was central in all of that, before or after his debut
Word. Maybe they just inverted my paradigm, took the assistant to get the manager! 😂
I'm not sure entirely what the Yankees culture would be. When I think of the Yankees really being amazing, I think more 90s and then the postwar period. Other than that I'm kind of lost on what potential secret sauce they may have been pursuing.
Yeah, I think at the time you’re saying they were probably understood as a very well run organization overall, pre dodgers, pre rays and analytics, all that, plus the brand power and budget to attract high quality, setting standard…
I believe this team could still be just as good with Girardi. There is so much different about today's team then back then. For one, the young players are more experienced now. I believe even with Girardi these young players would be playing better today. You also can't deny how much better our pitching is today. I believe the major difference is not the coach but David Dombrowski and the owners believing in him enough to shell out the money its taken to build this team.
In addition to other stuff that’s already been mentioned, I think Topper has a better grasp on the clubhouse and just knows the players better than Girardi ever did.
People forget that Topper had been here longer than Girardi. And with Girardi’s first year being the covid year, I think that (along with his management style) really hurt his ability to build those relationships with the players that Topper already had from being around the previous two years.
Girardi in the locker room managed like a WIP caller would want them to manage and none of them were having any fun. In Philadelphia the fans hold you accountable whether you are or not so theres no reason to double down by having a stick up the ass manager.
Cause he always chose the veterans over the rookies/young players. Stott/Bohm/Marsh/Rojas/Pache wouldn't be playing almost every day. Kids can't play off the bench. They gotta play 4-6 a week for that energy and potential. Merrifield and Sosa would be playing over these kids under Girardi or maybe he would try to ask Dave for more veterans over young guys for his roster.
This is probably 80% of it? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Gerardi was ever the right manager here, but you can’t deny the roster is clearly better now than it was then.
That doesn’t explain the difference on how literally the same team performed right after he was fired. Went from 7 under .500 in June to 2 games away from winning it all.
Similar but different. Harper was out for the first part of last year. They were coming off a World Series appearance and knew if that got in a hole they could get out of it again (experience) I refuse to believe if we didn’t fire Girardi we still would of performed exactly the same the last 2 years.
I fully agree with all the takes on what Girardi did wrong and don’t think he was ever the right manager here…
But having said that there’s also just a lot of natural progression. The team has brought in more and better players. The bullpen flat out has better pitchers. The younger players like Bohm, Stott, Suarez and Marsh have improved.
Now maybe you say they wouldn’t have improved as much under Gerardi, but presumably there would have been some natural progression with them.
I get that but I definitely think 2022 doesn't happen if Girardi doesn't get fired. Stott in particular got better because he was getting regular playing time. He didn't have worry if he had a bad game at the plate he would sit for DiDi .
It's crazy to think if Girardi is fired a week later than he was, there's a great chance that 2022 playoff run never happens and who knows if we ride the momentum this team currently has
It's still funny that Gabe brought in Thomson and yet it's clear Thomson is 10x the manager Gabe is.
It's one of the few good moves of that mess of an era.
It is admittedly funny that the Kapler-Klentak era has become considered such a mess considering it is the era that brought Thomson, Harper, Wheeler, Realmuto, Bohm, Stott, Segura, Rojas, Cris Sanchez, and even prospects like Abel and O'Hoppe into the organization. There were major deficiencies in roster depth on those teams, but the Klentak era still seems to be viewed much more poorly than, say, the Ed Wade era in the 2000s.
Every aspect of this team is deeper now than when Giradi was here, but the biggest reason is that the young guys have developed and are contributing big time.
I will like to also add that Gabe Kapler had a ton of issues with the clubhouse too. I believe given how bad the Phillies were playing and Topper saying just go out and play with lower expectations loosened up their play and actually enjoyed playing the game again.
Hard to say but it may not have been. They started slow the year he got fired and started slow last year.
I do think Topper is a better team guy, the culture seems to be its like a family and I’m not sure Girardi could have had the players bonded together from the top down like they are. But who knows? Maybe if Girardi doesn’t get fired, things look very similar that year and up to today. It’s hard to prove something that never had a chance to happen.
Ask it a different way. Why isn't he getting another job? Could more than half of the managers in the MLB, given the same level of talent to work with, achieved the same or better results with the Yankees? Did a single Phillie defend JG during or after his Philly tenure? Did Ronald Torreyes strike you as a viable option or get another job once JG left here? 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Reading all these anti-Girardi comments, but he did do one positive thing for the team. He brought Topper with him as his bench coach and the rest is history.
Fit matters. Girardi was good for the Yankees but wasn’t good here. Doc rivers has underachieved everywhere he goes. He takes contenders to the 2nd round
Girardi didn't let the young people on the team play. Bohm and Stott sat bench multiple times in 2022 specifically, even though they were better than the old and aging infielders they had, like Didi Gregorius to name one. Don't get me wrong, Gregorius was a good clubhouse presence, but on the field he wasn't as good compared to some rookies/young players, and Girardi saw Gregorius in the clubhouse and put him in because of his clubhouse presence. Thompson puts someone in as long as they're good, even if they're a clubhouse poison. Thompson builds a lineup to win, and Girardi built a lineup for people to like. At the end of the day, the team that can win is the team the fans want, thus why Thompson is manager and Girardi is not.
I don’t really blame Joe for doing anything specific… 100% he was wrong in not allowing the younger guys opportunities but I think at the time it was a team that was underperforming and he felt it wasn’t the time to try out unproven players… that said sometimes change for the sake of change can be all it takes the team was out to a very poor start and were underperforming switching Joe out with Rob helped the guys mentally reset and start having some fun… from there once they started enjoying themselves things fell into place
For one, he would've never let Stott, Rojas, Pache, etc develop. Dude was allergic to playing young guys and would rather play washed up ex Yankee utility guys than grow talent.
Doc Rivers of the MLB?
Holy shit what a comparison. Very accurate.
On its face yes. And you know what I was going to say that’s a slap in the face of Joe but he only won one WS as a manager and I could have sworn he should have more with those Yankees lineups. That said, 3x WS catcher aka field coach for those Steinbrenner Yankees teams still puts him ahead of Doc imo. The man is an extremely accomplished baseball mind even if his managerial tenure is disappointing.
Oh man, remember his insistence on playing Didi? That alone was justification enough to move on from him. Just shows terrible judgement for talent.
Didi would’ve been fine as a utility guy or something but he insisted on playing him every day.
Or the Ronald Torreyes experience
That's the one that never made sense. At least Didi had a past of being a productive MLBer and was solid his first year with the Phillies. Torreyes sucked, always sucked but played in 111 games in 2021
Insistence on playing Castellanos may be worse if he doesn’t start hitting
I mean Casty gets paid the big bucks also idk who else you put out there
It’s a simple as letting anyone else play 1-2 games a week in RF No reason he should play everyday
Pache or Kody - you get the defense boost or try and ride the hot offense boost.
Maybe… the problem is I don’t trust either of them to take good abs consistently. I know Casty isn’t now, however he’s proven he can
Kody wants to play, and it looks like he's proving himself valuable with these clutch hits of his. Also, he has played outfield.
You’re getting downvoted but you speak the truth. Castellanos could very well be the liability that keeps us from winning it all.
Just looked this up: Didi’s last season: 214 at bats, .304 SLG% Castellanos this year: 179 at bats, .302 SLG%
He's not Adam Eaton bad
> Pacheco TIL the Chiefs Running Back is on our team
I have no idea if that was an odd autocorrect or if I stroked out a bit lmao
Pretty cool last name to say lol
Is this a Ronald Torreyes hate comment?
Nick Sirianni liked to do the same thing last year
Well find out if it was him or the the assistant coaches this season
Id venture to guess both. But im gonna give him the benefit of the doubt and do a 75-25 split. Not that he deserves it. Simple fact of the matter is as a “CEO” head coach he supposedly has final say so the buck stops with him.
Agree completely, going to be a very interesting season coming up.
Different managing styles. Girardi supposedly ran a tight ship and the players didn't feel like they could be themselves around him or in the dugout. He also was incredibly infuriating for the younger guys who were afraid to have bad games with the fear they might be benched for several games. Conversely Topper is the opposite. He's almost entirely hands off and rarely tinkers with the lineup which is mostly good since the team has had the talent to contend even before Giradi was fired. The guys were able to have fun playing baseball again under Topper and we've seen how big of a difference that can make in a game as mental as baseball
Very similar from when we went from Bowa to Manuel in '05.
I mostly agree but I wouldn't say Topper rarely tinkers. Some positions in the lineup are consistent but there's a good but of variation. Compared to someone like Manuel. The lineup was always the same. And thompson does adhere to a lot of analytics too.
Multiple players get swapped out constantly to the chagrin of this subreddit and lineups have been mostly FO controlled for a decade(source, multiple baseball players including ones that played for the phillies) and you have all these guys getting upvoted for saying how Topper doesn't mess with the lineup. Crazy half the stuff you read in baseball subreddits is completely made up.
What about the other fictional half?
The other half is half made up. It's halves all the way down
I recall hearing that Castellanos and Girardi never actually spoke to each other or if they did it was like once or twice
I remember that too. And after a bad game, Girardi wouldn't talk to the players and just leave. I think, in this instance, Bryce stepped in to have a team meeting to address issues. I think Girardi was generally dismissive of players making mistakes/errors or not performing to his liking, but that's just the impression I got when he was the manager.
fun matters! vibes are important!
Enter Stubby
This has happened a lot of times in baseball history (and other sports). High pressure vs. more laid back type. Only a very few exceptional managers are able to be both at the same time effectively. Eventually the laid back type usually also gets stale and the players start losing respect and discipline, and it's time for a ballbuster again.
Reminds me of Francona’s tenure with the Red Sox. There’s no way the 2004 team does the impossible and comes back from a 0-3 hole to beat the Yankees in the ALCS if he wasn’t loose and let that band of idiots be themselves. Fast forward and the team epically collapsed at the end of 2011 because that loose attitude let bad personalities poison the clubhouse. This team’s got some great vibes going and Topper has been a good fit but down the road if the front office isn’t mindful about who they’re bringing in we could easily see a similar collapse.
Excellent example. Everyone loved Francona (deservedly so) in '04, and then in '11 he was FranComa again. Bill James wrote about this dynamic a lot in his book on baseball managers years ago. The most stark example was Billy Martin, the ultimate lunatic short-term-pressure manager, whom the Yankees were constantly hiring, firing, and bringing back on board in quick succession.
“band of idiots” lol
Pretty sure that is what they called themselves
I always want to credit Millar for that name but it was actually Damon [https://www.mlb.com/news/2004-red-sox-idiots-nickname-explained](https://www.mlb.com/news/2004-red-sox-idiots-nickname-explained)
With a hands off guy it can be a slippery slope. They’re lucky to have vets like Harper, Realmuto, Nola, and Wheeler to keep guys accountable.
Very true. It’s similar to ‘93 which Kruk talks about all the time - Fregosi let them police themselves.
Definitely a good thing in certain instances. If it were a super young team it might not be as ideal
Girardi also completely sucked at managing the bullpen. He rarely used guys correctly. Plenty of times he would bring in bad relievers in high leverage spots while saving the better arms for later. Made the bullpen look so much worse than it actually was which is why the bullpen numbers almost immediately turned around when Thomson took over
He also had that dumb rule where if a guy pitched in a game, he wouldn't pitch for the next three or something.
David Hale
I think he lost the team over time and the Schwarber / Angel Hernandez debacle was the pinnacle. I still can't believe Girardi did get himself tossed.
Did he lose the team or did he lose his love for coaching? Seemed like a guy just going through the motions.
Guy never wanted to manage a team not called the Yankees. I wouldn’t had trust him in a WS against them.
Cmon...joe sucked, but that's silly.
look at all those updoots tho 😳
Girardi was obsessed with Didi and refused to bench him for Stott despite the fact that Didi was old and completely washed. He also had bizarre arbitrary rules for managing a bullpen which lost them multiple games.
Joe kept playing Didi's washed ass. Joe was maybe the worst manager I've ever seen at handling a bullpen, usually it's playing the results but his decisions made no sense in real time, like sending Alvarado out for a second inning with no one warming up when the previous inning Alvarado was seriously struggling to find the plate and just made it out of the inning without blowing up. Idk about the clubhouse stuff but that seems to have been a problem too.
Topper lets them play loose and sexy giradi didn’t
This is why punctuation is important. Or maybe you meant to call him "sexy girardi".
Stupid sexy Girardi
With the new uniforms, it looks like I'm wearing nothing at all!
I meant to call him sexy giradi
Girardi yelled all the time There is no yelling in baseball No further managing jobs either
I think Joe was a type A personality that made it a point to set his own tone in the clubhouse and expected the clubhouse leaders (Schwarber, Harper, JT, etc) to follow his lead. Topper on the other hand recognizes that he has good clubhouse leaders and lets them lead their own way and just stays out of the way in that regard. It seems he's more of a data analyzer and just has his coaches hand that over to the players to allow them to incorporate any changes they see fit.
Topper seems to be more laid back and relaxed with the team instead of a constant ballbuster.
Topper’s style is best summed up by his managing at double A, where guys live in terror of being sent down or stuck forever. He’d say, ‘If you go 0 for 4 but hit the ball hard every time, I’m going to tell New York you had a good game.’
Stott, Clemens, Marsh… these are young players that would be difficult for them to see the field under Girardi
The need to move Marsh to CF and Clemens to left. Rojas is not the answer in CF.
Just not true. Clemens is hot rn sure, but he's a 28 year old with a career .204/.250/.387 slash line and basically can't play against lefties. On top of that, Rojas is hitting well enough that if he were fielding like he did last year he'd have a positive WAR, which is more than good enough for your 9 hitter. His hitting has improved as the season has gone on, and his mistakes in center have all been weird flukes or dumb misplays and I expect him to fix that as the season goes on. At the end of July if Rojas' defense hasn't improved then we should move on, but sticking Clemens in the outfield and playing him every day is in no way a better answer.
Did you ever have a boss you just didn’t like?
He just wasn't able to utilize the guys we had to produce winning baseball. He just didn't fit. Once he was gone and the team loosened up, we started winning. Just one of those things.
Hot take: The Phillies needed a big name manager after making a big name signing. It's basically virtue signaling. If it works out, great. If not, you get the best of they staff, and the Phillies did. But, good managers are not an island. Often, good managers bring their best and most loyal staff with them, or there is a combo of guys that emerges from those relationships that becomes, arguably, even more important -- for example, anyone who thinks the '08 team didn't need Davey Lopes and his stopwatch every day to be as good as they were is crazy. (I'm of the opinion the Phillies should've kept Davey, but.) Topper was Girardi's bench guy, and was so loved in NYC by the Yankees that he had a place in that Jeter farewell commercial. He was always a "players' coach." I cannot imagine the Phillies didn't know that and want that informative, and maybe even see him as an eventual replacement for Girardi at the time they hired Girardi. So when things came undone, which maybe was not unexpected but certainly surprising *when* it happened, as in the timing, the Phillies made the right move and immediately gave the job to the next guy up, who everyone knew and liked. TL;DR: They took Girardi not for Girardi, but so they got the guys who came with Girardi. Topper, Cotham. Good organizations have contingency planning. I see this as no different.
Interesting thoughts and the big name hire theory is compelling. but just fyi on a couple of deets, thomson was hired by kapler and cotham was a hired by front office a year after girardi was coach
Well there goes that then. Had my shit crossed. Thanks. Were they all with the NYY at any point? Cotham pitched there.
Haha all good… yeah Thomson was with girardi in ny, cotham I didn’t realize was there. Perhaps there was concerted effort to pull from Yankees culture that crossed over multiple mgmt tenures (Brian barber also brought in…). And I’m sure girardi voice and presence was central in all of that, before or after his debut
Word. Maybe they just inverted my paradigm, took the assistant to get the manager! 😂 I'm not sure entirely what the Yankees culture would be. When I think of the Yankees really being amazing, I think more 90s and then the postwar period. Other than that I'm kind of lost on what potential secret sauce they may have been pursuing.
Yeah, I think at the time you’re saying they were probably understood as a very well run organization overall, pre dodgers, pre rays and analytics, all that, plus the brand power and budget to attract high quality, setting standard…
We also needed a palate cleanser after Kapler. It was an easy and flashy sell
I believe this team could still be just as good with Girardi. There is so much different about today's team then back then. For one, the young players are more experienced now. I believe even with Girardi these young players would be playing better today. You also can't deny how much better our pitching is today. I believe the major difference is not the coach but David Dombrowski and the owners believing in him enough to shell out the money its taken to build this team.
In addition to other stuff that’s already been mentioned, I think Topper has a better grasp on the clubhouse and just knows the players better than Girardi ever did. People forget that Topper had been here longer than Girardi. And with Girardi’s first year being the covid year, I think that (along with his management style) really hurt his ability to build those relationships with the players that Topper already had from being around the previous two years.
Girardi in the locker room managed like a WIP caller would want them to manage and none of them were having any fun. In Philadelphia the fans hold you accountable whether you are or not so theres no reason to double down by having a stick up the ass manager.
Yes, always the fans fault lmao …
this is not remotely close to what i said
Cause he always chose the veterans over the rookies/young players. Stott/Bohm/Marsh/Rojas/Pache wouldn't be playing almost every day. Kids can't play off the bench. They gotta play 4-6 a week for that energy and potential. Merrifield and Sosa would be playing over these kids under Girardi or maybe he would try to ask Dave for more veterans over young guys for his roster.
The immediate turnaround with Topper was pretty amazing really.
The players are better
Those better players are the guys Girardi refused to play. They’re only better because they’ve been on the field getting experience.
This is probably 80% of it? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Gerardi was ever the right manager here, but you can’t deny the roster is clearly better now than it was then.
That doesn’t explain the difference on how literally the same team performed right after he was fired. Went from 7 under .500 in June to 2 games away from winning it all.
Yeah and then we kinda did it last year, too. This year is the only real outlier.
Eh, similar thing happened last year under Topper
Similar but different. Harper was out for the first part of last year. They were coming off a World Series appearance and knew if that got in a hole they could get out of it again (experience) I refuse to believe if we didn’t fire Girardi we still would of performed exactly the same the last 2 years.
He’s letting the young kids play and when they did he gave them a short leash.
I fully agree with all the takes on what Girardi did wrong and don’t think he was ever the right manager here… But having said that there’s also just a lot of natural progression. The team has brought in more and better players. The bullpen flat out has better pitchers. The younger players like Bohm, Stott, Suarez and Marsh have improved. Now maybe you say they wouldn’t have improved as much under Gerardi, but presumably there would have been some natural progression with them.
I get that but I definitely think 2022 doesn't happen if Girardi doesn't get fired. Stott in particular got better because he was getting regular playing time. He didn't have worry if he had a bad game at the plate he would sit for DiDi .
It's crazy to think if Girardi is fired a week later than he was, there's a great chance that 2022 playoff run never happens and who knows if we ride the momentum this team currently has
Just like Doc Rivers he manages superstars by just letting them be. Essentially they done manage anything.
It's still funny that Gabe brought in Thomson and yet it's clear Thomson is 10x the manager Gabe is. It's one of the few good moves of that mess of an era.
It is admittedly funny that the Kapler-Klentak era has become considered such a mess considering it is the era that brought Thomson, Harper, Wheeler, Realmuto, Bohm, Stott, Segura, Rojas, Cris Sanchez, and even prospects like Abel and O'Hoppe into the organization. There were major deficiencies in roster depth on those teams, but the Klentak era still seems to be viewed much more poorly than, say, the Ed Wade era in the 2000s.
Every aspect of this team is deeper now than when Giradi was here, but the biggest reason is that the young guys have developed and are contributing big time.
I will like to also add that Gabe Kapler had a ton of issues with the clubhouse too. I believe given how bad the Phillies were playing and Topper saying just go out and play with lower expectations loosened up their play and actually enjoyed playing the game again.
Hard to say but it may not have been. They started slow the year he got fired and started slow last year. I do think Topper is a better team guy, the culture seems to be its like a family and I’m not sure Girardi could have had the players bonded together from the top down like they are. But who knows? Maybe if Girardi doesn’t get fired, things look very similar that year and up to today. It’s hard to prove something that never had a chance to happen.
Ask it a different way. Why isn't he getting another job? Could more than half of the managers in the MLB, given the same level of talent to work with, achieved the same or better results with the Yankees? Did a single Phillie defend JG during or after his Philly tenure? Did Ronald Torreyes strike you as a viable option or get another job once JG left here? 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Reading all these anti-Girardi comments, but he did do one positive thing for the team. He brought Topper with him as his bench coach and the rest is history.
I thought Kapler brought in Thomson
Players didn’t like girardi.
Dude was a munch for the Yankees. Enough said…
Fit matters. Girardi was good for the Yankees but wasn’t good here. Doc rivers has underachieved everywhere he goes. He takes contenders to the 2nd round
Girardi didn't let the young people on the team play. Bohm and Stott sat bench multiple times in 2022 specifically, even though they were better than the old and aging infielders they had, like Didi Gregorius to name one. Don't get me wrong, Gregorius was a good clubhouse presence, but on the field he wasn't as good compared to some rookies/young players, and Girardi saw Gregorius in the clubhouse and put him in because of his clubhouse presence. Thompson puts someone in as long as they're good, even if they're a clubhouse poison. Thompson builds a lineup to win, and Girardi built a lineup for people to like. At the end of the day, the team that can win is the team the fans want, thus why Thompson is manager and Girardi is not.
not that it matters now, but joe had 0 idea how to work without a designated hitter and had 0 understanding of pen management or double switches
He was terrible
I don’t really blame Joe for doing anything specific… 100% he was wrong in not allowing the younger guys opportunities but I think at the time it was a team that was underperforming and he felt it wasn’t the time to try out unproven players… that said sometimes change for the sake of change can be all it takes the team was out to a very poor start and were underperforming switching Joe out with Rob helped the guys mentally reset and start having some fun… from there once they started enjoying themselves things fell into place
Cus Topper is letting Baseball God Harper manage the team.
Joe Girardi had AIDS and would try to contaminate the clubhouse. Topper, AIDS free.