NEW YORK — For two former Yankees managers, the month of May wrought contrasting fortunes, leaving Buck Showalter sitting pretty in first place with the largest lead on June 1 of any Mets team in history — at the same time, Joe Girardi’s seat got hotter and hotter until Friday when he was relieved of his job in Philly, very likely ending his career.
Two old-school managers who have gone in vastly different directions.
Besides both having managed the Yankees, Showalter and Girardi, in their later years, met similar resistance in their hopes of remaining in the game, each of them passed up numerous times by some of the same teams. Showalter, one of the runners-up to Girardi for the Phillies job in 2020. is so far making good in what is most probably his own last stop on the manager merry-go-round. His Mets players clearly love playing for him and there is no question about a major culture change having come over Citi Field. One reason his players are enjoying playing for him — and performing accordingly — is because he doesn’t complicate things, and with his “next man up” philosophy never allows their minds to stray beyond the game at hand.
As the Mets players have discovered, Showalter thrives on the daily give-and-take, challenging them on strategy moves, rules and situations, all in the pretext of keeping them in the game. It especially worked for him in Baltimore where player after player, from Adam Jones to J.J. Hardy to Nick Markakis, would attest that while they might be out-played in a game, at least they knew they would not be out-managed.
On the other hand, Girardi has a whole different — stoic — persona. When he was fired by the Yankees in 2017 after 10 years as their manager, for lack of any logical reason it was hinted that Brian Cashman felt there’d been a failure to communicate on Girardi’s part with the Yankees players. If so, stoic, rigid and sometimes icy as he might be, that wasn’t what got him fired by the Phillies. What got him fired in Philadelphia was (1) the major league’s worst defense which was compounded by Bryce Harper’s torn UCL in his right elbow that has prevented him from playing right field, and (2) a too often ineffective bullpen which has the highest walks-per-nine innings ratio in the majors and the overall 20th worst ERA.
Those were the two prime reasons for the Phillies’ 10-19 free fall in May that dropped them to 22-29, 12 games behind Showalter’s Mets despite an overall plus-1 run differential. Granted there were some questionable tactical moves on Girardi’s part in May that were said to have led to a loss of confidence within the clubhouse and the front office. But Girardi is a good person and a sound, always well-prepared baseball man. The hard, cold facts are the Phillies are simply not a well-constructed ballclub, and the analytics-driven previous administration before current GM Dave Dombrowski did a terrible job of drafting and player development, forcing owner John Middleton to invest heavily in free agency and go over the competitive balance tax threshold for the first time with the fourth highest ($233,209,325) payroll in the majors.
It was heartening to see Dombrowski turn the managership over to Robbie Thomson, who toiled for nine years as a coach and spring training coordinator for the Yankees before joining Girardi in Philly. He’s obviously paid his dues. Whether he is able to manage the Phillies beyond his interim period this season is another question. The defense can’t be fixed, especially with second baseman Jean Segura, one of their better defenders, now out for 12 weeks with a broken finger, and it would be foolhardy on Dombrowski’s part to sacrifice any of the few prospects the Phillies have for stopgap help in the bullpen.
As it is, Dombrowski probably would have been well advised to pass on either the four years/$79 million he spent on Kyle Schwarber or the five years/$100 million on Nick Castellanos and instead used it on a couple of relievers and some defensive help. The sight of Schwarber in left and Castellanos in place of Harper in right — two DHs masquerading as outfielders — has not been a pretty one for the angry fans in Philly. But at least that’s not Girardi’s problem anymore.
