Andy MacPhail hasn’t shown a quality blueprint on a Phillies rebuild yet, how long can we wait for better things to happen with this team?
The patience has to be wearing thin from Phillies fans as yet another prediction by manager Pete Mackanin of being happy with finishing .500 this season would make him happy.
As a player, you have to been wondering, I guess management just doesn’t set the goals high so I guess this team will be pretty bad this year. The years are starting to roll on where this Phillies team has been really bad for many years now.
We don’t hear too much from Phillies team president, Andy MacPhail. He hasn’t really been vocal at all since he’s accepted the job position at the end of the 2015 season. When he was hired he said his 3 major functions on the team would be to read, to watch, and to listen. I am wondering about all those games he’s been watching and what he thinks that this team has benefited from so far.
The Phillies seem like they are in a constant rebuild mode, and this year again, we have a lot of 1-year deals in place where the deck will be reshuffled again for the 2018 season, and that is a shame. The Phillies were a world class championship team, they have been cut down to a team that plays the opposite of that.
Phils fans have noticed this trend, the attendance dropped to 13th out of 15 teams in the NL for 2016 (1.9M fans still attended games last year), and if this ’17 team doesn’t improve from what we’ve seen from last year, it may reflect more fans lost at the turnstile.
The Phils signed a $2.5B TV deal back in 2014 (which kicked in for the first year in 2016) for the next 25 years, but you would never would have known it if you see how the Phillies now spend money. They have spent a lot on marginal players this year for 1-year deals which is strange, it’s almost like someone in the upper management said, ‘Sign a couple guys that at least make our payroll look respectable’.
I suspect the fire will be turned up on GM Matt Klentak and MacPhail this season (now going to be the 2nd full season for both in Philly), more expectations of average or below average results don’t really sit well with a fan base that hungers for the success that witnessed back in 2008-09 and a couple years after. Joe Maddon seemed to turn the Cubs around over night with the help of Theo Epstein. The Phils still look like they are lost in the crowd anymore of bad baseball teams.
