Manager is known for the Phillies, it’s Gabe Kapler

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The Phillies upper management has selected a manager for the team, his name is Gabe Kapler. Surprise! A lot of media writers and fans had pegged the Phils to select a candidate from inside the organization as that is what the Phillies had done for a lot of the managerial posts available in the Phillies recent history going back 25 years or so.

A lot of great candidates were available for this job, recently released John Farrell, had a tremendous track record of guiding the 2013 Boston Red Sox to a World Series title. The Red Sox reeled off 97 wins that year. The past two years, Farrell has also had a great run with the Red Sox with 93 wins each season and finished first in the AL East. Who can argue with that success? And Farrell is young at 55 years old for a manager’s post. You could have even had a seriously strong case to hire Joe Girardi, who has been managing the Yankees for 10 years. Girardi was Manager of the Year in 2006 and guided the Yankees to a World Series win over the Phillies in 2009.

No, the Phillies weren’t interested in someone with success on their side this time, instead it seems like Phillies GM, Matt Klentak, who has attended college at Dartmouth, went the way baseball is going. A murky dark area called sabermetrics and managing by numbers which apparently Kapler had done a good job in selling his knowledge of players and numbers.

First for those who may not have even heard of Gabe Kapler, here’s where Kapler’s MLB career had taken him over the years, he was drafted in the 57th round. The following is a breakdown on some numbers that he produced over his career:

A quick glance at Kapler’s numbers over his career, and it makes you scratch your head and ask yourself what Kapler thinks of his own career in the ‘sabermetric’ world. What opportunities would have he had in this era of intense scrutiny of numbers? Kapler’s 12 year career included 82 HR and 386 RBI.

What’s more, certain pictures have surfaced on the internet of Kapler that suggests he worked out a whole lot. There has already been an article on deadspin.com (an online site that I don’t normally read) that says that Kapler has had a blog in the past and that he was a good blogger.  Local Philly sports columnist and media member, Howard Eskin, aka ‘The King’, tweeted out a picture of Kapler in a pose that shows a body builder physic on Kapler as seen below.

Here he is .. your new #phillies manager Gabe Kapler. If his analytics don’t work as a manager maybe he can be a model for leopard thongs. pic.twitter.com/FtvKSIcy14

— Howard Eskin (@howardeskin) October 30, 2017

Eskin joked that perhaps Kapler could be a good model for thongs, but that was years ago, Kapler now must make his hay in the Phillies organization as their manager. GM Matt Klentak saw something in Kapler that he was looking for.

The selection has been made, the Phillies have a new manager. A lot of work lies ahead of Kapler to turn this last place team in the NL East into something better. We’ll see now that the announcement has been made just what becomes of this Phillies team. Kapler got the opportunity to be one of only 30 managers in baseball, there are some very good managers still out there looking for a managerial post, but Kapler’s our man.