Philadelphia Phillies Gabe Kapler remains a happy cheerleader for his squad, after a rough stretch of MLB games.
This should begin as objectively as possible: The Philadelphia Phillies road trip through Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago did not go well for Gabe Kapler and his squad.
They won only three of ten games and concluded their travel West by giving up a game-losing grand slam on May 6 and losing the following day when their catcher blocked the plate illegally in front of a Cubs runner. So, naturally, manager Gabe Kapler decided that his team “can go toe-to-toe with the best teams in the National League.”
To be fair, Philly.com’s Scott Lauber notes Kapler did admit, before that assessment, the team’s 11-day effort was “not our best road trip.” And Lauber tried to help him out (as is his job, sort of) by noting that the Phillies were 3-4 against the Cubs and Dodgers and outscored them in the aggregate.
The order of Kapler’s two remarks above is essential, however, and that order defines the term “spin.” Common sense says the conclusion of Kapler’s two-sentence overall evaluation of his road trip is not the “not our best” view, but the Fightin’ Phils’ “toe-to-toe” scrappiness.
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This is an objective and fair enough hearing of Kapler’s remarks. It is also fair enough to point out that in between the series with the Dodgers and the series with the Cubs, the Phillies scored exactly one run in three games against the Giants. It came on a home run by a starting pitcher, Jake Arrieta.
It would also have been objective and fair enough for the fourth estate to question Kapler a bit more aggressively about the fact that, in the Giants series, it surfaced there were only two teams with overall negative results from their defensive shifts, the Dodgers at -1 and the Phillies at -11 in runs saved by shifts.
When Arrieta blew up after a loss on the trip about Phillies shifts (and other matters), Kapler essentially said, “Hey, we’ll talk that over.” No one in the mainstream press corps thought to ask Kapler even relatively benign push-back questions like: “Gabe, what do you think might be wrong with Phillies analytics? What’s the root of those bad shift numbers?”
No one reported Kapler being pressed on his evaluation of LA and SF as properly included among the NL’s “best teams.” Yes, the Dodgers and Cubs played for the NL championship last year, but this season the Dodgers and Giants are merely .500 teams so far, both hampered by the injuries to star pitchers, Clayton Kershaw and Madison Bumgarner.
In fact, Meghan Montemurro of TheAthleticPHI instead tweeted an expansion of Kapler’s comments about “best” teams: “That felt like a playoff atmosphere out there…we’re prepared to battle with the best in the NL.”
Yesterday, on WIP, a Philly sports talk radio station, one of the mid-day hosts defended Kapler against an unhappy caller by asking whether the fan would concede the Phillies were “doing better” than expected.
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That fan conceded that point, but the exchange arguably defines a disconnect between Philly’s establishment media and the fans about Happy Gabe. Or as J.L., a longtime Phillies fan from North Wales, PA, messaged me through social media:
“Kapler is neither a manager a leader. These guys need to be held accountable, how else would they get better?! Gabe Kapler can take his ‘positive speak,’ posters, silly nicknames, spray charts and notebook and shove them.”