Will Gabe Kapler be fired because fans find him annoying?
Gabe Kapler couldn’t prevent Philadelphia Phillies injuries and his core players claim to like him, but could he be fired for being too annoying for the fans?
Today we take up, again, the question of whether or not manager Gabe Kapler should be fired with a year to go on his contract with the Philadelphia Phillies. For the record, a number of people in eastern Pennsylvania have already delivered themselves of opinions on this matter, including fans, players and writers.
One of the Philly sports talk radio stations, for example, ran a poll on Twitter the day after the Phillies season ended on whether Kapler should be retained, and 4000-some votes had been cast in about six hours. Seventy-nine percent wanted the current manager to disappear as I type this, and there were 18 hours to go, but that figure hasn’t budged much in the last couple of hours.
On the other hand, Kapler’s players seem to rather like him. Team leaders Jake Arrieta, Bryce Harper, and J.T. Realmuto have all said kind things about their skipper quite recently.
But on the third hand, at least one writer has explicitly pointed out that Kapler has failed in one of his two jobs – keeping the fans happy – and suggests that might matter more. David Murphy goes on to point out the team’s attendance decline, particularly in the season’s final month. He doesn’t but could have added this was despite the fact that the Phillies weren’t technically eliminated from playoff contention until late in September. The fans stopped believing.
At this juncture, then, Gabe Kapler may become a somewhat rare duck in MLB history – a manager who is actually fired for annoying his team’s fans.
No one can fault Kapler for caring. At a last post-game news conference, he became fairly emotional speaking about his squad: “I’m not sure if I’ve ever been more proud of a group of men like these guys. We didn’t get the job done. But it wasn’t for lack of effort. And it wasn’t for lack of character and it wasn’t for lack of grit. I’m truly proud of every one of those guys.”
At another point, he said, “I love managing that group of players. I love working with that staff. Love working with this front office.”
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Additionally, Kapler is not responsible for the significant injury problem the Phillies had to contend with this season, but that may not matter. It’s very easy to point out (or type) that the 2018 NL MVP, Christian Yelich, broke his own kneecap with a foul ball this season, and his team still made the playoffs.
However, that isn’t the issue unless the Phillies looming upper management and ownership confab decides that they’re willing to endure very poorly attended early games next spring in order to keep the core of their players as happy as they say they are publicly.
(No one will actually know what that group of players says behind closed doors in the next few days.)
Finally, Joe Maddon is available, but that is probably not as important as some people think. Gabe Kapler’s problems began in earnest when he yanked Aaron Nola too early in the very first real game he managed in 2018. After that, if anything, he became more annoying.
Immediately after that game, he defended his decision – in retrospect, he was still “very confident” about what he’d done despite a loss. Confidence has never been a problem for Kapler.
Neither was stroking the egos of his players. Who wouldn’t like to be called gritty after your obscenely expensive ball club finishes 81-81? Go back and carefully read the two longer Kapler quotations above, and ask yourself, does any of that matter?
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The Fightin’ Phils may decide the money they have invested and will invest in their core players is more important than the money they could lose next spring, assuming all of those players are being honest about their annoying manager. However, they could have a fight on their hands with the people who buy the tickets for all of 2020 if they do.