It’s time to turn up the heat.
Joe Girardi’s run as Phillies manager hasn’t just been disappointing. It’s been even worse than that. And as the underachieving, can’t-get-out-of-their-own way Phillies stare down the midway point of the 2021 season, it’s time to put Girardi on the hot seat.
No, I’m not calling for the imminent firing of Girardi. That makes little sense, especially without a ready-made replacement in house or ready to roll. But Girardi is on the clock. If the Phillies don’t significantly improve under his watch in the second half of this season and finish over .500, there’s simply no good reason for Girardi to be back managing this team in 2022.
Think about the excitement you (likely) had when the Phillies hired Girardi. I felt it. We were talking about a winning manager with a track record. He did a good job with a young, cheap Marlins team way back in 2006 before guiding the Yankees to a World Series in 2009. Surely a manager with that kind of diverse track record, long playing career, and ability to last in New York for a decade would be an upgrade from what the Phillies had, right?
Well, we now know that was wrong.
Girardi’s Phillies had another slam-your-head-into-a-wall series at Citi Field over the week, blowing save after save and somehow making every Phillies fan feel worse, even with a split of the four-game set.
Since the start of the 2020 season, Girardi’s Phillies have been known for poor fundamentals, defensive miscues, horrible bullpen performance and egregious in-game bullpen management. All reared their ugly head over the weekend in a series that summed this club up too perfectly.
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Girardi’s in-game management continues to confound. His bullpen maneuvers lack foresight. In fact, he’s often one or two steps behind the opposing dugout, and it’s costing the Phillies. On Saturday, Girardi allowed Zach Eflin to hit in the top of the seventh, promptly removed him from the game in which he was cruising (at 82 pitches) before throwing a pitch in the bottom of the inning, and used lefty Ranger Suarez in relief. The move (and three-batter minimum) set the Mets up to use Kevin Pillar (who’s made a career hitting lefties to the tune of an OPS nearly 100 points higher than his career mark vs. righties) as a pinch hitter. A home run flew out to right. The game was tied, and the Phillies eventually lost.
No team has allowed more (8) pinch-hit home runs than the Phillies. It’s often because the Phillies are out-managed late in games. Sure, the relievers here are less-than-stellar. They are also put in situations more likely to see them fail because of Girardi's shortcomings.
Girardi was hired to be a difference maker. He was hired to win. He was hired to take a team that couldn’t get over the hump with Gabe Kapler and to mold it into a winning outfit. We’re talking about a team with a $200M payroll. Girardi’s Phillies teams have had Zack Wheeler, one of baseball’s 10 best pitchers since the start of last season, fronting his rotation. He’s had bullpen upgrade after bullpen upgrade handed to him, with the hope he could make something work. The team has just gotten worse and struggled to compete in the NL East, including a collapse in the final week of 2020.
Prior to Girardi’s first game in the dugout, team owner John Middleton compared Girardi’s impact to that of signing a star player. Beyond the egregious mistake of thinking a manager could change that much about a team, think about what that meant and how it played out. This is the equivalent of the Phillies signing a star hitter and watching him hit .240 for two seasons. It is, to use a famous Girardi line, not what you want.
Girardi inherited a .500-ish team with the task of straightening out fundamentals, fixing late-season collapses, making sure in-game strategy was sound, cleaning up poor defense, deftly maneuvering the bullpen, and getting a team that too often played without fire to start showing some. Has this manager done any of those things? My eyes say no, which adds to the disappointment of watching the Phillies on the wrong end of too many strategic, in-game mistakes.
This manager owns a 64-71 mark through 135 games in Philadelphia. He has 87 more games to turn it around. Time is running out.