The Mack Attack is back!
It was officially announced on Tuesday that interim manager Pete MacKanin would be sticking around a little bit longer. The Phillies named MacKanin the manager for the 2016 season with an option for the 2017 season. Somewhere in the world, Ryne Samburg weeps.
This isn’t the most Earth shattering move, considering I don’t expect MacKanin to be around after the next two seasons, maybe he’ll stay a third but thats at the most. Pete is only sticking around so that he can help some of the Phil’s younger talent develop, as soon as they find someone more experienced to lead the team of what should be established talent, they’ll give MacKanin the boot. So pretty much Pete’s only been brought on to wade out a couple years of crap before something better comes along, the job Ryne Sandberg didn’t want.
I have no problem with the team bring MacKanin back on, in fact I was hoping they would. The players have already shown that they’re behind him and like playing for him, something that wasn’t really there under Samberg. MacKanin was able to turn the complete dumpster fire of a team into just a pile of hot garbage, he salvaged this team from being historically bad to just the second worst team in baseball, talk about improvement!! But seriously, I don’t think MacKanin getting this team to go 21-12 after the all-star break is anything to scoff at, he got actual results with the Phillies turd of a roster.
The Phillies deciding their manager is big, but I think the bigger news of the week was about the general manager position.
When talking with Greg Murphy during Tuesday’s CSN Phillies broadcast, Andy McPhail talked about the importance of deciding the manager position, he’s quoted as saying:
“Well, I think my concern was that if we go on a general manager search, that’s going to probably be a few-to-several week process.
If he or she should want to come in and make a managerial change, that’s a three or four week process
Then you’re going to spend two weeks trying to create a coaching staff. You’re going to end up losing half your offseason, just to sort of be at a place where everybody is starting from zero.”
All that talk about time and coaching staffs is cool and all, but WHAT DID HE JUST SAY ABOUT A SHE?!
If this is true, that the Phillies are looking at all possible options to fill the soon-to-be vacant general manager position, even those of the female variety, than this is a very awesome forward thinking move on the Phillies part and one that I support 100%. I would love to see a woman as the Phillies GM, I am for ladies in charge. I think this is huge new for all of baseball, it could potentially change the entire landscape of the major leagues.
Andy McPhail is going to explore every possible candidate and if he decides the best person for the job just so happens to be a woman, than so be it, she’s the girl for the job. No news or speculation has yet to be made as to who the mysterious madame the Phillies had in mind might be.
So until potential candidates emerge, we wait and hope the Phillies can suck their way to the number one pick in the draft. The more ammunition they have, the better the GM they can attract, be it male or female. Things may be bad, but we may be in store for an interesting offseason with Andy McPhail at the helm.
~Also if you haven’t done so already, you should go listen to Return of the Mack by Mark Morrison, 90’s R&B at its peak~
Snowballs & Batteries 