Phillies Should Have Considered Raul Ibanez as Bench Coach

Raul Ibanez Would Have Made More Sense As Bench Coach Than Larry Bowa

The Phillies announced yesterday that Larry Bowa agreed to a one-year deal and would return as the team’s bench coach for 2016. Bowa is a life-time Phillie, a good baseball man and a more than serviceable bench coach.

The idea that he was seriously interviewed for a managerial vacancy in 2015 is alarming, but that’s another story.

Bowa, however, isn’t going to be the Phillies’ manager again anytime soon. So it leaves something to be desired that Pete Mackanin will return under a one-year deal, with a bench coach that has no chance of being the long-term manager.

Perhaps with Juan Samuel returning as a base coach, there is a potential successor to Mackanin, if things don’t work on the staff. But there isn’t someone who is the front-office’s guy.

Former Phillie Raul Ibanez has reportedly drawn interest from numerous clubs for some sort of role as a coach or front-office member already this off-season. It’s unclear if he will leave his position as an analyst for FS1 to take a job like this, but given that he was a finalist for the Rays’ job last year, he seems destined to be a manager someday. Even the Royals, despite the fact that calling him done as a player would have been generous, kept him on their World Series roster a season ago because of the clubhouse perspective he provided.

It’s unclear if Ibanez would have been someone that the organization would have had interest in, or if they or Mackanin made the decision on the coaching staff, but Ibanez would have been a bench coach with more of a potential for long-term growth than Bowa.

Other Phillies Thoughts

J.J. Picollo may have been the Phillies’ general manager if things were just simply based off of having a great resume and fitting the part. Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported that Picollo was impressive in his interview(s) with the club, but was not one of the three finalists. Unlike the three finalists and Matt Klentak, the eventual pick for GM, Picollo doesn’t have as much of a sabermetrics-based background and the Royals are a scouting-based organization that sprinkles in analytics. There’s nothing wrong with that, and Picollo will probably eventually be a general manager, it just wasn’t what John S. Middleton and Andy MacPhail were looking for.
The idea that some have suggested of the Phillies giving someone like Jason Heyward, still just 26, a deal upwards of eight years because he will still be good again when they are good is flawed. It’s not that the premise isn’t true, it’s just not smart to pay someone a deal that length for what they may be able to do with the team in two to four years. When you give those deals, it’s usually because the player is in their prime at the perfect time for the team to win. The Phillies’ time-line, as Klentak hinted at, is still kind of an open book. Heyward is going to get a big deal from a team and probably be productive for a good portion of it, but it doesn’t make sense for the Phillies to be that team, especially as they get out from underneath numerous other large deals.
Frankly, it may just not be smart, despite the talent level, to ever give deals that exceed five years. It felt like the Yankees couldn’t lose Alex Rodriguez in 2007, so they gave him a 10-year extension that even with his strong 2015 season they would gladly take back. The Cardinals, fresh off winning a World Series that featured a game where Albert Pujols hit three home-runs, let Pujols walk after the 2011 season. Since then, their team has had way more success without Pujols than the Angels have had with him. Klentak, smartly, seems to get this and to be opposed to trying to build a team through free-agency or high-profile trades.

Next: Phillies Front-Office Structure Leaves Room For Questions

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