Tonight, Gabe Kapler makes his triumphant return to the Philadelphia. Normally, we’d make a bigger deal out of this occasion, but managers seem to have so little impact on the game these days as compared to the past. Now, managers just seem to be “follow the data” guys that rarely steer from what the graph in front of them says. Yesterday, we saw a clear example of the manager from the Phillies NOT doing what the data tells him, allowing Aaron Nola to finish what he started and earn himself a complete game shutout in the process.
This may have been the biggest issue when it comes to why the city never embraced Kapler.