Ryne Sandberg has resigned his role as the manager of the Phillies, he announced today. The Hall-of-Fame second baseman was hired late in the 2013 season after Charlie Manuel lost his job. He’ll be replaced on an interim basis by Pete Mackanin.
“With some leadership roles coming up, I think it was important for me not to be in the way,” said Sandberg, “but to allow the organization to go forward.” He explained that he “felt it was better now than later” that he hand over his role, citing the “accumulation of … losses” as the major factor in his decision.
Sandberg went on to reiterate that he was making the move now in part due to the team’s apparent decision to make changes in the front office, apparently alluding to the reportedly pending hiring of Andy MacPhail. “With some changes at the top looming,” he said, “I did not want to be in the way of anything happening and the progress going forward.”
GM Ruben Amaro Jr. and president Pat Gillick indicated that the move came as a surprise. While Mackanin will take over for the time being, the front office decisionmakers indicated that the process of filling the vacancy in the long term is still in the early stages. When asked when the upper-level changes would go through and who would decide on a new manager, Gillick declined to comment.
Discussing the matter on the broadcast of the team’s game tonight, Amaro said that the decision came “out of the blue” from the organization’s perspective. He said that he and others tried “to push [Sandberg] to stay with us,” but that he felt the outgoing skipper “had made up his mind.”
Expectations for the club were obviously quite low coming into the year, and it has not been pretty. The Phillies sit at 26-48 entering today’s action. It would be impossible to lay all (or even much) of the blame at Sandberg’s feet for the results, of course, as the organization all but declared itself in the early stages of rebuilding over the winter.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
COME BACK TO THE CUBBIES! Should have never left
He’s not a good manager.
I’ll give him credit for starting in the minors, and he seemed decent there…but he obviously seemed to be moving along due to his statute more than ability. He has a place in the game, but it wouldn’t have been on a rebuilding team like Philly. This scenario with Francouer and the Utley revealed he was over his head.
after the team’s he’s had to work with the past 2 seasons, is it really fair to say he’s even had a chance to be a Big League Manager yet?
Agreed. This has everything to do with Amaro. Won’t make moves to build for the future. Who would want to manage a team with no future at all?
No, not really….it isn’t fair in most regards. The only thing he can be held accountable for are his abilities within a fair framework. Did he still have the clubhouse? How was his game management. He clearly can’t be faulted for his players lack of capacity to succeed. Ryno was my idol growing up…its been nice seeing him in uniform again, but there are many worthy talents out there. I think this was inevitable… And it appears Sandberg thought so too.
He moved along through the minors because he had nearly unprecedented amounts of success despite incredible roster turnover. He had absolutely zero chance of fielding a wining, or even a competitive team this season. The organization gave him an absolute joke of a 25-man roster to work with.
I don’t think anyone is judging him based on wins and losses because obviously that would be unfair given the roster he was given. But if you watched the majority of the games he’s managed since he took over for Charlie, you’d see he is a subpar manager. Not saying he’s a bad coach, I think he’s made more for the minors as a manager or in the majors but not as the manager.
One of the final straws for me as a fan was hearing that my manager had no clue his starting 2B had an MRI over a month ago. What manager doesn’t know that? Yes you can blame it on the incompetent GM the Phillies have in place or Utley not being 100% truthful about the injury, but the manager should know these things. That combined with the Francoeur pitching disaster game and the writing was on the wall that he lost the locker room.
Sandberg knew it was just a matter of time til he was gone. Once MacPhail is hired, he’ll probably bring in his own GM in the offseason who will want to bring in his own manager anyway.
Best of luck Ryno, hope you find a better situation.
I’m not sure how to judge “unprecedented” success. Only one of his teams as a minor league manager ever finished higher than 3rd in their league.
I do think he shook off the entire, “ex star player wants to be a manager” thing…he was legit. Paul Molitor has taken that route as well.
I think for the majors he isn’t. He wasn’t a bad minor league coach though.
iowa, like dylan said, there was a reason the Cubs let him leave.
He wanted the manager spot. Obviously, the Cubs were right that wasn’t a fit for him in the big leagues. Was he not an adequate minor league coach?
Ha, can’t see him sitting on the same bench as Dave Martinez.
That’s not happening.
Heh. This my first thought. I don’t think he’ll be signing on for helping out here at Wrigley.
So you have the greatest manager in probably the history of the game in Maddon but still demand a cub?
He’s good, but let’s not exaggerate…. There’s John McGraw, Casey Stengel….even a Tony LaRussa or Joe Torre in modern times. Connie Mack. Maddon hasn’t won anything but the hearts of wine afficianados yet. Let’s not put that Cubs series ring on him yet
Yea, that did seem to be a bit of an exaggeration I would say.
How would you say those guys are better? Total win count?
I saw Joe make his managerial decisions as a Dodger and he was among the worst.
Each of those guys is not going to challenge Maddon if not willing to use analytics.
Analytics is a front office approach, and not necessarily a managerial approach. My frustration with many that discuss analytics is there flippant nature with it. They read Moneyball or some basic info on BP and think they’ve found something golden. I can always spot the newbies because they are prone to trashing “traditional” scouting in the way BP did a whopping 10 years ago. It’s ironic that some new people to analytics are old school in their own approach.
There is a chance if, say, Stengel, encountered current statistics, he would be a top of the league strategist.
There is not a way to determine that though, so the tools a manager has are a part of his skill set intrinsically.
So I can say of the entire history of the game the most effective manager is probably active in the current analytical era.
I think we make a gross over assumption that managers prior to our modern era did not have basic analysis. I mean if you want to run out the modern idea of batting the pitcher 8…that’s a whopping run a season. Even lineup theory will concede there’s not much difference between strategy and just drawing the lineup out of a hat. Sorry…but a run even 5 runs a season is conducive to a lot of elements playing into it. That’s also not giving credit for managerial invention…Stengel was a master of the platoon.
Analytics are wonderful…but there’s a lot of ego in play in the modern era that wants to claim other people’s ideas.
By this line of thinking the vast majority of all major leaguers now are better than any that we’ve ever seen….might be truth in individual cases….but there were also fewer major leaguers in the past….and I don’t really care what the flawed population expansion theory has to say about that because it doesn’t account for growth in locations that are not conducive to baseball or account for baseballs status in the community or lack thereof.
You’re original premise is that Maddon is the likely the greatest manager in history. I’m saying he’s naturally overrated. Best is also a loaded question…. Best at what?__best at being what someone narrowly wishes define as best? Someone wants to make the case that Mike Matheny is the best manager because his teams win…they have about the same point as you… I’m not making that case…but it’s just as narrowly defined. Maddon needs to keep managing awhile.
If we’re speaking about effect then we need to separate eras. We can’t say a manager now is more effective that Casey Stengel was in the 50’s…because the game has changed… Not just by analytics…sheer game finances…effects of train travel
He was likely to be fired before the team would be able to turn things around. Good for him for being able to leave on his own terms.
Phillies need to start trading pieces already.utley is out , lee is out. Hamels didn’t do well his last start, and has a hamstring issue. Besides franco and crawford , and nola I don’t see them having a great farm system.
I hear ya, but I don’t think anyone is worried about Hamels. He “had” a minor hamstring issue.
Also, don’t be surprised if Phillies have a top 10 farm system by next year. They have a lot of really good pieces in their system and will only get better with their draft and trades.
They will start trading, one would assume, but only when the price is right. The absolute worst thing a rebuilding team can do is start trading players for less than adequate return. You cannot rebuild a team with someone else’s scrapheap players. Trading pieces is fine for fair return but trading pieces for the sake of trading accomplishes nothing.
shocking.
leave the ship before it sinks
Sinks? They hired him to basically be the band leader on the Titanic
Agree with you 100! and the Captain who built this 100% disaster (Amaro jr) refuses to take both responsibility, or go down with it. What are the odds he comes out with some mealy mouthed, slight words of praise.. Yet still blame Sandberg for his own debacle?
Amaro is toast….Sandberg just brought down his shield. Amaro is gone before the All Star game
Even the band leader went down with the ship….
Hurry up, Amaro, and you can split cab fare to the airport. I’m not sure if Ryno would be a good manager or not. Amaro was so slow start the rebuild that Sandberg was doomed. Could also be that he and MacPhail have a strained relationship…change was coming at some point…but no manager anywhere was going to get wins with this group.
Mackanin has been waiting too long for this shot. He was pretty solid his last gig. I kinda hope they let him keep the job at least until the end of the year.
Let the Braves’ contingent kick into high gear.
We can only hope Fredi is gone sooner rather than later!
This sub par schmuck should have never had the job in the first place. Nice guy though.
How do you figure sub-par? Until he took over the Phillies, he was a very good manager in the minors and then served as a coach on the MLB team. When he finally was given a shot to me a MLB manager, Amaro, JR handed him possibly the biggest joke of a team possible and told him to make lemonade from rotten lemons. The love child manager of Tony LaRussa and Whitey Herzog couldn’t have made a wining team out of the Phillies the last two years.
Maybe we can see Amaro become manager of the club too. That way, he can directly see how badly he has done.
And so the Phillies continue marching down the path of irrelevance. How different would 2015 have looked if they had started their rebuild 2 years ago (when most suggested it). No Lee, Hamels, Howard, Utley, or Papelbon. Stocked farm system and about $100M less in salary obligations this year.
What a mess.
Sandberg might have been subpar, but he was dealt an awful hand–an old, bad team, not much youth coming up, a front office clearly just putting people out there to trade them. And then not trading them. How do you motivate a team like that? It’s every man for himself.
The Phillies could do a lot worse than to seriously consider Mackanin for the permanent role. As for Sandberg, he didn’t have much at all to work with, but he really never impressed me as being in control of that clubhouse.
I like Sandberg but can’t help but think that this will have a double-effect on his future.
1. He wasn’t very good at managing (I know the team is bad, but Ryno didn’t help)
2. He’s essentially doing a Jim Riggleman and just walking out. It’s like working in the real world, you can leave any time, but give some notice.
How long does it take moderators?
I’ve had posts with no visible inclination asnto why they needed moderation hung up 6_ hours or more.
Not knowing the physical status of one of your players is just being out of touch. That and his constantly putting Utley in the lineup knowing if he played too much, his contract would be extended another 15 million bucks. That’s just not looking out for your team. Sandberg was one of the best players I ever saw but being a great player seldom translates to being a good manager. Not many have done it.