Managerial Notes: Mets, Phillies, Klentak, Bochy, Guillen

David Wright and Jacob deGrom were two of several Mets players who weren’t pleased by the teammates who anonymously criticized manager Terry Collins in a recent piece by Newsday’s Marc Carig.  “It was cowardly, in my opinion,” Wright told Kristie Ackert of the New York Daily News.  “I have been very fortunate in my career.  I haven’t had too many gripes, but when I did, I went and talked to Terry or whoever the manager is.  His door has always been open and he’s always listened.”  It seems a foregone conclusion that Collins won’t return to manage the Mets in 2018, and the manager himself didn’t want to comment on many of items in Carig’s piece, other than to take exception to the idea that his usage of Jeurys Familia contributed to the reliever’s surgery to address an arterial clot in his right shoulder.

Some more managerial notes from around baseball…

• “In my mind, we have reached a turning point in this rebuild,” Phillies GM Matt Klentak told reporters (including PhillyVoice.com’s Ryan Lawrence) about why Pete Mackanin was moved to a front office position rather than manage the Phils next season.  “We see our roster right now is littered with young players who look to have a very, very bright future. It’s time to look forward. That’s the message today: it’s time to look forward.”  In Lawrence’s view, Klentak’s answers were somewhat indirect, especially since Mackanin was just given a contract extension in May.  Both Lawrence and Bob Brookover of the Philadelphia Inquirer believe Klentak is now taking a larger role in the Phillies’ rebuild, given that several of the team’s top young talents were brought into the organization by previous (since fired) front office personnel.  Brookover figures the new skipper will be younger and more analytically-minded, and he cites Dusty Wathan as “the smart choice” for the job since Wathan is so familiar with Philadelphia’s young players.  Wathan has managed in the Phillies’ farm system for the last decade, including managing the Triple-A affiliate in 2017.
• Sources close to Giants manager Bruce Bochy believe he’ll certainly stay on until his contract is up after the 2019 season, CSNBayArea.com’s Alex Pavlovic writes.  Despite the Giants’ dreadful season, there is no danger of Bochy being fired, and though the manager has undergone some health issues in recent years, Bochy is intent on righting the ship next year.  “I want to leave the Giants organization better than when I came here and I want to get this team back on track. This is my passion,” Bochy said.
• Ozzie Guillen hasn’t received an interview request since being fired by Miami four years ago, but the former Marlins and White Sox manager is still hopeful of another chance at managing a big league team, he tells Anthony Fenech of the Detroit Free Press.  Fenech believes Guillen would be an interesting candidate for the Tigers job as the club embarks on a rebuilding process, though it isn’t clear whether Guillen is one of the names under consideration for the job.