Max Kepler Is a Bust with a Big Mouth
It’s hard to imagine that a baseball player making $10 million this season would try to portray himself as a victim, but, hey, what do you expect?
Max Kepler has been whiffing all season at the plate. Why should we expect more when there’s a microphone in his face?
In case you missed it, the left fielder blamed his godawful first season as a Phillie on the way he has been used by his robotic manager Rob Thomson.
As reported in The Athletic, Kepler feels he was lied to by the organization, which supposedly promised him the everyday job when he signed as a free agent.
“The biggest challenge for me is not playing routinely,” Keplersaid. “That’s the biggest challenge. I was told I was going to be the starting left fielder.”
When the Phillies made that pledge, he was coming off back-to-back seasons of hitting .253 and .260, with a combined 32 homers and 108 RBIs. And it’s not like Kepler has been rotting on the Phillies bench this season. He did play in 75 of the first 84 games.
There’s no reason to believe the Phils were paying a cool 10 mill for a player who would hit .207 with nine homers and 28 RBIs over those first 75 games. They expect more. They paid for a lot more.
In Kepler’s mind, a promise is a promise, regardless of performance. He wants Thomson to write his name in the lineup every day, even if he has become one of the main reasons the offense has flopped for the past month.
Kepler is especially steamed that the Phils are rarely playing him against left-handed pitchers, completely ignoring the fact that he has only one homer and five ribbies in 49 appearances against southpaws.
Max Kepler is the latest in an alarmingly long line of bad signings and acquisitions under GM Dave Dombrowski during his five seasons with the organization.
Before Kepler, there were ridiculous contracts for Taijuan Walker, Odubel Herrera, Didi Gregorious, and Jordan Romano – plus awful new deals for J.T. Realmuto ($115 million) and Aaron Nola ($172 million.)
All of those busts at least had the common sense to keep their mouths shut and count their windfall. Not Kepler. The strikeout machine – 58 Ks in 281 plate appearances – needed to blame someone other than himself for his ineptitude.
Now there’s speculation that Dombrowski is in the market for another leftfielder before the trade deadline next month, the ultimate sign that a free agent is a bust.
A couple of days after The Athletic report, the Inquirer followed up by asking Kepler if he was unhappy about the way Thomson was using him. Not only did Kepler not back off his whining, he doubled down on it.
“I think I play my best game when I’m getting routine and consistent play time,” Kepler said. “I’ve always gone through my ruts and gone through my hot streaks. Some might say I’m a streaky hitter. But I’d say the hardest thing to do in this game for me is to go play with inconsistent opportunities.”
Wow. A malcontent batting .207 and blaming the team, not himself, for his brutal season.
Who wants to be the first Phillies fan to tell Kepler to shut up and play?
OK, I’ll do it then.
There’s nothing worse in sports than a bust with a big mouth.
Daryl Morey and Danny Briere just finished the most important drafts of their careers as GMs. In fact, it’s safe to say if they flop this time, they won’t have careers as GMs anymore.
So how did they do?
I have no brilliant insights, though I did find their comments annoying after picking third and sixth in their respective draft. Neither executive has ever learned to speak the language of the fans.
After selecting V.J Edgecombe, an athletic guard from Baylor, Morey said: “I think we’ll have one of the best backcourts in the league, with Grimes, Maxey, Jared McCain, and now VJ. With the way the NBA’s going, I think you saw some of these teams playing dynamic, up-tempo with multiple guards that put the defense in jeopardy.”
One of those teams was most definitely NOT the Sixers, who have a plodding, oft-injured Joel Embiid in the middle. By the way, that talented Sixer backcourt, minus the new kid, managed a 24-58 record last season.
Every time Morey is on the dais – which, by the way, is not very often given his press-shy style – I amuse myself by looking down at his hands in search of a championship ring. He talks like he’s won a bunch of titles, but his bare fingers tell a far different story.
The best news about the Sixers draft is their decision to draft center Johni Broome of Auburn in the second round, presumably to prepare for life after Embiid. Broome is a bit undersized at 6-9, but he’s a solid defender with some offensive skills near the basket.
Maybe Morey is finally coming to grips with the fact that Embiid will never win anything here.
That’s progress, I guess.
Meanwhile, the more Briere talks, the less I like him. He was a good-enough player to develop a veneer of arrogance, I suppose, but he has no such track record of accomplishment as a GM. Since he got here, it has been promises, promises, followed by failure.
What he said this week that disturbed me was his open disdain for the many media experts who post their mock drafts. Briere doesn’t pay much attention to them because, well, here’s the way he put it:
“No offense to all the experts out there that watch these players on tape once or twice and they make their own rankings; it’s great and it works for them,” he said. “But I’m going to trust our guys that I’ve worked with for a lot of years. They’re experts at it and that’s what they do.”
If these guys he has worked with are so brilliant, maybe Briere can explain why the Flyers have sucked for a decade now, including all three years Briere has been GM.
Hey, maybe winger Porter Martone and center Jack Nesbitt will be the foundation of a better era for the team. Maybe Briere got it right this time.
If he’s wrong again, it will be time for him to take his bad attitude and leave. The only reason he hasn’t been held more accountable for his failures is, so few people care anymore.
Some final thoughts. . . .
- Does Jordan Romano have photos of a Phillies higher-up in a compromising position? Is that why Rob Thomson keeps calling for the reliever in high-leverage situations? Somewhere in that blizzard of numbers, the manager must see that Romano has an ERA of 7.28. No?
- Has any big star in Philadelphia sports history ever retired and immediately became more famous? Maybe, but certainly not the way Jason Kelce is crushing it right now. Last week he was at his annual party in Sea Isle, hustling in a red, white and blue Speedo for charity. I often asked him if he knew what he would do after football. He never hinted it would be anything like this. Bravo for him.
- I’m counting the days until MLB adopts the ball-strike technology that reduces the role of the home-plate umpire. Back in the day, baseball pundits liked to say the umps were right almost all of the time. Well, no, the men in blue never were, and especially not today. Some umps have no clue about the strike zone. They have sacrificed the right to call pitches. Frankly, they stink at it.
- There’s a sense of anticipation for the start of a new Eagles season, especially after they just won the Super Bowl, but I sense no apprehension by the fans about Kevin Patullo being the new offensive coordinator. The two times coach Nick Sirianni used his own people, they team went nowhere. The two times he accepted coaching help from outside the organization, they went to the Super Bowl. With an inside man back in charge, everybody’s not the least bit worried? Well, I am.
- There are 66 days until the start of the Eagles season. In other words, 66 days till I can stop watching golf. Not that I’m counting or anything.