Once a hitting guru, former World Series-winning Phillies skipper Charlie Manuel is now asked to fix the Phillies’ errant bats.

Before he managed the Phillies to National League East dominance, a couple of pennants, and a World Series ring in 2008, Charlie Manuel was known around baseball as a great teacher and shepherd of hitting. And with this year’s Phillies under-hitting while threatening to drop out of even the wild card race entirely, the team brought Manuel back as . . . their hitting coach, at least for the rest of the season.

This happened just a day after the Phillies executed John Mallee, perhaps to the dismay of manager Gabe Kapler. And bringing back Manuel is rich enough. The man who took the ultimate fall for the beyond-control aging of his NL East owners, but was brought back to the organisation as mostly a glad-hander, is now being asked to save their bats.

Already the old schoolers are having a kind of field day with Manuel’s return, seeing it as an overdue triumph over heavy analytics and an object lesson to all those data nerds. They’re not necessarily seeing that it wasn’t analytics, heavy or otherwise, by themselves that put the crimp into the Phillies’ bats.

Analytics applied and operated the right way gives you the Astros since their rebuild. As in, the World Series-winning, American League West-owning, excellent-chance-of-returning-to-the-World-Series-this-year Astros. Analytics applied and operated the wrong way gives you, among other things, this year’s first half Mets and most-of-the-year Phillies.

Mallee’s mistake wasn’t in analytics qua analytics. His mistake was delivering what the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Scott Lauber called a message of “selected aggressive” hitting. And, implementing it up and down the organisation, never mind to the parent club. Aside from the obvious, the big error in such a hitting message is that it didn’t (and doesn’t) marry the data as it should be married, to the individual psyches of the hitters.

To state only the obvious: Bryce Harper has needed someone to remind him that it’s an exercise in futility trying to come right out of the chute living up to the mammoth decade-plus contract you’ve just signed. Because you’re going to be pressing at the plate no matter your periodic jaw-dropping moments. And the Phillies had to look no further to their own Hall of Fame legend Mike Schmidt: Schmidt, too, spent his first season after signing his first big contract pressing at the plate.

Someone needed to tell Harper, Rhys Hoskins, and other Phillie swingers that not only is the data just another tool in their boxes but that you shouldn’t let the data knock you off your game. The data’s telling you you should be looking for this or that pitch in this or that zone slot? “Selected aggressive” hitting is just as liable to keep you from hitting the pitch when you get it. It’s also liable to put you in a place where you’re not as comfortable at the plate as you should be.

Just as good scouting marries the data to the makeup of the prospect, sound analytics marries the data to the makeup of the player. That’s where Mallee seems to have made his mistake. Even the most stubborn among the analytics minded know there’s no such thing as one size fits all when it comes to hitters. Or pitchers, if you nod toward the Astros’ astonishing ability to either remake pitchers successfully or get proven pitchers back to where they once belonged.

And when you apply and operate all the analyses and data the wrong way, you need a Charlie Manuel to come in and apply enough of a fix to stand you in good enough stead for the rest of the season and next year. If anyone in baseball can turn what the analytically overfed Phillies have been fed into practical execution, it may just be Manuel. He may not be of the analytics school, but he can sure as hell get these Phillies back to using that information sensibly.

“Selective aggressive” hitting, my foot. Get them to jump when they get the pitch they’re most likely to hit, or get them back to working toward forcing the pitcher to throw it to them. Manuel is an established virtuoso at developing or straightening out major league hitters.

If he decides to use the Phillies’s analytics after all and conform it to his knowledge that no one size fits every hitter, he’s going to leave the Phillies in a better frame no matter whether he sticks around after this season or not. If he decides the Phillies’ hitters have all the data they can digest without him, and just sticks to bringing them back into their individual sweet spots, he’ll have done them a huge favour.

Sure it hurt when the Phillies lost leadoff man Andrew McCutchen for the year. But these Phillies were beginning to look a little lost at the plate anyway and stayed there. Sharp teams overcome a loss like McCutchen. The Phillies’ batters were about as sharp as a bag of marshmallows.

Harper isn’t the totally lost cause you’re foolish enough to think his .250 traditional batting average this year indicates. His real batting average in 2019—total bases + walks + intentional walks + sacrifices divided by plate appearances—is a healthy enough .572. Which is fifteen points below his career RBA. Only Rhys Hoskins has a higher RBA for 2019 (.586) among Phillies hitters; Hoskins and Harper are also the only Phillies regulars with 80+ walks.

But with nobody else on the Phillies reaching base often enough since McCutchen’s injury Harper and Hoskins aren’t getting the RBI opportunities they should get. And under Mallee’s “selective aggressive” approach, they weren’t giving anyone else that many chances to drive them in, either. Seemingly, “selective aggression” gives more extra advantages to pitchers facing Philadelphia bats than to Philadelphia bats facing the pitchers.

Why else bring Manuel back even as a hitting coach? Possibly to send a message to manager Gabe Kapler, who’s much like his now-former hitting coach in that he’s not exactly the Astros’ kind of smart about analytics (not many analytically minded teams are) or the most deft situational tactician, either.

On the other hand, it wasn’t anybody’s fault that the Phillies’ bullpen, which wasn’t exactly one of the top pens in the league as it was, was decimated by injuries near the middle of the season, either. Whenever there was something to protect, or something for which the other guys needed to be throttled while giving the Phillies time to revive, wherever you looked another bullpen bull joined the walking wounded—Pat Neshek’s shoulder troubles, Tommy Hunter’s pending elbow surgery.

And, in the case of David Robertson, uncertainty over whether it’ll be his elbow flexor tendon requiring surgery or his ulnar collateral ligament requiring Tommy John surgery. If it’s the former, Robertson could be back for 2020. If it’s the latter, it could be career over for a 34-year-old relief pitcher who’s worked a heavy load in his career even by today’s short relief standards.

But it’s also not impossible to believe that Manuel’s return even in this capacity might be the Phillies’ backhanded way of saying they made a big mistake making him the fall guy for things beyond his control. Things like the injuries that wrecked and finally ended Ryan Howard’s career and put paid to the late Roy Halladay’s career. Things like the aging of middle infield commanders Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley.

Might.

Manuel once shepherded the likes of Hall of Famer Jim Thome plus Manny Ramirez and Albert Belle in Cleveland as a hitting scientist, either making or steadying them as dangerous hitters. (Ramirez and Belle, for different reasons, had themselves to blame in the end for missing out on Hall of Fame election.) He’ll have the rest of this season at least to get Harper, Hoskins, and other Phillies batters steadied back.

Beyond this season? Excellent question.

Back-to-back days, back-to-back game winning home runs for Carlos Santana, and a half game lead in the AL Central for the Indians . . .

Don’t look now, but the Twins’ runaway train has hit an obstruction on the tracks. The obstruction came from Cleveland. Whose Indians have been—unexpectedly but just as profoundly—baseball’s second-hottest team since the All-Star break, just behind the self-resurrected Mets.

The Twins were bludgeoning their way to the American League Central title, no? The Indians were an injury, inconsistency, and sometimes indifference-addled mess who were lucky to be tied with the rebuilding White Sox eleven and a half games out in second in the Central, no?

While baseball world paid closest attention to what looked like the self-imploding Mets turning into a self-resurrecting surprise after the All-Star break, and the Twins and their thumping boppers sending home runs flying at a volume unfathomable by even this season’s supposed Year of the Big Yank, the Indians took more than a little advantage of the chance to sneak back into the thick of things.

So the Mets jerked themselves right back into the National League’s wild card picture? With a chance to make the National League East a race of it again while they’re at it with a three-set in Atlanta starting tonight? Don’t look now, but the Indians jerked themselves right back into the AL Central race.

And, a half game beyond.

That’s the Tribe sitting in first place this morning. They followed a weekend taking three out of four from the Twins by taking advantage of a Twins off day Monday and walking it off against the Red Sox—the defending World Series champions now staggering their way through a season looking more lost as the days go by.

Well, specifically, switch-hitting smasher Carlos Santana walked it off. He led off the bottom of the ninth in Progressive Field Monday night, after Xander Bogaerts tied it at five in the top with an RBI double to blow a save for Indians reliever Brad Hand. Batting lefthanded he saw a 2-2 slider from Red Sox reliever Marcus Walden coming right into his wheel house. And he wheeled his 200th career home run over the center field fence.

That was one day Hand blew a two-run lead in the bottom of the ninth at Target Field. Leaving Santana to bail him out in the top of the tenth. With the bases loaded and nobody out against Twins reliever Taylor Rogers. Rogers fed Santana batting righthanded a 2-1 fastball that didn’t elude the middle of the zone entirely, and Santana sent that one into the left center field bullpen.

On the far, far, far other side of the power coin there were the beyond hapless Orioles. While Santana bombed the Indians to a half game lead over the Twins Monday, the Orioles set the record no team wanted to set, the most home runs surrendered by a team on a season. They had the Yankees to thank for that on Monday, the Yankees—somehow continuing to possess the American League East despite resembling a season-long M*A*S*H post-op population—hitting seven out to make it 248 at the Orioles’ expense this year.

The Indians appreciate what Santana—a prodigal son returning to the Tribe after a 2018 with the Phillies—is doing lately. “Right when you get punched in the stomach he takes a swing like that,” said manager Terry Francona after Santana hammered the Red Sox Monday. “I mean, that was a gorgeous swing. I know the last two days, but he’s been doing it all year.”

They just hope the next time Santana hits one out it won’t be solely to save Hand’s hide after another blown save. Hand hadn’t blown one until 25 June; he’s now blown four including that one.

“You guys know Carlos is a damage guy, a really dangerous guy,” says Indians outfielder Franmil Reyes, who’s been an Indian for two weeks, “and you have to watch out every time he is up there.”

Especially when it’s late in the game this year. Santana’s 26 bombs on the season include twelve putting the Indians into the lead, and five of them have been hit in the seventh or later. That puts Santana second to Reyes’ former San Diego teammate Hunter Renfroe’s six seventh-inning-or-later lead-taking homers this year.

And to think that it was only yesterday (figuratively speaking) when talking about the Indians meant reminding yourself which pitcher(s) occupied the injured list and which bats were missing in action a little too often. Corey Kluber, their ace of the recent past, is due back this month. Carlos Carrasco is still working through his leukemia diagnosis. Hunter Wood left Monday’s game with a calf contusion and is day-to-day. And that’s just a cursory look.

Just as the Indians might have been better than their first half results showed, the Twins may not have been as powerful as their looked. “Finally, some relative normalcy,” wrote The Athletic‘s Grant Brisbee after Sunday’s game. “The Twins aren’t a super team. They’re just a well-constructed group of sluggers and starters who have a chance to make some October noise. If they can ignore those heavy, clomping footsteps coming from behind them and . . . ”

Aren’t a super team? The Twins are 23-23 since they had baseball’s best record and a ten-game AL Central lead on 18 June, and they’re 15-14 since the All-Star break. And, since the trading deadline?

They added nothing big at the deadline but settled for Sam Dyson as a bullpen boost. Dyson got torn for three earned runs each on 1 and 2 August, against the bottom-feeding Marlins and Royals.

They lost two out of three to the Braves before the Indians hit town, and about the only positive the Twins took out of that thumping was manager Rocco Baldelli—who’d looked like a Manager of the Year candidate in his first-ever season commanding from such a bridge—managing somehow not to burn his bullpen in advance of the Indians’ arrival. If you’re a Twins fan and you saw that set as an October preview, it wasn’t exactly encouraging.

But if you’re an Indians fan, you’re sitting with dessert in your mouth practically every day. They didn’t hurt their rotation when they dealt talented but mercurial Trevor Bauer to the Reds in the three-way swap that bagged them Reyes and Yasiel Puig, a pair of fun lovers who are now good for clubhouses regardless of what they do in the field or at the plate. Puig’s hit .333 as an Indian so far with six runs batted in and five scored; Reyes is beginning to find his stroke again.

All-Star sophomore Shane Bieber (a Twins fan of my acquaintance refers to him as “Chained Beaver,” swearing that’s how it sounds when announcers say his name) has been a continuing pleasant surprise with his walks/hits-per-inning-pitched rate under 1.00. Rookie Zach Plesac has been a plain surprise on the mound even if he’s depending a little too much on his defenses. Veteran Mike Clevinger came off the injured list in June and has a 3.13 ERA since.

And Jose Ramirez, the third base mainstay, has shaken off that grotesque first half slump at the plate. He has a .328/.354/.681 slash line in his past thirty games, and when you bring that back to a lineup already featuring Santana, Puig, Reyes, Francisco Lindor, and rookie surprise Oscar Mercado, all you need is for one and all to hit and play the way they’re capable of hitting and playing.

If so, these Indians are no pushovers. And these Twins should have known better than to think they’d turned their division into the proverbial walk in the park.

Who’s going to have it worse over the final 44 games?

With the Brewers and the Red Sox reeling more than a little bit, the Twins have only one bona fide contender to deal with down the stretch, when they have three home dates with the somehow-self-revived Nationals 10-12 September. And those are sandwiched by a pair of three-game sets with the Indians.

The Indians have another pair with the Red Sox starting tonight. But then they get to test themselves with a very long week in New York—against the Yankees and the Mets, one after the other. It’ll be a big test for the Mets, too, depending on whether they can make a solid stand against the Braves this week. If they make it, this coming weekend against the Royals will be target practise. If they don’t, it’ll be time to re-charge.

Like the Mets against the Braves this week, the Indians need to make a solid stand against the Empire Emeritus this weekend. But if the Mets prove they’re still the real second-half deal by the time the Indians visit, the Indians may have a real battle on their hands.

They still have to be careful. For all Santana’s heroics. Kluber has to return to his ace form when he returns. Bieber and Plesac need to be handled adroitly enough not to exhaust themselves down the stretch. Puig and Ramirez can’t afford to be too streaky. And that mostly soft schedule for the Twins could mean the northern thumpers getting their groove back for keeps.

Will it be a treat or a soul sacrifice for Santana and his Indians?

Any resurrected inconsistency on their part and their current overthrow of the Twins will turn into a pleasant memory before its time. But let’s just savour the pleasant part, for now. We’ll know soon enough whether it’s singing winds or crying beasts.

Can you remember the last time the Mets lost a game this year and Mets fans didn’t come away from that loss feeling as though the proverbial roof fell in on both again? Well, perhaps you can. From among several.

Maybe 23 June in Chicago. When beleaguered manager Mickey Callaway let a less than well armed Seth Lugo work a second inning’s relief, which let Javier Baez on 0-2 hit a three-run homer that proved the game loser.

And, when both Callaway and then-Mets pitcher Jason Vargas started a war with a Newsday reporter doing what only every damn reporter in the clubhouse did: ask why Callaway let Lugo go to work for a second inning when he’d been run to back-to-back full counts and needed a double play to bail him out in the first inning’s work.

Maybe 26-27 June. Back-to-back walkoff losses to the Phillies. The first courtesy of erstwhile Met Jay Bruce doubling home the game-winner in the bottom of the tenth; the second, which really hit where it hurt, courtesy of two homers in the bottom of the ninth, including Jean Segura’s three-run winning shot—after the Mets took a lead in the top of the inning with a two-run homer and a run-scoring ground out.

Maybe even 18-21 July, when they could win only one of four against the Giants, and all three losses were walkoffs. And, at those times, the Phillies were still factors in the National League East race while the Giants still looked as though they’d yanked themselves back from the dead and into the NL wild card hunt.

The Giants polished them off after they’d taken two of three from the Marlins and swept a pair from the then-American League Central-leading Twins. But then the Mets got even crazier: they took two of three from the Padres, swept the Pirates and the White Sox back-to-back, took two of three more from the Pirates, swept four from the Marlins.

And everyone wondered whether these resurgent Mets were anything resembling the real deal. If you include the Giants going from a 19-6 July to a 4-7 August that may have sent them back out of the wild card run, the Mets hadn’t really beaten anyone significant until this weekend with the Nationals—holding second place in the NL East and the lead for the first NL wild card—coming to town.

Then the crazy Mets got downright insane. They beat the Nats at the last minute or next to last minute Friday and Saturday nights. Losing Sunday, leaving the Mets 21-7 in the second half so far and still baseball’s hottest team, didn’t send Mets fans looking to stick their heads into the nearest oven.

Maybe the most disheartened among either the Mets or the much-put-upon faithful was first baseman Pete Alonso, their Rookie of the Year candidate. “If I make that play,” he said after the 7-4 loss, “we’re probably still playing baseball. Tough pill to swallow.”

“That play” was on a bases-loaded, two-out grounder to first by former Met Asdrubal Cabrera, whose bases-loaded two-run double in the seventh broke a three-all tie and proved the game winner, in the top of the first. Instead of the third out it meant three unearned runs. And it wasn’t exactly Alonso’s entire fault.

He made a sharp snag of Cabrera’s sharp enough grounder. He threw to Mets starting pitcher Jacob deGrom running over to cover. Inexplicably, deGrom hesitated a step. By the time he reached the pad the ball flew just past his outstretched glove. Alonso was charged with a throwing error but the charge probably should have gone to deGrom for that inexplicable hesitation.

Then it went from crazy to rubber room time. As two Nats scored on the error, deGrom ran the ball down in foul ground toward the Mets’ on-deck circle. With Juan Soto trying to score a third unearned run, deGrom threw home and Soto was a dead duck. Except that Mets catcher Wilson Ramos dropped the ball as he was turning to tag Soto, who should have been out by two and a half feet on the play.

Instead, the game opened with the Mets in a 3-0 hole. DeGrom steadied from there, keeping the Nats scoreless, though the Nats did their best to keep running up his pitch count to get him out after five innings. But a 6-1 homestand including two of three from the almost-equally-resurgent Nats—like the Mets all but left for dead in May and June—is nothing to mourn.

Especially when your next opponent will be the Braves, in their playpen, starting Tuesday night, after a weekend in which they split a four-game set with the Marlins. Leaving the NL East leaders a mere 16-13 in the second half so far and 6-5 for August.

The Braves’ newly retooled bullpen isn’t as sharp as advertised. Shane Greene has gone from lights out in Detroit to lights flickering with the Braves. Mark Melancon had four consecutive solid assignments as a new Brave until Saturday night.

Handed a four-run lead to protect in the ninth, Melancon opened with a strikeout before surrendering four straight Marlins singles including one with the bases loaded. Snitker lifted Melancon and brought in Greene, and Greene promptly surrendered another RBI single and a two-run double, sending the game to extra innings. Where Sean Newcomb surrendered a game-losing sacrifice fly.

And on Sunday, a 5-4 win to gain the series split still felt almost like a loss. Neither team scored since the bottom of the sixth, but in the ninth Luke Jackson, the Atlanta reliever whose name lately strikes fear into the hearts of his own team’s fans, performed a perfect impression of postseason Craig Kimbrel: single (and the fortune of throwing out Isan Diaz trying to stretch), ground out, single, deep infield single, and a long fly out.

Why must they always do it the hard way now? you could hear the Tomahawk Choppers moan.

The Mets don’t exactly have a steady bullpen themselves, of course. They may even have to throw in the towel at last and do something drastic with Edwin Diaz. His early season misusage has led to confusion between his ears and command issues on the mound. After he surrendered Victor Robles’s two-out two-run homer in the top of the eighth Sunday, he retired the side, but back in the dugout he looked as though he’d been told of a death in the family before he got there.

It may turn out to be his. Jim Bouton once described players being sent down to the minors as deaths in the family. (“I died tonight,” he wrote in Ball Four, after the Seattle Pilots sent him down to their Vancouver farm for a spell.) With Lugo now the arguable best reliever on staff, and likely to claim a formal closing job, the Mets may consider sending Diaz to AAA Syracuse to help him right himself.

On the threshold of meeting the Braves, the Mets can’t afford to wait for Diaz to regain his once-formidable command. And this week’s set with the Braves, even more than the weekend with the Nats, will show what the Mets are really made of. Especially, whether their young turks and the now-best rotation in the league, if not the game, can keep overcoming the dead weight of too many of their veterans.

But it may be a set in which the Braves have to prove once and for all what they’re really made of, too. Especially if it turns out to be a contest of whose bullpen is going to play with more matches.

The good news for the Braves: they don’t have to worry about facing deGrom or Noah Syndergaard this week. The good news for the Mets: They can still throw Zack Wheeler, Steven Matz, and then Marcus Stroman—coming off a splendid showdown against Stephen Strasburg Friday night—at the Braves, who counter with, in order, Max Fried, Dallas Keuchel, and Julio Teheran.

Fried has a winning record but he’s prone to inconsistencies now and then. Keuchel isn’t the pitcher he used to be anymore even if he eats innings and provides a veteran steadiness to the Braves’ staff; more and more, his Cy Young Award winning season resembles a fluke. Teheran’s faced the Mets three times this year with mixed results: one earned run surrendered 14 April, six surrendered 18 June, two surrendered 29 June—the third when he threw 50 pitches in three and a third before rain delayed the game an hour and ten minutes.

Wheeler’s gone from trade deadline speculation subject to something resembling his better self since. Matz has begun trusting his breaking, off-speed stuff a lot more and become a formidable foe once again. And Stroman, thought an inexplicable trade deadline period acquisition, is now invaluable to the Mets.

After this set, the Mets get one of their absolute few breathers the rest of the way when they spent next weekend in Kansas City. The Braves have the Dodgers to deal with next weekend. The Mets still want to prove they’re for real. The Braves still want to prove they’re the same team who had the kind of lights-out June that the Mets have had since the All-Star break.

Neither will be confirmed without a good, solid battle. And to think that, before the Nats hit New York for the weekend now done, Alonso thought, “We are now in crunch time.” He ain’t seen nothing yet.