Yesterday we wrote about Howard Eskin, who butchered the hell out of a question to Matt Klentak and Gabe Kapler before the team’s 4-2 win against the Cubs.

What Howard wanted to know was if Kapler had anything to say about a 2013 tweet calling for Charlie Manuel’s firing, a tweet that was sent while Kapler was working as an analyst for Fox Sports. The question itself wasn’t even really relevant in the first place, and the stumbling delivery resulted in a non-answer from the Phillies manager.

Here’s the relevant part of the exchange, as a refresher:

Eskin: The other part of that question, about 2013 –

Kapler: I have no idea where that comes from.

Eskin: I wanted to address that because (Wednesday) morning it’s going to come out, it’s already come out so I just wanted to have you address it. That’s all.

Kapler: I’m not sure what that’s about.

Eskin: Okay, I’m just following up.

Kapler: Great, thank you.

So this morning Kapler was on 94 WIP with Angelo Cataldi, and of course Cataldi brought up the topic again, only this time asking it in a much more cohesive way and actually getting a real answer.

Here’s that exchange, after the jump:


Cataldi: Gabe, the next thing, Howard Eskin screwed all this up yesterday, confused everybody. Here’s what people are talking about, and you can probably really help us clarify this. When you were working for FOX, this was July 26th, 2013, you tweeted out, “Time for Phillies to do the right thing for the future of the organization and pull the trigger. Sad for fans, sadder for team, but time.” And then two weeks later, Charlie was fired. Was this you endorsing a removal of Charlie as the manager?

Kapler: I actually didn’t remember that all when Howard brought it up. But I’m impressed you went through than six years of my tweets to find that. Charlie knows how excited I am to have him with us. I didn’t see him getting too worked up over one off tweet from 2013, particularly since I’m sure you called for his dismissal plenty of times as well.

Cataldi: Even the year they won the World Series I did it, I think, Gabe (laughs).

Kapler: With Charlie, I tell him the truth though, which is that my job at the time was to put out opinions often. It was a different job, a different role, a different time, and that it isn’t at all reflective of my evaluation of him as a coach or a person. But I’m pretty sure Charlie would prefer to talk about J.T. (Realmuto’s) bomb to right center field last night, over an old tweet when I was an analyst at FOX.

Wow, that’s crazy. Gabe’s real answer to the question is pretty similar to the fake answer I came up with in yesterday’s article.

“Obviously I was in a different role back then, a different job. Those comments were my professional opinion and I’ve got all the respect in the world for Charlie. I’m looking forward to working with him.”

So yeah, Kapler said exactly what he thought he would, except Angelo had to ask the question a second time in a non-confusing way because Howard, in his words, “screwed all this up yesterday, confused everybody.”

One other thing here –

Kapler was also asked about Alex Rodriguez’s comments about his managing, from the situation the other night with Nick Pivetta and Kevin Pillar, to which he replied:

I hear that stuff pretty quickly. I did hear that. I think A Rod, who was my teammate in Texas a long, long time ago, put a lot of emphasis on Pillar being hot and Crawford being cold. Frankly, those streaks, those hot streaks have never been reliable for game planning purposes. (Brandon) Crawford has had more success off of Pivetta in the past. Nick is generally stronger vs right than left. Crawford’s swing, the way it plays, is better against Nick’s pitches than Pillar’s (swing). And obviously Nick didn’t execute his pitch and the results were pretty bad. But to suggest that the decision to go after Pillar vs. Crawford lacked care just doesn’t ring true to me.

Full audio here: