It’s been a weird couple of weeks for Joe Girardi.

In addition to just having a ‘meh’ month of managing the local baseball team, he’s encountered some media hiccups along the way, first telling the scribes that Bryce Harper was fine, and then backtracking to explain that he was being intentionally misleading in order to create what he felt was a competitive advantage.

After Harper was placed on the ten-day DL, Girardi told reporters this (via Tim Kelly at Phillies Nation) – 

“There’s a distinct advantage if I tell you that a guy’s wrist is hurt to the other manager,” Girardi said Tuesday afternoon. “And the idea here is to win games. It’s kind of like me telling you who is available and not available in the bullpen – I don’t like doing that because I don’t want Donny [Marlins manager Don Mattingly] to know who I might use or not use.

“And I understand that you want to know, but there are distinct advantages that I can give another club if they know everything that’s going on over here. So, I’m sorry that I had to do that, but we’re trying to win games. And he’s just not ready to go, I thought he’d be ready on Monday or Tuesday, he’s not, so we decided to IL him.”

A similar situation came up Thursday afternoon, when Jean Segura pinch-hit but did not stay in the game, which resulted in Nick Maton entering at second base.

When asked about it, Girardi took somewhat of a Marshawn Lynch approach, and gave media a response equating to “I’m just here so I won’t get fined.”

From Matt Gelb:

“Just so you guys know, we’re going to approach this different. I’ve talked to people in our organization. Just a manager’s decision. And I’m not going to share anything, who’s available, who’s not available, because I think that’s somewhat unfair to us. Just like if you were to do something, you’re not necessarily going to share it with a rival reporter. So that’s the way we’re going to handle it. Just a manager’s decision.”

What happens here is that reporters then become offended, because they feel like the manager is shirking his responsibilities and dissing them in the process. Sometimes fans don’t necessarily agree with that, because they think the media is acting “butt hurt” or “entitled” or something along those lines, and maybe there’s some truth to that. Reporters can certainly be whiny. But regardless of what you think about the media in 2021, the fact of the matter here is that Girardi is simply refusing to share this block of information with anybody at all, and fans who want explanations and accountability should find that bothersome.

The thing that complicates all of this is that it’s essentially a heel turn for Girardi, who told us straight up in 2019 that he was going to be transparent:

And it took less than two seasons for that to no longer apply.

One thing that’s interesting here is that we live in a world of daily fantasy and sports betting, which are big money makers. For Girardi to withhold information about which players are available and which players are not, that’s something that MLB might be concerned with on a macro level, because it could possibly affect revenue generators that also bring eyeballs to the sport. We’ll touch on this in a separate column.

The other thing is a question that can’t really be answered. Does keeping information from the media really result in a competitive advantage? Sometimes, but not always.

For instance, if the Eagles don’t tell the media who the starting QB is for week five, maybe a particular opponent doesn’t know which guy to game plan for. That could be an advantage. Likewise, if Roger Federer tells the media his ankle hurts, then perhaps Rafael Nadal tries to get him moving laterally to attack the weakness. Maybe it’s the total opposite, and you play up an injury but you’re 100% healthy, and that takes an opponent by surprise. It’s hard to say how influential these things are because it depends on how the other team reacts to the information, or lack thereof, and we can’t get inside their heads to find out.

More than anything, I think Philly sports fans are the types who do not want to be bullshitted. A baseball manager or a football coach doesn’t need to have all of the answers all of the time, but honesty and straightforward talk is always appreciated. We’re a rather blunt town, and there’s not a lot of beating around the bush. Anything that’s honest is well received.

But fans would probably also say that they do not give a single shit what the manager tells the media as long as the team is winning. If there’s truly a competitive advantage to be had, then reporters can get bent.

Maybe Girardi’s change in approach would be better received if the Phillies were playing winning baseball, but the reality is that they’re one game below .500. So here comes the manager of an utterly average team to tell us that he’s not telling us anything. This would be different if the Phils were humming along like the 32-19 Padres and taking care of business on the field, but they’re not, so there’s a bit of a “lack of accountability” thing going on. They aren’t playing well enough to have earned the right to not explain themselves.

Ultimately, if you want to boil it down to one singular thing, it’s less about Girardi stonewalling the media, and more about him doing exactly what he said he was not going to do. That has to be the biggest takeaway here.