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Vic Fangio Remains a Rob Thomson Defender
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Saw this on the Eagles quote sheet and it was good for a laugh:
Q. [Regarding recent Philadelphia Phillies moves.] (Pat Gallen)
Vic Fangio: Definitely going to improve their offense. We’ll see how it does defensively. It’ll be interesting. Do you see some of these other guys? I mean, [Phillies players] Nick Castellanos, Matt Strahm, Harrison Bader, Taijuan Walker. Man, [former Phillies Manager] Rob Thompson did a hell of a job with managing those guys through to the playoffs last year.
The question was “what do you think of the Arraez trade?” It’s funny because Fangio answers that question and then segues into ripping Castellanos, Strahm, Bader, and Walker. That was unprompted. Nobody asked about those guys. If you give Vic the opportunity to talk about the Phillies, you never know where he’s gonna take it. That’s the thing about older Italian guys; they do not care. They’ll be out here one week dropping Fauci jokes and then the next week they’ll randomly bring up Nick Castellanos and Taijuan Walker.
Thing is – he’s not wrong, is he? That team won 96 games while carrying some dead weight. Then they lost to the 2x champs in the playoffs after Orion Kerkering’s brain fart. Nothing to do with the manager, though someone needed to be fired after the start to this season, and Topper was the fall guy. It was probably time. Obviously they got the new manager bounce before flattening out a bit and returning to Earth.
Are we back where we started? Good team, but probably not good enough? We’ll see.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com