Phillies bench coach Larry Bowa appeared on 97.5 The Fanatic in Philly today and he ripped the Phillies a new one.
Bowa said he’s angry and that the clubhouse is angry. He said that the young players aren’t stepping up and may not have the best baseball instincts. He called out his pitchers -- Roberto Hernandez specifically -- for not going deep enough into games and said “if you’ve got a big league uniform on, you gotta go more than five innings.”
He called out Dom Brown for his attitude somewhat subtly, saying Brown comes to the ballpark happy every day and Bowa’s not sure how he can given his poor performance. He also said that if you take away Brown’s good “five or six weeks” last year he hasn’t done much and made it sound like, if he were in charge, Brown wouldn’t be playing. Though Bowa admitted that there aren’t many alternatives.
He called this past homestand the worst he’s ever seen and summed it up by saying that the Phillies just aren’t playing big league baseball right now.
Go here to listen to the entire interview.
It’s not often that you hear someone call out a team from the inside like this. It happens, but it’s rare. It’s even more rare when it’s a coach as opposed to the manager. Larry Bowa has a track record, of course, but he’s not in charge. And you have to wonder how happy Ryne Sandberg and the Phillies’ brass is that he ripped the club in public like this.