If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's one of baseball's oldest sayings, and when you win more than you lose, it's usually a staple. So when the Phillies punched their ticket to the postseason for a fifth straight year, you'd think things were going well, right?
But expectations have a way of throwing a wrinkle into things, and this team has been expected to compete for a World Series for years. When those expectations aren't met, someone usually has to answer for it. With a roster full of guys locked up for years to come, it's been the man in the manager's chair who has paid the price.
Rob Thomson was let go in late April with the Phillies sitting at 9-19, tied with the Mets for the worst record in baseball. Don Mattingly stepped in and steadied the ship, and his club went 79-55 the rest of the way to sneak into October. Plenty of fans would love to run it back with Donnie Baseball. But after Atlanta knocked the Phillies out in the Wild Card round, reports indicate Mattingly won't return, and Alex Cora has emerged as the guy Dave Dombrowski has wanted all along.
If you don't know Cora by now, he and Dombrowski go way back, including a 2018 World Series run with the Red Sox. As a first-year manager, Cora led Boston to 108 wins and an AL East title, then finished the job with a ring. He's a communicator, a guy players want to run through a wall for, and someone who's comfortable under a bright market spotlight. But if Cora wants to hit the ground running in Philly, he might consider keeping one of the main ingredients of the Phillies' success over the past five years.
If Cotham doesn't return the org is just cooked pic.twitter.com/p6SlPLSTDi
— Mike (@mhc_76) October 2, 2026
Caleb Cotham: The Phillies' secret weapon is already in the building
Cotham knows what it's like on the mound. The Yankees took him in the fifth round of the 2009 draft out of Vanderbilt, and he made 35 big-league appearances with New York and Cincinnati across 2015 and 2016. He developed a data-driven approach through his time with Driveline, then spent two years as Cincinnati's assistant pitching coach before the Phillies hired him at 33.
Since then, the results speak for themselves. Philly's rotation finished top 10 in NL ERA in every one of his first five seasons, posted a 3.53 ERA in 2025 (second-best in baseball), led MLB in quality starts, and had three starters receive Cy Young votes.
Ask the guys who work with him and you'll hear the same thing. Zack Wheeler called him "that next generation-type pitching coach. We're all lucky to have him." Jesús Luzardo spent an hour on the phone with Cotham right after being traded over to Philly, and the sweeper they built together has become one of the best in the game. Cotham called Cristopher Sánchez's rise "the coolest thing [he's] ever been a part of", sharing the joy of his player's success. And when Andrew Painter lost the zone in his playoff debut, Cotham walked to the mound, told him to trust himself and attack, and Painter put together what turned out to be one of the few bright spots this October.
And here's the kicker: Cora has followed this playbook before, and it won him a ring. When he took over in Boston ahead of the 2018 season, Dana LeVangie had been the Red Sox bullpen coach for five years. Rather than clean house, Cora promoted him to pitching coach, making him one of, if not, the only holdover from the previous staff. One year later, they were celebrating a World Series title together.
That's the value of keeping someone the players already trust. A new manager doesn't have to spend his first spring learning who responds to what, which arms need a pat on the back, and which ones need their asses jumped. A guy like Cotham already has a pulse on the DNA of the clubhouse, and that hands the new skipper a head start most managers never get.
Walking into a clubhouse full of World Series expectations means understanding who the main characters are and making sure they keep playing their roles in the winning formula. Cotham has done everything to earn a seat at the table. Let's hope Cora agrees.
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