SB Nation FanPulse Poll: Phillies fan confidence continues to plummet

The deadline has come and gone and the second half is here. It’s time to get serious, and nothing means you’re serious about the playoffs like picking up Drew Smyly, Jason Vargas, Blake Parker, Mike Morin, and Corey Dickerson at the trade deadline.

Right?

Right! According to the SB Nation FanPulse poll—You can be a part of these surveys every week by clicking here.

Yeah, people seem pretty okay with what happened at the trade deadline around here. Needs were addressed, but nothing sexy occurred. Just like the Phillies promised. And now we’ll just continue watching them play, and stuff. And that’ll be... that’ll be that.

Cool.

Confidence in Gabe Kapler has been slowly lowering over the past few weeks. I’ve seen some ardent defenders of the Phillies manager pop up, performing various mental contortions to point out that no matter what’s wrong with the Phillies, somehow, Kapler is never the one at fault. But I’ll be honest, when this much is wrong, and we’re staring at a less and less likely playoff berth after the sad decline that was the second in 2018, at least some of the things the manager is doing aren’t working. And with only 42% manager approval among voters (down from 74% and 50% approval the last two weeks), people are starting to agree with that. Of course if you listen to sports talk radio in this town, you know there’s been people firmly against Kapler for months, just because he knows how to do math in his head.

Over 20 weeks of the MLB season, there are seven in which the fans polled by SB Nation felt 100% confident in the direction of the team. These days, that confidence is down to a wilted 32%, and you can understand why—even though this is a team that, as I write this, is very much contending for a wild card spot. It’s the kind of season it is, man: Fine, when it was supposed to be better. Or maybe it wasn’t? Eh, who keeps receipts anymore.