By Tim Kelly, Sports Talk Philly editor 
If Philadelphia Phillies general manager Matt Klentak has spent a lot of time recently thinking about the future of manager Pete Mackanin, he's good at hiding it.
With Phillies pitchers and catchers set to report tomorrow, it appears manager Pete Mackanin will enter Spring Training as a lame duck, with the organization not having made a decision on his 2018 option yet. Klentak told Jim Salisbury of Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia that the club doesn't feel pressure to make a decision on Mackanin's long-term future:
“We have time to do that,” he said. “Obviously last year we talked about his status in spring training and I’m sure the time will come when we’ll sit down and talk about it again.”
As Klentak noted, Mackanin was in an identical situation a year ago before the Phillies chose to rip up his contract and sign him to a new deal that guaranteed him 2017 and gave the club an option for 2018. If the Phillies are happy with the job that Mackanin has done, they could pick up Mackanin's 2018 option or do something similar to what they did a year ago and negotiate an entire new deal.
[Phillies manager Pete Mackanin ranked 21st best in league]
The guess here is that the Phillies will eventually pick up Mackanin's option for 2018, but perhaps not in Spring Training. Spring Training will give the organization a chance to see how Mackanin and his staff work with top prospects such as J.P. Crawford, Nick Williams, Roman Quinn and Dylan Cozens, among others. Perhaps the biggest task that Mackanin and his staff will have this year is making sure that players who he's had the chance to coach for a few seasons now — such as Maikel Franco, Odubel Herrera and Aaron Nola — develop at a better pace than they did a year ago.
If the Phillies ever decided to make a change at manager, one that seems especially unlikely to take place during the season, Triple-A manager Dusty Wathan would likely be the internal favorite to take over. Wathan was promoted to Triple-A manager this offseason, after becoming Double-A Reading's winningest manager ever a season ago. Wathan has successfully coached a majority of the young talents in the organization and was the only coach added to the team's coaching staff last September. Wathan is a good bet to end up on the major league staff in one way or another at some point, whether Mackanin remains manager or not.
