By Tim Kelly, Sports Talk Philly editor 
This afternoon's season finale will be the final game that Pete Mackanin manages for the Philadelphia Phillies. Who will coach the team in 2018 isn't yet clear, but it appears unlikely that it will be current Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter.
Dan Connolly of BaltimoreBaseball.com penned a piece Saturday evening saying that despite connections to the front-office of the Phillies, Showalter is pretty unlikely to end up managing the team next season:
So, it’s a natural leap for speculation: Showalter as a fit for the Phillies.
Except for this: Showalter is under contract with the Orioles through 2018. And I’d be shocked if Orioles’ ownership would let him out of that commitment – especially for a lateral move – if that, indeed, were Showalter’s desire.
Connolly would go on to note that neither Showalter or owner Peter Angelos is especially keen on the idea of not playing out the full length of a contract, and with Showalter signed for one more season, the Phillies are a year early if they wanted to target Showalter:
Duquette or Showalter getting fired this winter also goes against Angelos’ stringent adherence to the sanctity of contracts. Angelos doesn’t like to can executives – he prefers to part company when their contracts expire.
And I’d be even more surprised — floored, really — if Showalter was in Philadelphia in 2018.
But if Showalter is anywhere else in 2018 it would go against everything he has said while in Baltimore. One thing Showalter has consistently railed on while here is the idea of looking for another job when you already have one. He abhors the concept, and has shared that sentiment multiple times.
Angelos actually offered Showalter a chance to replace current Phillies president Andy MacPhail as the Orioles GM when MacPhail left after 2011. That, of course, was not an offer that Showalter accepted, but it gives you an idea of how highly he's thought of in Baltimore. You also get the feeling that despite his connections to MacPhail and general manager Matt Klentak, among others, he may be too large of a voice to coexist with the two in Philadelphia. So the fit just isn't a good one, as I wrote on Friday.
With all the connections that the Phillies have to the Orioles, you get the sense that they know this. If Showalter was their No. 1 target, perhaps they would have allowed Mackanin to manage the team in 2018. They aren't going to do that, which makes you think they have someone else in mind.
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Dusty Wathan, the current manager at Triple-A Lehigh Valley, seems to be the speculative favorite. Wathan has had the chance to manage nearly every young talent in upper levels of the organization, which gives him a pretty good perspective on how to turn the team into a contender. Former major leaguers Alex Cora, Dave Martinez and Chris Woodward, all of whom are coaching for teams heading to the playoffs, are other potential candidates.
Klentak said on the telecast Friday evening that the team will hopefully have a new manager before the end of the World Series, which is scheduled to begin on Oct. 24.
