By Tim Kelly, Sports Talk Philly editor 
Though the stalled developments of prospects such as Nick Williams and J.P. Crawford may have been a major part of the Philadelphia Phillies choosing to not retain Dave Brundage as their Triple-A manager for 2017, there appears to have been some other motivations to the move.
General manager Matt Klentak told a group of reporters this afternoon, which included Stephen Gross of the Morning Call, that Dusty Wathan, who had been Double-A Reading's manager, will replace Brundage in 2017:
Dusty Wathan is your new Triple-A IronPigs manager, per #Phillies GM Matt Klentak @mcall
— Stephen Gross (@SteveGrossMCall) September 15, 2016
Wathan has won consecutive Manager of the Year awards in the Eastern League, and also became the all-time wins leader for the Reading franchise during the 2016 season. Though Wathan wasn't able to lead Reading to an Eastern League title, he led Reading to an 89-52 regular season record and a professional baseball high .631 winning percentage.
The 43-year-old, who briefly played for the Kansas City Royals and spent some time in the Phillies minor league system, will likely re-join prospects Andrew Knapp, J.P. Crawford and Nick Williams to start the 2017 season, all of whom seemed to have more success under him than Brundage. Dylan Cozens and Rhys Hoskins are also likely to move up with Wathan to Triple-A.
While this is a nice promotion for Wathan, it's likely just the beginning of a promising coaching career. He's coached nearly every valuable prospect in the team's upper levels of the minor leagues, and is likely to coach ones in the lower levels of the team's system, like No. 1 pick Mickey Moniak, at some point. That's on top of already coaching current major leaguers like Aaron Nola and Maikel Franco.
The Phillies may very well feel more comfortable with Wathan continuing to mentor some of the organization's most important players, but this, along with finishing the season on the major league staff, may also serve as a tryout of sorts to eventually be on the big league staff or even be the Phillies manager.
