Will the Phillies smarten up and “examine their processes”?
The MLB.com writer in Philadelphia offered five questions the Phillies should consider while planning for 2020. One is especially important.
On the day the Phillies found a new pitching coach, perhaps not very many people saw an article on something else on their website by MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki. Zolecki also wrote about the signing of Bryan Price, but in his earlier piece about five questions the team must address in the off-season, he delivered himself of this passage:
“The Phillies entered the 2019 season believing they had a top-10 rotation and that somebody like Moustakas was not an upgrade over Franco at third base. How did they come to those conclusions? They should dig into their hitting and pitching philosophies and how they present their information to players, which even former manager Gabe Kapler acknowledged this summer got too complicated.”
To quote the late Harry Caray, “Holy cow!”
Here is a rare sportswriter’s passage demanding the sort of examination ordinarily only done at the graduate level for, say, small pieces of James Joyce’s Ulysses or controversial parts of The Federalist Papers. Keep in mind the passage above came under the intriguing header question: “Will they [the Phillies] examine their processes?” Let’s go clause by clause.
The Phillies entered the 2019 season believing they had a top-10 rotation… This is an assertion really crying out for source identification, not that we want to doubt Zolecki. If this is literally true – of multiple Phillies management officials – then…
No, do this: Start listing MLB rotations as they stood at the beginning of 2019 either in the NL or MLB that were clearly worse than the Phillies starters. You might get to five in the NL, but certainly not after the season. You won’t get to twenty in MLB at either end of the campaign. Go ahead. Start with the Orioles.
We Got No Use for the Moose
Somebody like [Mike] Moustakas was not an upgrade over [Maikel] Franco at third base. Let’s not worry about what’s meant by “somebody like Moustakas” at the start of last season. Since Moustakas’ name is there, that’s who’s meant.
Are. You. Serious. Todd? OK, Zolecki didn’t come up with this idea. He’s the reporter. Franco is generally a better fielder than Moustakas (10.3 to 12.2 errors a year at third). He can be more spectacular, and he’s five years younger. But, really. Mouskatas was a two-time All-Star going into the season, and came out a three-time All-Star with a seasonal WAR of 3.2, according to Baseball-Reference. Franco’s WAR this year was -0.8, and he still hasn’t been on an All-Star bench.
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The wildest sort of optimism about youth is not a defense here. Moustakas was only moving into his age-30 season last spring.
How did they come to those conclusions? Best Understatement Presented as a Question, 2019.
They should dig into their hitting and pitching philosophies…
Do ya think?
[They should dig into]… how they present their information to players, which even…Kapler acknowledged…got too complicated.
Right, this is two clauses, but let’s move this along. Somebody had to commit to the record the fact that the Phillies, muddling through, if not its analytics infancy, then its “toddlerhood,” coupled those analytics to modern long-term thinking (because of the cost of the players) and just screwed up the last two years.
This, however, was obvious in the first Phillies game at home the now-former skipper managed in 2018. As is widely known, Kapler pulled Aaron Nola after 68 pitches with a lead and lost the game. This was because of “match-up thinking” (that backfired immediately) and too much concern way too early in the season about “saving” the Phillies ace.
Next. LAD: Revisiting Pollock signing after first season. dark
All of which is a roundabout way of saying Todd Zolecki’s carefully worded advice to the Phillies – examine the processes – is manifestly important. At a time when MLB teams guard their information and true opinions about their realities far better than the current White House, MLB.com’s man in Philadelphia has gingerly exposed some of those recent Phillies realities, and carefully offered excellent advice.