A Phillies key: Coach Price and the rotation’s back end?

While the Phillies rotation in 2020 isn’t set in stone, the season will start with important interactions between Bryan Price and three weak starters.

While a number of Philadelphia Phillies fans are still hoping for the late holiday gift of a good starting pitcher, there have been a number of indicators the team will once again expect at least two of three relatively young, disappointing pitchers to step up and nail down the fourth and fifth spots in the team’s rotation.

The latest indicator came in a Todd Zolecki piece on the Phillies website Jan. 16 quoting new pitching coach Bryan Price as follows: “As I kind of investigated [the probability that Zach Eflin, Vince Velasquez, and Nick Pivetta would improve] through meeting these guys or talking to them on the phone, and then talking to our staff members here and looking at a lot of video, I was extremely encouraged. I think there is a lot of pitching here that has room to get much better, and I’m looking forward to being a part of that by helping where I can.”

Of course, Phillies fans have been hearing this sort of thing about these three pitchers for a number of years now – meaning, at least three, and in Eflin’s and Velasquez’ cases, four.

Thus, however disappointed Phillies fans may be, it is becoming pretty clear that a pivotal relationship for the team will be that of Price and these three pitchers. The Fightin’s are just not strong enough on the mound altogether yet for both the fourth and fifth starters to fail or to be constantly changing.

Price is one of the strong indicators the Phillies are moving just a bit away from the Phillies field management’s fully analytical approach for the past two years. He is much more an “old school” thinker, a guy who emphasizes that pitchers should “command the strike zone.”

Second, he believes in being aggressive. And he makes this observation that initially seems to involve a contradiction: “[We] have all this data, but at times we’ve oversimplified pitching. Let’s get four-pitch starters back out there that command the strike zone. Ninety-five-plus is great, but if you can’t manage the strike zone, typically you’re not going to be effective.”

Hmm, more data leads to oversimplification?

What Price may mean here is either that pure velocity is overvalued, or that too much data leads to something like panning for gold – lots of rocks are thrown away, and one that’s shiny is seized upon as “the answer.” Or both of those notions.

It’s a remark that seems to demonstrate that old school guys can think beyond what a baseball man sees when he stares at a data spreadsheet. However, it’s hard to tell. Does Price have a little Casey Stengel in him?