2018-19 Phillies Off-Season News/Notes/Discussion

[EDmuch]

MacPhail insulted my intelligence. His interview was garbled granola. And whether you approve or not, Julio, I am allowed to feel insulted by the granola.

[julio]

MacPhail insulted my intelligence. His interview was garbled granola. And whether you approve or not, Julio, I am allowed to feel insulted by the granola.

I don't dispute that, at all. The point was that you are not MacPhail's target audience. Nor am I. You certainly understand that people shape their statements to the audience they're trying to reach...an attorney to a jury, for example. MacPhail isn't trying to reach fans like you or me (or most of us here), because we are few. We're not the kind of fans that buy 2 million tickets in a season.

I can understand that you found his interview useless, uninformative. I guess I don't understand why you seem to feel entitled to something different.

[zambonir]

Did Dave Montgomery or Bill Giles ever give a meaningful press conference. Let's face it, people want to hear from Middleton or they want to hear from Klentak and Kapler. McPhail is the middle manager (a CEO, yes, but neither the real power nor the real worker).

[allentown]

Let's face it, people want to hear from Middleton or they want to hear from Klentak and Kapler. McPhail is the middle manager (a CEO, yes, but neither the real power nor the real worker).

I thought MacPhail actually said more than Klentak or Kapler. Maybe I'm reading conclusions that he didn't intend to drop between the lines. The same format end-of-season pressers from Klentak and Kapler were also posted here. What do you think they actually said? I didn't find much in them. That neither surprised nor disappointed me. That's what they're supposed to do. Dissing players to the fans/media virtually always hurts the team. Stating you're going to pursue players X and Y during the off-season only drives the price up and disses the guys X and Y are supposed to replace, making it more difficult to trade them. Promising a post-season trip next year puts their employment in jeopardy, so they certainly won't do that. The season ended very badly, other than the last two meaningless days, but on a whole I think they were honest when they said the season's overall result was about what they expected. Their goal was probably .500, which they missed by a game.

I just about spit out my coffee reading a fan comment about this season being bad because it was a tease. That is a paraphrase of an old Mike Missanelli WIP line. Hey, far better IMHO to be teased by 100+ games of fighting, and leading, for the NL East titles than all of the season's-over by May seasons we've had lately. Over half a season of winning baseball is something to be pleased about, not dismissed as a tease which got your hopes up only to dash them.

[fish]

Kapler and Angelo Cataldi this morning after Cataldi's anti-Klentak column:

omny.fm

Gabe Kapler vs. Angelo Cataldi - Angelo Cataldi And The Morning Team - Omny.fm

Phillies manager Gabe Kapler calls in one last time to wrap up the season. One of Angelo Cataldi's finest interviews.

I strain to subject myself to listening to half-wit banter from Cataldi- in this case, he was almost right, he just didn't seem to know why. "Fans hate analytics" is just about the dumbest thing he could have said, because he basically attributed analytics to the bad baseball and lack of fan enthusiasm leading up to that stretch. The bad baseball and lack of fan excitement was because this team doesn't have the talent that the teams who play by the same methods and win do. The average fan may not have been aware of the ghastly run differential this team put up even when they were in first place, but they certainly were able to perceive that the run of success couldn't last playing that way. That's why most didn't feel like they could trust the team to see the run of success through to the end of the season.

[phillychuck]

Though I disagree with Kapler's entirely positive take on the season, his interview with Angelo actually tends to make me more sympathetic to his point of view rather than less. I thought he made better points more rationally than Angelo did.

[EastFallowfield]

Did everyone see the list of teams that led in games where they scored 1 or 0 runs? Cubs were one back of the leader, and the Phils weren't even on the list, shocking! The Cub fans blame either too many lineups or the hitting coach. It's always the darn hitting coach.

[Austinfan]

It's not just sports, there's only a few papers and magazines that do actual reporting, the cable networks just have talking heads, and a lot of journalists just like to throw out questions at press conferences instead of doing the hard work of researching a story.

Most sportswriters are hacks who don't even know their sport well.
So if you're in management, the best move is to just provide vacuous answers, a real discussion is fruitless.

[Philsmania]

Kapler and Angelo Cataldi this morning after Cataldi's anti-Klentak column:

omny.fm

Gabe Kapler vs. Angelo Cataldi - Angelo Cataldi And The Morning Team - Omny.fm

Phillies manager Gabe Kapler calls in one last time to wrap up the season. One of Angelo Cataldi's finest interviews.

I strain to subject myself to listening to half-wit banter from Cataldi- in this case, he was almost right, he just didn't seem to know why. "Fans hate analytics" is just about the dumbest thing he could have said, because he basically attributed analytics to the bad baseball and lack of fan enthusiasm leading up to that stretch. The bad baseball and lack of fan excitement was because this team doesn't have the talent that the teams who play by the same methods and win do. The average fan may not have been aware of the ghastly run differential this team put up even when they were in first place, but they certainly were able to perceive that the run of success couldn't last playing that way. That's why most didn't feel like they could trust the team to see the run of success through to the end of the season.

To a certain extent, I think Klentak suffers from Sam Hinkie Syndrome. He is a modern sports executive and progressive sports thinker who who has a plan that he resolutely sticks to through all setbacks but isn't very good at selling the fan base--particularly its less-sophisticated members--on his plan or giving any sense that he feels the fan base's pain.

[EastFallowfield]

The Yankees last night were shifting, and yanking position players early, and removing a starter who hadn't gone 5 yet, and their fans were going nuts with happiness. Kapler and Klentak might be wrong about everything else, but they're not wrong in saying that winning is what the fans want, the fans not supporting the team in August wasn't about hating analytics.

[zambonir]

I think we all have tunnel vision about our own team but I find the people who complain the most about anything - be it analytics or bullpen management or strikeouts - don't really follow the sport that closely, and certainly don't follow other teams. They are comparing things to their memories or some ideal version of what the game is instead of how it is actually being played all around the league.

[allentown]

They are comparing things to their memories or some ideal version of what the game is instead of how it is actually being played all around the league.

Baseball promotes nostalgia more than any other sport and also has the oldest fan base. That can be a stifling combination. No team promoted nostalgia more in recent years than the 2012-2015 Phillies.

[zambonir]

Aaron Gleeman (AaronGleeman)

[DurhamBull]

One of the things I like about Kevin Jordan in the broadcast booth is his sincere enthusiasm for the game. Not overwhelming or obnoxious, just a constant undercurrent of delight. Same with Stocker to a lesser extent.

What happened to Frandsen? I don't remember hearing him much.

[Austinfan]

The game is going through a transition period.

As pitchers learn to counter launch angles with high FBs and breaking balls away, hitters who can adjust (launch angle on low FBs, adjust your swing to high FBs, take slow stuff away to the opposite field) these trends will stabilize.

Same with the fielding shifts, hitters who can't beat the shift will be replaced by hitters who adjust to situations, hitting over the shift isn't going to work in the long-run, b/c pitchers will then feed you a steady diet of pitches away that you can only turn over and hit into the shift.

It may take a couple years, but evolution never sleeps, the increase in velocity has shifted batters to lighter bats and more compact swings so now almost every ML hitter can handle a 95 MPH FB in the "sweet zone," so expect a shift back to more junk ballers with good command throwing in the low 90s (but not the upper 80s) - but they'll still be a minority of pitchers, but a larger minority.

And some changes are good, base stealers who aren't successful 70+% of the time shouldn't be attempting to steal bases, bunting with hitters who are bad at that skill is a waste of an AB, and so on.

[jimglitto]

Cataldi, while being a blowhard windbag, isn’t completely wrong about fans hating analytics, though he just lumps everything he hates as analytics. I found the team unwatchable at times, with head-scratching shifts and players out of position. That’s more the execution than the analytics however. If you don’t have the right pieces in a given situation, you probably shouldn’t deploy the tactic, ie infield shifts that effectively move Santana to SS or leaves a hole at 3rd base allowing a runner from second to score without a play. The horrible defense really killed me all year, but that’s not exactly analytics, though it kind of is, since the manager used data to reinforce his preference for moving players around the diamond regardless of defensive ability. What was most glaringly painful for me was the lack of ability to come up with a big hit or, in the absence of that, even moving a runner. That’s more old school/new school vs analytics. Home runs are great, but just sitting around and waiting for a homer rather than stringing hits and moving runners is painful. The reason the team was hard to watch is because we just don’t have great players outside of Nola. Watching Hoskins struggle for extended periods and no one filling that gap makes this a boring team. We need an infusion of superstar talent, and since there is none on the horizon, I want multiple players in free agency. I want Harper and Machado if possible. And I want a Kershaw-type pitcher. I also need someone to have a 93-style personality. The guys are all likeable in an oh-golly Kevin Stocker kind of way, but there needs to be a Daulton and Kruk to get behind. And that’s not Odubel. He’s maddening in his inconsistency. All that said, I watched at least part of every game this year. That shows my level of masochism. It’s like kicking yourself in the privates every day and asking for more.

[andyb]

It is not the use of analytics as a foundational team building tool that bothers me. It is that there is not much evidence they are very good at it.

We still need more data, but the initial data showing us among the worst in the league at shifts tells me we don't do it that well. And the whole Herrera positioning is another item in that category.

And second is that we used analytics to justify building a roster of mismatches. It seems the cost of moving Hoskins to the OF and playing guys like Cabrera and Kingery at SS was minimized.

One can be for analytics but also question how well they are at using the analytics. Hopefully we get better at it.

[allentown]

It is not the use of analytics as a foundational team building tool that bothers me. It is that there is not much evidence they are very good at it.

My point, exactly.

[zambonir]

Of course the team's spin is that they managed, analyzed and number-crunched an 80-win roster to .550 baseball for 2/3rds of the season. Just not sure there's evidence they actually did, seems more like they had some luck and SSS outliers until it all caught up with them.

But the front office is the same as the players and the manager. It's a young group. I don't know that the Astros were any good at analytics three years after Luhnow started either (and they also didn't thrive until manager #3). We're just wishing that they were GREAT at analytics because they simply don't have the talent Chicago and Houston did, and now the Braves look like they have a better roster and GM too.

[julio]

It is not the use of analytics as a foundational team building tool that bothers me. It is that there is not much evidence they are very good at it.

My point, exactly.

Learning curve? Is it reasonable to expect either the players, or management, to just "get it right' the first time, with no experience?

Learning is painful sometimes. And of course, there's no guarantee that a particular set of players or managers/coaches will actually get up the learning curve - every individual is different in that respect.

What's certain, though, is that other organizations are working their way up the same learning curve. If the Phillies don't make the effort, they will be left in the dust. And if the current complement of players, or coaches, or the manager, aren't able to master the skills required (on-field athletic skills and cognitive skills), then those individuals will have to be replaced.

This is the natural order of progress.... sometimes smooth, sometimes bumpy.; sometimes you slip backwards. But you make the effort, you work through it; if you don't... you die.