2020 Philadelphia Phillies Season News/Notes/Discussion

[andyb]

The argument about whether the Phillies are shifting successfully is probably hard to parse out. How does one separate mediocre fielders from bad shifting decisions? What is clear from any data (like the leaderboard below) is that this is not a good defensive team:

http://www.fieldingbible.com/TeamDefensiveRunsSaved

Shifting and being creative is the right decision. I think there were some learning pains under Kapler as the team and its analytics people learned how to work together. It is not just putting the fielders in the correct position. It is also practicing it and training the fielders on how to make plays from different positions and angles.

Fielding is clearly less important in today's game because there are more strikeouts. One of Klentak's failures IMO as a GM is he took this to mean that it is more important to field a good offensive team than a good defensive team. It is embedded in decisions like moving Hoskins to LF (and signing Santana in the first place), acquiring Segura to play SS instead of prioritizing defense in Crawford, and living with Kingery playing below average defense at new positions.

These were conscious management decisions and they seem to have failed. And left us with an older, more expensive roster. Even our good stories (Bohm) are balanced by mediocre defense (check out Bohm's overall WAR rankings). The DH helps this philosophy a bit, though as we are seeing this year, the DH is more often used to rest and rotate regular players than to help the overall defense. While I am the first to point out Haseley's shortcomings on offense, he is also a very good defensive corner outfielder, perhaps our best or at least as good as Harper. He should have played more this year plain and simple. That is on Girardi a bit. There has been constant pressure to win each game this year in a heightened short season and prioritizing rest while trying to get enough bats in the lineup to outscore them has been the priority.

This team needs to prioritize defense more, plain and simple. And the bullpen of course.....

[LoneStarPhan]

Bad defense isn't just about errors.

For me, whether the Phillies make the playoffs or not, has no bearing on what they need to do this off season to prepare for 2021. They are clearly a team struggling to end the season at .500, just like 2019 and 2018. If the owner is not happy with that, then the ball is in his court.

COVID had a huge influence on this season. But every team played under this disruption to normal operations. 2020 was an opportunity to step up and make the playoffs with a team that might not have made post season in a normal year. Maybe they still do make it, but losing 5 or the last 6 in the final week of the season is a disappointment regardless.

[Austinfan]

A lot of things are out of Girardi's control.

His best defensive CF can't hit a lick (warned y'all about Quinn's big swing, ML pitchers saw that too). That' creates a domino effect.

His best corner OF, Haseley is both inexperienced, missed valuable time due to false positives and probably needed a full second spring training more than the veterans. And has had to play CF where he is average.

His RF has back problems and has been forced to DH, putting Bruce in RF, nuff said.

Kingery got screwed up to start the summer, over time he should be plus at both 2B and CF, but this is not a good year for player development.

Bohm is a work in progress at 3B, another development project that has been thwarted by the short season.

We may well need prospects like Rojas and Garcia to emerge to really settle down the defense, an above average SS and CF covers for a lot of players.

[andyb]

Much wrong with this post. Quinn can hit a lick. He is just not great at it or consistent and he is the least of our problems. All teams have some positions weaker than others. He is still a better player in CF than Haseley.

Haseley's problem is he can't hit enough to be a corner OF. It is not lack of practice time. Why do you make excuses for guys you like and not guys you don't?

Bruce has actually been fine in the OF. He just can't get on base and stay healthy. Harper's injury is not great timing, but it is actually the least of our concerns.

Bohm is of course a work in progress at 3B, but we also knew he was not very good defensively from the beginning. He is just not that quick and a little awkward. You laud him like he is a 6 WAR all star. He is a very good hitter. He could be great in a couple of years. But he is just bad defensively and that affects his value and was always the downside of taking him over Madrigal (who hit .333 BTW and it is unclear which of the two will be better).

Kingery is another guy you are making excuses for. He just has not been that good for whatever reason. Maybe COVID, maybe something else. He also has not been that great defensively anywhere. That may be because of the utility role, but then that is Klentak's fault (i.e. your guy that you have been making excuses for the last few years).

The problem with this team is a mediocre roster. A truly awful bullpen (which was never prioritized). Most is not Girardi's fault. It wasn't Kapler's fault either. And it is not Middleton's fault either. A good GM could take an owner's willingness to spend $200 million and improve the team. Ours did not.

Of course we need young players to emerge. That is not exactly rocket science. The problem is we don't have enough good young players up and down the organization. Probably time to clean house in the player acquisition and development areas because they have been bad given their resources.

But let's not cry woe is me and say this is bad luck. This was bad management.

[zambonir]

It would be truly silly if Klentak's firing is conditional on any of the things Bowden mentioned, as they are both crapshoots. Either he left the organization in a better place than when he was hired - which is actually true - but didn't do enough -also clearly true, or he didn't. We already have the answers though.

Would be insane if MacPhail stays and hires the next GM, though I don't know that I trust Middleton to do it either. The best scenario there is that he hands over the keys so someone good and gets out of the way. It will end badly when he interferes again, but it's ended badly for the Red Sox multiple times and they still have the rings in between.

As Branch Rickey said and many have posted here and elsewhere, luck is the residue of design. There has been a lot of bad luck, but good organizations are in a better position to overcome it. Not always, but sometimes.

[andyb]

but it's ended badly for the Red Sox multiple times and they still have the rings in between.

The advantage of being a team with money is the ability to rebuild more quickly. A good farm system helps of course. The Red Sox generally had that in their previous quick rebuilds. That is less true now. They took advantage of Latin America and international signings when they could. Now the playing field is more level and other clubs have the same analytics. All we hope is that the Phillies emerge as a team capable of mastering the new rules. We seem to adapt to what was working a few years ago as our modus operandi.

[Austinfan]

Quinn can't hit, he's 27, he's no longer a prospect, just a mediocre player.
RC+ in three albeit short ML stints, 96, 75, 60, K-rate, 24.5%, 27.9%, 33.9%.
Just watching him, he can't hit a breaking ball, and his swing is too long.

Haseley is 24, he hit in the minors, and while it's been up and down, this is a weird year, his BB% is up, his K rate is down, but his power this season is non-existent, but ISO in the .170-.200 range in 2018 in the minors, .131 last year, so this year is probably an anomaly due to SSS.

Kingery had a RC+ 101 last season, he strike out too much as he got pull happy trying to hit HRs. He's struggled this year with health and luck, BABIP of .197! If it was normal, he'd be hitting around .240 with an OPS > .700. He's getting more selective at the plate, if he just focuses on hitting the ball to the alleys instead of trying to pull everything he'll be alright.

[zambonir]

I just mean that on a macro level, ownership/front office drama and frequent turnover, generally at the same time, did not stop them from getting where they wanted to twice in the last eight years. But Theo and Cherington left things in much better shape too.

I think if you're gonna fire Klentak for one dramatic, symbolic reason rather than making a measured decision about his overall body of work, the Marlins making the playoffs instead of us is a pretty good one.

The only thing this Quinn-Haseley debate between you guys show is that we really do need a CF next year, unless it's Kingery. Quinn is a bench player and Haseley should be platooning in LF with occasional CF and DH action.

[allentown]

Quinn has never had, and perhaps his body never will permit, enough play in a season for him to truly find a groove, finish developing, and show what he can do. He is 27, but has played far less than your average 27-year old, but doesn't have typical AB for that age. He's had over 300AB only twice since we drafted him and didn't have 200AB last year and won't have 150 this year. He's had a bad year this season, but he's outhitting Kingery on the year and playing a lot better CF. Quinn and Kingery have just about the same career MiLB and MLB OPS. Kingery is a year younger, but has more professional and MLB AB. Quinn is a very efficient base stealer. I'm not giving up on health. I think if he can stay healthy for a season, he can make it in MLB. The biggest thing I want to see from him is more walks.

[andyb]

I don't think CF should be a priority actually. Quinn and Haseley can both be 1-2 WAR players in 300 to 400 plate appearances heavy on the platoon and the other is a bench player with defensive value. That is all you need because you can't spend money everywhere. Appreciate what they are and don't expect them to be stars.

[zambonir]

Haseley is -0.2 in 76 appearances and Quinn is 0.2 in 100, so I don't think we can count on that any more than we can count on Cutch to be a plus player next year (offensively or defensively). Of course it depends on what they do at other spots, but they need more than just a bench bat (let alone just a defense guy) to round out the OF group. And if they don't re-sign JT they almost definitely need a bat.

Of course big bats who can also play CF are pretty rare (and definitely not bench players).

[phillychuck]

I think you can realistically HOPE for better WAR from both of them. Both of them have room for growth and there are reasons they have not performed to what their ceilings were believed to be, mainly injuries and sickness. I think you could get 3 or 4 WAR from them in a platoon if everything breaks right. But you could get just replacement level play, too.

[zambonir]

It all depends what the team is really trying to do next year. If it is a Red Sox 2013-type run you gotta upgrade. If it's a rebuild, Quinn will probably be 31 by the time the team is good again. Haseley you can keep in both cases but he's neither your starting CF (the manager certainly doesn't think so) or your starting LF for one more season. There's so much to love about Quinn but he's also always a day away from injury, and he's not that far from turning into Billy Hamilton overall.

I listen on trades for both of them and for Kingery too, if only because Cutch and Segura are going to be hard to move.

Or maybe there is a legit '93 Phillies type platoon approach for next year. But you still need one more OF bat as well as Didi.

[kmc1019]

The 5 fatal errors of the Matt Klentak era - The Good Phight

The 5 fatal errors of the Matt Klentak era

[gmwannabe]

Could be???? should be!!
gm

[zambonir]

I thought we only had to win and get a Giants loss but we need a Brewers loss too. Brewers win also knocks out SF.

[andyb]

Was mainly trying to think about who we should root for yesterday when I left the Brewers off. I was sort of thinking losing last night would be the nail in the coffin. But today we live on. Need to win and SF and Milwaukee to lose.

Looking at tie-breakers for the postseason is interesting. I wonder if they will keep this, even for division titles which theoretically will mean more in the future. There is a logic to use tie-breakers to get the playoffs going as soon as they can (and the loser of a division playoff might be at a disadvantage in a wild card game). If 2 teams tie for the division I really have no problem with using the head to head to decide the champion.

[zambonir]

If they expand the playoffs one assumes they won't play 163rd games, as it were. It's just that the tiebreakers are pretty skewed this year, for the non-division title spots. But everything is skewed, and you can't really cry about anything when you're 29-21 (as it happens the Phillies also wouldn't be the team doing the crying).

KInd of wish the games were starting at the normal time but I guess in addition to the "decision day" type novelty the later innings will happen after the first NFL window.

The Good Phight article is good. Mentions all the things that went wrong on the field but also the system failures that leave us so bare (and practically forced to pay the tax, except we didn't).

[allentown]

I totally agree with the Good Phight article. I clearly lays out what a disaster the MacPhail/Klentak era has been. and the other dreadful management period that preceded him, after 2012. And, MacPhail was on-board and wasting time, prior to Klentak's muck-ups. The Good Phight is actually being generous. In addition to the parlous state of the MLB Phillies, calling the pharm only bottom third is actually over-rating it. It is in the bottom handful of farm systems, with its one arguable advantage, two extra farm teams, having just been stripped away by MLB on top of that. There latest top LA signing, is a perplexing over-aged guy signed for the money agreed to when we thought he was 16, and who now has missed another year of development due to the Covid shutdown -- a bigger loss for a guy who is a year older than his peers. This comes atop the Ortiz and Encarnacion flops.

As I've done, Good Phight, strongly points at the analytics department. I am a proponent of analytics, and I think Good Phight is also, but our guys seem almost uniquely incompetent and behind the curve, compared to your average progressive baseball franchise.

What really stuck out to me is saying that Nola is the only pitcher the Phillies have succeeded in signing and developing in the past 10 years. That hurts! I would remind TGP that it also is not actually correct, since the Phillies also developed Sixto, but squandered him. I don't know if it was Klentak, McPhail, or Middleton who refused to go over cap for a season to re-sign Realmuto, but I think he is now lost and that two losing seasons with Realmuto wasn't worth the trade. When you trade future for present, you have to win in the present, and you have to re-sign the guy you traded for.

Combining an incredibly weak minor league system, with a sub-.500 MLB record, with a baseball organization in disarray makes the Phillies among the very most pathetic organizations in baseball. Not having a winning year since 2011 is disgraceful and makes calls for patience absurd.

[zambonir]

And, MacPhail was on-board and wasting time, prior to Klentak's muck-ups

That part's not really true. He was hired at the end of June but didn't start until the end of the season. I doubt he was even in physically in Philadelphia for much of that time. So yeah he was wasting time, but it's on Middleton, and, especially, Gillick (who was not only president but did and does have a small ownership share) that they didn't just put him in charge right away, and it's also on them that they didn't fire Amaro (preferably before that season had even started, but instead they waited until mid-September). Even not being officially on the job MacPhail could have been interviewing candidates in July or August).

Of course the real issue there is he knew who he was probably going to hire and was just waiting for the Angels season to end. Meanwhile the Brewers hired an Astros assistant who left Houston the minute he got the job in August).

I still think it's lame that he could have kept or lost his job just based on how the past few weeks go - even, allegedly, by making the playoffs now and lucking out, unlikely as both those things are. Really, it was pathetic that they didn't fire him last year. It's pathetic to say this 60-game result greatly changed his performance or their evaluaton of him either way.

Bottom line, did Klentak improve the franchise? At the major league level, a lot, but still not enough, and mostly by checkbook. At the minor league level, yikes.

And while we don't really know anything yet, it's also discouraging that MacPhail doesn't seem to be in the rumor mill.

The Phillies have mostly won, when they've won, in spite of poor ownershp and management, helped along by the kind of draft classes unintentional failure can provide. And then by stadium and now TV money. Can they get it right this time? And if the changes to the system have been as fruitless as they seem, how long will that overhaul take?