The Phillies don't really have good base stealers. Same in the minors. Instruction appears lacking. Also true of bunts. For years I've noticed that Reading and Allentown don't sacrifice bunt as well as the teams they are playing against. Since we lost Davey Lopes, that part of the Phillies game has been MIA. We have a lot of slow players, but Kingery is speedy and has just 3 SB and 1 CS in 210 place appearances. Crawford is at least average speed, but hasn't attempted a steal this season. Herrerra has above average speed to go with 2 SB and 2 CS. Between them our Altherr/Williams platoon has 2 SB against 3 CS. It's fine to advocate an offense built around walks, steals, and sacrifices, but we don't have the personnel for that. Probably our analytics have found that to be a fool's approach to modern baseball. I firmly believe that walk-enhanced plus OBP is a great thing, but it needs to be backed with effective power hitting to work. Of late, we've lacked sufficient power. That's the problem. The solution to that problem is not to turn the high OBP hitters into attempted power hitters, it's to get Hoskins back on track.
The other side of small-ball position players is excellent D. With all of the position switches, and maybe even without that and the shifts, we have poor D. Putting Crawford at SS would solve part of that problem.
