New Director of Player Development--Josh Bonifay

[andyb]

Looks like we are going to hire a farm director from Houston. Seems to fit the Phillies' modus operandi (young guy with analytical organization that also has old-school baseball ties). Sounds like they cleaned house of most of their hitting instructors and are more happy with the current pitching development side.

Phillies mine Houston's successful system for their next...

[Squire]

Can we make the new farm director it’s own thread?

Done--pc

[andyb]

Looks like he was a decent minor league hitter - though I am guessing he was lousy defensively or just did not have enough batspeed to hit major league pitching, because he kept hitting well (800+ OPS most years) and failed to get promoted.

His dad was GM when he was drafted but only till 2001.

Josh Bonifay Minor Leagues Statistics & History | Baseball-Reference.com

[Squire]

Without really having any real basis, I like the hire if only because he's worked in multiple other systems both of who have had good success developing hitters.

[Philsmania]

Looks like he was a decent minor league hitter - though I am guessing he was lousy defensively or just did not have enough batspeed to hit major league pitching, because he kept hitting well (800+ OPS most years) and failed to get promoted.

Sounds like he'll fit right in here.

[allentown]

Without really having any real basis, I like the hire if only because he's worked in multiple other systems both of who have had good success developing hitters.

It is an opportunity to pick the brains of a successful organization. For good or ill it adds a guy who will be fully on-board with the new approach. Jordan had the integrity to resign, when he concluded he couldn't be totally on-board.

[Austinfan]

It also looks like Klentak had a very good idea what he was looking for, and what organizations he wants to emulate, LA, Houston ain't a bad start.

At least we're no longer the Giles Phillies, where retreads get recycled through the organization with no thought to what they want to achieve, just taking care of their people.

If you're gonna go down, at least do so with a coherent philosophy and execution, if you're wrong, you're wrong, but at least you're not floundering "without a direction home."

[andyb]

Not sure one can say that Klentak knows what he is looking for and past regimes like Giles and Amaro did not know what they were looking for. All GMs know what they are looking for and have a philosophy. Whether one agrees with that philosophy is a different question.

[Austinfan]

I never got a feeling the Phillies had a coherent organizational philosophy in the past, other than "we're baseball men and we know what we're doing." Never sensed there was any connection between player acquisition, player development and the major league club.

Now it's obvious they're trying to get everyone on the same page, from scouting to Kapler, in terms of the qualities they want in players, and the skills they want to develop. Whether they succeed remains to be seen, but they're shipping out holdovers that can't get with the program and bringing in people from organizations that have a similar approach.

[andyb]

The Phillies had a philosophy. Durable starting pitchers (and developing projectable arms). Spending on the bullpen including middle relief. Developing and drafting power hitters without caring about patience that much. Solid up the middle defense. It was a coherent philosophy. You just did not agree with parts of it and did not think the GM was that smart. Some of that of course was true. But they had just as much of a philosophy that Klentak has. It just was not based much on analytics. It does not mean they were not often correct though. We got a whole lot of production from developing those solid up the middle defenders (Bowa, Rollins, Utley, Ruiz, Lieberthal, etc.) More hit and miss developing starters but that is true for all of baseball.

I hope Klentak is good at this. Right now there is not much evidence, positive or negative. They clearly had more of a problem developing hitters lately, so hopefully this is a step in the right direction. It is hard to tell if the development blame for hitters is more on drafting mistakes or the teaching side. This move seems to place the blame on the teaching side. Hopefully they are right.

[allentown]

I remain undecided whether or not the Phillies have a consistent philosophy which they are willing to stick to for an extended period of time. To me, it seems like the organizational churning is continuing too deep into the rebuild. Apparently what was the philosophy even two years ago is not the philosophy today. The farm and MLB team are loaded with position players signed and developed under the old philosophy. There are now a lot of square pegs to be fitted into round holes. That speaks to an extended rebuild, unless we hype the position roster with primo free agents. Even last season's signing of Santana -- how does that fit? He is a high OBP hitter, but he is not a power-first loft hitter, which seems to be the new approach. 'Consistent philosophy' from top to bottom is not a phrase which springs to mind as Klentak replaces the farm director and farm hitting coaches this late in his tenure and even later in MacPhail's and Middleton's new administration. The posted article from Fangraphs suggests that a lot of people are clueless about the Phillies actual philosophy and their level of devotion to it.

To me, smart management makes the most of the players they already have in the system, maximizing their performance as the type of players they are. They then make their new minor and major league additions from the available amateur and professional talent pool of players who fit their new paradigm, knowing they are going to have old paradigm players for quite some time.

[Austinfan]

I think the new philosophy has been in place for a year or two at the lower levels.
Take a look at the DSL teams, They used to be full of players with extremely low BB rates and poor BB/K ratios.
Only a few players were significantly below a BB/10PA:
DSL Red
Valdez, 12BB/16K
Dipre, 18BB/68K
Barreto, 6BB/25K
DSL White
J Herrera 10BB/38K
Boekhoudt 17BB/45K [210 PA]
W Garcia 9BB/34K
GCL East:
Aparicio 4BB/26K
Torres 8BB/27K
De La Cruz 11BB/56K
Made 4BB/18K
Mercade 3BB/26K
GCL West
Gutierrez 10BB/16K
Matos 5BB/29K
Rojas 8BB/10K

[andyb]

I think the new philosophy has been in place for a year or two at the lower levels.
Take a look at the DSL teams, They used to be full of players with extremely low BB rates and poor BB/K ratios.
Only a few players were significantly below a BB/10PA:

Except both of our teams were below average in walk rate in the DSL this year. We were 29th and 41st in BBs for the league out of 44 teams. Now we have never been that good in that respect (usually in the bottom quarter) but there is not a whole lot of evidence of a sea change. The whole industry has changed to some degree, but there is little evidence that the Phillies are unique or have some secret philosophy that will give them a competitive advantage.

We'll need time to evaluate Klentak. He deserves to put his own people in place. But there is nothing about those moves that suggest any unique philosophy or any indication that he knows something that other organizations do not. In past years they had less emphasis on patience, but that does not mean those regimes did not have a philosophy. You just disagreed with it. Very different things.

[allentown]

I think the new philosophy has been in place for a year or two at the lower levels.

I think the Phillies have indeed been sold on walks and OBP for at least a couple of years, fairly much across the organization. BA is a part of OBP. The Bill Dancy days of taking a walk with RISP being a sign of cowardice are past. What I'm referring to is the Phillies very recent aggressive buy-in to the swinging for loft trend. This works against OBP but is expected to increase HR. The main reason I see this as such a drastic, quick change is that their last 3 OF first rounders were drafted for their high contact swing, something we are apparently now trying to change. After those drafts, the Phillies fairly gushed about how long the draftee's bat stayed in the hitting zone. That and bat speed were what Gillick loved about Moniak. That makes 3 primo draft picks square pegs in the team's current emphasis on becoming a round peg offense. I don't believe that approach is the right one for guys like Crawford, Kingery, Odubel, Moniak, Randolph. It make work with Haseley and is the approach I would take with Cozens, Hall, Listi, Walding.

[andyb]

The best organizations do not really have a one-size-fits-all philosophy for their hitters (or pitchers). Ideally an organization should have an individual plan for each hitter. A Rhys Hoskins might be a perfect fit for the loft angle crowd. But maybe a Moniak or Haseley are not. I am sure Klentak has some different ideas that led to the split with Jordan (who remember has a pretty good reputation around the game). I am guessing there is an analytical component to these ideas. But to me, that does not mean loft angle for everyone. Maybe, just maybe we might want to develop guys with a pretty good hit tool to hit to all fields to defeat future shifts. Maybe that is the new moneyball. Hopefully the organization is smart and can change and can adapt to the players they have (not the ones they wish they would be).

[flyers19rw]

In a press conference after Wednesday night's game, J. D. Martinez stated that forcing the ball in the air is the greatest mistake made by hitters this day. Recently, Christian Yelich made similar comments. These are two of the best hitters in the game dismissing the emphasis being put on the launch angle hitting approach. Granted it has had some success with a few players but to push it as an organizational strategy seems flawed.

[zambonir]

What Martinez was saying was pro launch angle, not con. He's the poster boy for it. If you do it right you are not forcing anything. If you do it wrong you're just flying out.

[Austinfan]

All these things should work together in an AB.

You look for a pitch you can drive with less than two strikes, and avoid swinging at not just balls outside the strike zone, but pitches in the strike zone you can't drive, for example, outside breaking balls you'll just turn over on.

With two strikes you should shift to making contact and driving the ball to all fields.

The idea is to maximize both OBP and exit velocity in every hitting situation.
Walks are good, strikeouts are bad (0 probability of a hit), so are popups and weak ground balls.
Launch angle is just one part of situational hitting, and it makes more sense for power hitters than gap power hitters.

[flyers19rw]

I don't believe that Martinez was saying that at all. He was talking about barreling up the bat on the ball and driving it not swinging for loft and the fences which is what launch angle swinging is all about.

[zambonir]

Barreling the ball at a high exit velocity is the optimal launch angle hit. That's what is being taught. You want to hit line drives between 10 and 30 degrees. No, you shouldn't be trying to hit 25-degree loft if you don't have power (or the situation doesn't call for it). But nobody's teaching that as an all-or-nothing hitting approach.