Phillies Hot Stove Discussion 2021-22

[zambonir]

Regardless, we should be past the point of trying to build 84-86 win teams that might still take a weak division or wild card (though, next year will also probably be expanded playoffs). And yes, I don't think Freeman is going to stink, but he might drop off. And maybe Morton finally will too.

The Marlins are also gonna be a factor, and we already can't beat them. The Nats also have more young talent and more rebuilding material (having already started it).

Meanwhile, in Cincinnati, the Reds--another organization that was late to the analytics and sport science party and seemingly outsourced a lot of minor league coaching to Driveline in an effort to catch up--are also now cutting ties to Driveline.

That's because they changed front offices as well. Just took them a year. Question is, are we really cutting ties with Driveline? The actual Driveline guys still work here - for now.

[Taudawg]

Speaking of Driveline (again), Matt Vierling was using a different swing during the 2019 season, went home that winter to rediscover his old swing, and then stick with what got him drafted. There was no direct mention of Driveline but full article is behind paywall. https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/matt-vierling-went-home-fixed-his-broken-swing-and-became-a-contributor-for-the-phillies/ar-AAOceEC?ocid=Peregrine&

Matt hit well in 2018 at traditionally hard Lakewood park, and again in 2021. I suspect if we dig deeper, we can find several instances of Driveline not just stunting development, but damaging players.

[zambonir]

Yeah, we have heard that about Vierling already (this article is one month old). The story also says the instructor who "fixed" his swing in 2019 is no longer with the team, so he may well have been fired by Ocharski, and was never a Driveline-type person.

Where Vierling got lucky was that the Phillies wanted nothing to do with him in 2020, and apparently that was better than actually working with the staff. But conversely, Kingery did the same thing pre-pandemic, except his private coach was the one preaching Driveline-type changes, not the Phillies.

And who knows what Vierling has actually fixed. He still couldn't hit in AAA (no power, either) and had insane BABIP in MLB (as discussed already too). Small samples all around, both good (Reading, MLB) and bad (AAA).

I think the hype about this stuff is a overblown on both sides, it's neither as bad nor as good as people think, nor as much of a binary. And sometimes these changes are about trying to raise the ceiling on players, at the risk of also lowering their floor.

[andyb]

I think we go too far in assigning certain blame for players that improve (Vierling) or struggle (Moniak at times). We need to remember that all players in all organizations were on their own if they were not at the alternate site last year to some degree. Two years are a long time and some players can take leaps over that period just because it is twice as long as the normal gap between performance we see (part of why I am curious if Simon Muzziotti is almost ready rather than just looking at when he actually played).

With Moniak we are speculating completely. He was drafted pre-Driveline and did not light it up and showed an inferior hit tool compared to what was advertised. He is also the type of player that is always asked to build power because someone who is not great defensively in CF can stay there by adding offense. I have no idea why Moniak's development has been so bumpy. Could be the Driveline guys. Could be not responding to other types of instruction. Could be he just is not as talented as advertised. We criticize the organization for forcing Driveline on everybody regardless of the individual fit or need, but we also probably have no clue to the degree that the club did this.

They are changing philosophies because the collective approach did not work. It is much harder to say whether they messed up individual players.

[zambonir]

Driveline (and Chris Young) are more the symptom, not the cause. Of the lack of unified philosophy (both between the minors and majors and drafting/development) of the constant churn, and of just not having a good organization in general. Arguably that's the reason they made the Driveline move in the first place - things were in such tatters that bringing in some guys with a plug-and-play system was appealing. But once they fired Kapler, Mallee and Young (and took that decision out of the hands of Klentak) the new people weren't necessarily going to be in sync (and Dillon still got fired anyway).

I'd like to say that Bonifay's failure in Philadelphia probably has more to do with the Phillies than him, since they got him from Houston, and Houston had made all of this stuff work. But he was really just a minor league manager there, not an executive, as well as a major league coach, and had been out of work for a year when the Phillies hired him. So maybe just a bad hire, and another old-boy's club mistake (his father was the Pirates GM and was likely pals with MacPhail).

[rkeden]

I think there is the possibility that the Phillies have a secret weapon that might help us more quickly and effectively develop our young players who are on the cusp but not yet quality major leaguers. Bryce seems to be unusually determined to change the skills and culture of our better players in the minors. I think we should allow him a nice long rest to get his body and mind back in shape and then ask if he might run a development program to shape minds, bodies and swings. The youngsters would listen to Bryce, and would develop greater chemistry with each other. Bryce can bring in a few friends to assist and create a winter camp for skills improvement. He has already worked with Bryson Stott for mostly geographic reasons but it seems to have worked. If 5-8 players got some concentrated mentoring from someone they respect and want to emulate, maybe by Spring Training, they will have gained what was lost in the disaster of 2020. Could Ortiz develop consistency and a strategy for two strike counts? Moniak new confidence and power? Vierling lock in his new swing and gain power?

Bryce and the readers of this board are in a hurry. I watched Richie, Del, Robin, Curt and Puddin' Head. I can't wait forever either. Just an idea!

[allentown]

Yes, the Phillies are a highly dysfunctional organization. It wasn't that long ago they built a championship team, built it on their own home-grown talent. Something VERY major was lost in the organization. We had guys who could find talent. We managed to develop that talent. The championship team wasn't a free agent extravaganza. Gillick probably got them over the hump to the championship, but the organizational decay also seems to have taken hold on his watch. Our ownership seems to crave the grey hairs as some sort of security blanket. MacPhail was certainly a fail. Monty seemed a fail. Dombrowski got ownership to open the purse, but is he the guy who can rebuild by building a strong farm which can produce a string of plus MLB talent? The Phillies are a team which should have expensive FA, but we need a productive farm to make a go of it. It's not lost on me that once the Phillies went big on the FA route after 2008, they never won another WC, despite better teams, and ownership never unzipped the purse at crucial moments. Chopped RAJ's legs out from under him. The decline of organizational competence from the early and mid-2000s decade to now is stark.

Bryce, the readers of this board, and all fans should be in a hurry. Longest post-season drought, one winning season (barely) in a decade, constant churn, no sense of urgency to build the farm or participate in the international over-25 marketplace.

If Driveline really is gone, that was another awfully quick switch to them, then away from them. Nothing constant but the endless churn.

[Austinfan]

I'd be happy with three losing seasons if they really committed to building a top ten farm system.
What I don't want is buying enough players to win 80-85 games, draft around 15-20, don't invest in the farm system and wait for another 1993.

[nycphils]

Sadly it isn’t a matter of not investing…they spend all the $$ they are allowed to spend. They just spend it poorly or can’t develop what they get. But I agree with your larger point.

[BaseballCat]

I am not saying I want us to draft 15-20, but there is value there - we just never seem to find it. I would like us to find a gem every once in a while.

[zambonir]

I'd be happy with three losing seasons if they really committed to building a top ten farm system.
What I don't want is buying enough players to win 80-85 games, draft around 15-20, don't invest in the farm system and wait for another 1993.

I would too but they're already at least a year too late on that, and there's clearly no appetite on the part of ownership (or the media) for sub-.500 teams. Would be hard to sell Bryce on that either, no matter how loud he trumpets his commitment.

And they don't spend all the $ they are allowed to spend, they have a self-imposed (or MLB whisper network imposed) hard cap.

[EDmuch]

Ahhhhhhh, AF, seriously? Three losing seasons in order to get prime draft picks? Didn’t we try that recently? Think Randolph, Moniak, Haseley.

[EDmuch]

While everyone agrees that the organization is dysfunctional, etc. this thread is focused upon what we should do THIS off-season, not long term planning. I really have not seen many comments focused upon the near term rather than the long term.

[allentown]

While everyone agrees that the organization is dysfunctional, etc. this thread is focused upon what we should do THIS off-season, not long term planning. I really have not seen many comments focused upon the near term rather than the long term.

This year's team collapsed at the end of the season, but really wasn't better than an 84 win team. They got excellent production from their main FA. They had probably normal luck with injuries. They spent just about max on lux tax. I think this year's result, give or take a couple wins, is what one should expect in a normal season with just short-term planning for the next season. We've done short-term planning for the next season for a decade. Without a good farm you are dependent upon getting REALLY lucky in a given season in order to reach or at least progress in the post-season.

OK, what for next year?
We have to get our own young players righted. That is the biggest thing: Bohm, Kingery, Nola, Moniak, Hasely and Quinn.. Bryce can help over the winter. There will be a strike. The teams whose players work to keep in shape and sharpen skills will do a lot better than the teams that dont.

I'd sign the best FA SS or CF I can afford, but must be under 30.
I'd go small $ deals for all other holes, with a lot of dumpster dives, minor league FA, Rule 5s, and our own minor leaguers for the rest. I don't worry if the small $ FA signings are up to age 35, but I don't go multiple years on them.

Management needs to think long and hard over the winter about how they minimize the negative impact upon the players of this latest churn. How do you push buy-in from players to make changes to achieve X when a year or two later X becomes Y, then a year or two later it's Z or back to X, while at some level of the org they have never left W? It cannot work.

Get the team vaxxed. Bring in a doctor who's a long-Covid expert to work with Kingery and others.

Cheat! Most of the teams ahead of us have cheated internationally. (Don't get caught).

Hit the international over-25 market for a pitcher or hitter who can be a plus player in 2022. Go over lux cap if necessary.

Seriously, turn our analytics department loose on the question of how to win on the road. The Braved did it this year That's how they beat us.

[fish]

Management needs to think long and hard over the winter about how they minimize the negative impact upon the players of this latest churn. How do you push buy-in from players to make changes to achieve X when a year or two later X becomes Y, then a year or two later it's Z or back to X, while at some level of the org they have never left W? It cannot work.

The best way to minimize the impact of coaching churn is to dump half the roster and start building this differently. If they don't want to do a rebuild, that's fine. But adding a couple of over 30 guys on big contracts will not change the end result. Any outside GM with a clue must look at the Phillies like a gambler losing big at the tables who is trying to recoup his losses by throwing more money in.

Figure out where to find value, where to find guys with something to prove, and don't give away draft picks to keep turning things around in the minors. Honestly, I don't see a path to winning in either approach, but the current roster is incredibly boring/frustrating to watch and losing draft picks only prolongs a future rebuild.

[Austinfan]

TB just won 100 games spending $83M.
Maybe steal their personnel guys?

[EDmuch]

Tampa Bay has all of its "personnel" guys locked up under contracts and in the past they have refused to allow other teams to even approach these individuals to discuss moving to any of the other teams.

[andyb]

We actually don't want to be Tampa also. That would mean trading Bryce and Wheeler immediately. If we did that we could actually start adding some of the high end prospects that would be necessary to be Tampa. They do it because they have to. We want to be smarter within a higher salaried club. It is a very different strategy.

[allentown]

The best way to minimize the impact of coaching churn is to dump half the roster and start building this differently.

That only works if they commit to sticking with an approach for at least a half dozen years. If you change personnel, you must only bring in people who support that approach.

Be creative on pay. Our farm slipped when Arby became more of a manager and then left when he didn't become GM. Maybe he isn't suited to be a GM or a limited scouting participant manager, but his presence and absence shows his value. He may still have that value, or not. But pay him or somebody with the ability to find the talent that Arby found to get us to 2008 and pay for that ability. We pay Harper, Wheeler, JT more than we pay management. Get away from the rank-based salary structure, in which you are paid for managing. A lot of industry has a technical salary scale and a supervisory salary scale and one can get quite high on the technical scale. Arby was worth more than Klentak or Fuld, whether or not the Phillies liked him as a GM candidate.

[allentown]

We actually don't want to be Tampa also.

But we basically should want to be 90% TB. The emphasis on scouting/development which involves getting good staff, building he organization around the farm, paying the staff to do what they do well and not forcing them to be managers of baseball-side staff to succeed $-wise, not trading top minor league talent and having guys who are able to identify those guys, unloading your top MLB talent when they are in decline, avoiding the trap of giving in to fans and media and rewarding your stars from the last WS team with big contracts (Dykstra, Daulton, Howard). On top of that, you use your financial resources to bring in 2-3 expensive top FA who are under-30 when you sign them, preferably no older than 28. 10% of your effort, but 50% of your $ are devoted to acquiring the top FAs.