Former Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr., now the Red Sox’ first base coach, discussed the perception that his regime in Philadelphia was well behind the curve in terms of analytics in an interview with David Laurila of Fangraphs. Amaro makes the claim that while his club may not have been as progressive as some of the most aggressive adopters of statistical analysis, the Phillies may also have been more up to speed than they let on. “You can’t ever deny the numbers,” said Amaro.“That’s true for every GM and every baseball person, regardless of whether you’re ‘old school’ or ‘new school.’ … I’ve always believed in analytics. I just didn’t make it all public (in Philadelphia). I thought it was more of a competitive advantage for me to keep our thought-process about analytics closer to the vest. … I didn’t think it was anybody’s business but our own as to how we evaluated.” That is, of course, a fairly bold claim to make, especially in the face of years of stories to the contrary, which highlighted the Phillies’ adherence to more traditional means of evaluation. Amaro goes on to discuss the balance between data and scouting as well as new data from Statcast and evaluating players at different age levels. Regardless of whether one believes his initial claims (and I’d expect that most will not), the issue the comments raise is interesting, as there certainly could be some value to keeping operational methodology close to the vest for a big league organization. The interview is well worth taking a few minutes to read.
Here’s more from the NL East…
- Cody Asche is in danger of opening the season on the Phillies’ disabled list, writes Ryan Lawrence of PhillyVoice.com. The former third base prospect, who converted to the outfield last year to accommodate Maikel Franco, was originally shut down two weeks ago due to an oblique issue, and an MRI conducted on Wednesday showed little progress. Asche is battling a Grade 1 strain in his right oblique, and manager Pete Mackanin says that the 25-year-old is still not cleared to hit. Aaron Altherr’s unfortunate injury — he’ll miss up to six months following wrist surgery — seemed to have created a window for Asche to get some more playing time, but his own health problems could now stand in the way of that. As a result, Lawrence notes, Rule 5 pick Tyler Goeddel’s chances of sticking with the club become even stronger.
- Phillies GM Matt Klentak implied to MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki that it’s unlikely he’ll look outside the organization to replace Altherr. “We owe it to the guys in camp to give them that chance to fill that spot,” said Klentak. “We’ll survey the market. If there’s something out there, we’ll explore it, but we feel pretty good about the guys we have here.” As Zolecki notes, the Phillies do have top priority on the waiver wire, so they could add an outfielder late in camp if one becomes available in that manner. In addition to Goeddel, the Phillies have Odubel Herrera, Peter Bourjos Darnell Sweeney and Darin Ruf as 40-man options, with veteran David Lough in camp as a non-roster invitee.
- Denard Span, who signed a three-year, $31MM contract with the Giants this offseason, spoke fondly of his time with the Nationals to James Wagner of the Washington Post in a recent interview. Within, the 31-year-old Span reveals that he and former agent Joe Urbon of CAA Sports approached the Nationals about a potential extension back in 2014, but the team wasn’t interested at the time. Despite the fact that his interest was spurned, Span had nothing but glowing things to say about the organization. It’s not necessarily a surprise that the Nats weren’t keen on a long-term deal, as Bryce Harper is a fixture in the outfield, Jayson Werth is locked up through 2017, and the team undoubtedly hoped at the time (and still hopes) that Michael A. Taylor can shift into the center field slot as a more cost-effective long-term option.
- Braves general manager John Coppolella tells MLB.com’s Mark Bowman that he’s not ruling out Major League debuts for top outfield prospect Mallex Smith or shortstops Dansby Swanson and Ozhaino Albies in 2016. “They have all been very impressive, and I don’t think they could have shown any better than they have,” said Coppolella of the trio’s first week of Grapefruit League action. Coppolella went on to say that service time implications (i.e. delaying a player’s free agency) won’t be a factor for him if a player deems that he is ready for MLB action in 2016. “You can always sign young guys to long-term deals,” said the GM. “Sometimes, when you bring up prospects early, they’re more willing to sign long-term because they know you didn’t hold them hostage or try to manipulate them in any way.”
Everyone is focusing on the qualifying offer/loss of draft pick and its impact on free agents but the “keep top prospect in minors for two weeks” to gain an extra year of club control needs to be fixed in the CBA as well.
Make the cutoff around something like 2 months not two weeks so it impacts a teams chance at contention that year if they want to keep the top prospect in the minors
Good point
That would just hurt the players more and change nothing no team goes into a season expecting to rely on prospects to compete it has no affect, no one puts that much stock into a rookie. Kris Bryant would have just sat in the minors for 2 months instead of 2 weeks.
That would move what constitutes a service year to about 120 days, less than what a player typically needs to currently qualify for Super 2. Which in itself would most likely be affected, lowering to about 90 days. The economic impact of such a drastic move would have a ripple effect
Lost in this discussion is that the service time rule in question affects ZERO MLB players. Kris Bryant isn’t going to retroactively accrue a full year of service time based on a rule change two years later. That’s why it doesn’t get talked about. In order for the owners to give up the current service time rules, the players are going to need to give up something on their side. Why in the world would they ever give up something to get a rule changed when that rule has ZERO affect on them.
The way this is going there is going to be somewhat of a change. The issue is delaying the clock for free agency. Leave it at 6, but like the QO, base super two off of performance and not necessarily service time. You can’t blame teams for trying to keep players from arb as long as possible. Its the system in place and teams will always try to find that loop hole. Players will dictate their performance. Perform within the top 10-20% , within their first two years, of their respective position in order to earn super 2 status. Guys who deserve super 2 will still have the ability to obtain that status and teams will no longer be able to control that. The problem with free agency is you pay for past performance and not future production. Now having owners agree to that is a different story
Sounds like RAJ finally understood how bad he was at his job and is trying to save face in case he gets another chance to GM again. He was pretty vocal about being anti-analytics and surrounded himself with old school guys, and also had old school guys like Mike Schmidt take to the media to discredit metrics.
Absolutely – his re-writing of recent history is quite laughable.
He’s pretty much trying to say – “Hey, when I told you we didn’t care about it, we actually did!”. His current outlook on what happened is in direct conflict with what he portrayed at the time.
And I have no reason to believe the Phillies FO, RAJ included, was any smarter than they seemed.
Amaro doesn’t understand that having their one analytics guy get him his coffee every morning doesn’t count as using analytics.
I thought mallex smith was on the chiefs?