CLEARWATER, Fla. — Baseball has always been quick to label and resistant to change. The combination of the two led to the status quo remaining as gospel. As described in The Only Rule Is It Has To Work, a book about two sabermetricians (Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller) who ran an independent league baseball team, conventional relief pitching roles are often boiled down into agonizing simplicity. “The closer is the closer because he’s the closer.” Who cares if the most important at-bats take place in the seventh inning? By conventional wisdom, the best reliever, the closer, is saved for the last three outs because those are the outs that seal the win.
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Lineups and positional flexibility, or lack thereof, fall into this category. Your everyday starting second baseman is the second baseman because he’s the second baseman. Why take a guy out of his rhythm and move him around the diamond if you don’t have to?
But over the last handful of seasons, a different kind of lineup flexibility has come into vogue. Many teams don’t just have utility guys, they want utility guys. Teams value utility-type players with starter-level talent, and are less afraid to push them in that direction if they think the player can handle it. The Phillies have joined the party. If a player proves he can play multiple positions, he’s that much more valuable to an organization. If the situation presents itself, you can go out and nab Carlos Santana without worrying about finding room for Rhys Hoskins.
“We’ll demonstrate we are capable of a juggling act,” Gabe Kapler said on Sunday.
He doesn’t talk in maybes about his biggest season-long challenge. He talks in absolutes.
But adjusting players’ expectations and massaging playing time in a way that truly benefits everyone will be a true test. It will take more than willing it into existence.
The first test of Kapler’s juggling skills will come Thursday, against Atlanta and right-hander Julio Teheran.
“We are going to optimize for the lineup that gives us the best chance to win on Opening Day, while also being very empathetic,” Kapler said. “There’s no question about it. There is a ripple effect to whatever decisions we make. We’re well aware of that.”
Opening Day is just one game in a 162-game season. But it has some extra significance. That is why it will be fascinating to see if Kapler defers to César Hernández’s established spot as second baseman and leadoff hitter. The “optimized” lineup against Teheran probably would not include Hernández based on his track record. Hernández has faced him 33 times. He has a .107/.242/.179 line against Teheran.
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Still, Hernández could start with Scott Kingery on the bench.
“If somebody’s not in the Opening Day lineup — whether it be Scott or somebody else — the message is: You’re probably in the lineup the next two, three, four, five days,” Kapler said. “We’re going to make sure everybody understands and nobody is surprised when they come in and see themselves not in the lineup. There’s a why for everything we’re doing.”
The addition of Kingery to the lineup makes the team that much more flexible. Kapler said he’s comfortable starting Kingery at his native second base, as well as shortstop, third base and all three outfield positions. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if the 23-year-old Kingery could hold his own at first base not too far down the line, despite his smaller size. Not many teams think this way.
Kapler is familiar with this manner of positional flexibility from his time in Los Angeles. The Dodgers were the only team in baseball last season with three players who tallied 300 plate appearances over the course of the season and spent some time in the field at each of second base, third base and shortstop. Chris Taylor, Enrique Hernández and Logan Forsythe were their infield Swiss Army knives, capable in each infield spot if necessary, besides first base.
This is becoming more common in baseball, and not just in Los Angeles. In addition to Kapler’s previous employer, the last two World Series winners both utilized flexible lineups and players who checked multiple boxes.
“This isn’t new,” Kapler said after the club announced it had signed Kingery to a long-term contract Sunday. “The Cubs have done it with their players. The Dodgers have done it with their players. The Astros have done it with their players. Scotty fits that profile beautifully.”
It’s tempting to compare Kingery to a guy like Taylor on the Dodgers. Taylor is primarily an outfielder — he started 86 games in the outfield last year, but also played the infield in parts of 44 games. That’s what Kingery brings to these Phillies, except he specializes in the infield. On Monday against the Pirates, Kingery played third base and right field and fell a triple shy of the cycle.
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“I see why Chris Taylor is a nice example … some adjustments to his swing that made him a formidable force in the National League. So I can understand why someone would go right to a guy like Chris Taylor,” Kapler said. Kingery, too, made swing adjustments that unlocked some power.
But Kapler thinks Kingery more fits the mold of the manager’s former teammate, the most prominent utility man in the modern era.
“The guy that comes to mind more, just because he’s so dynamic and changes the game in so many ways, is Ben Zobrist,” Kapler continued. “Although, Scotty in a lot of ways has a different skill set, so I don’t want to compare the athleticism between Zobrist and Scotty, but maybe how I saw Zobrist used with the Rays as his teammate and how beautifully that worked both to get him the reps he needed to put him in a position to succeed. Also to keep his teammates healthy and strong and get them in optimal matchups for most of the season.”
That is the goal with these versatile Phillies. They have four primary outfielders. One, Hoskins, can play first. They will have five primary infielders. Of those, four — J.P. Crawford,Hernández, Pedro Florimón, and Kingery —can all play every infield position other than first base. Kingery and Florimón can play outfield. Even Hernández played the outfield when he broke into the league in 2013.Maikel Franco has also played over 50 innings at first base.
The manager who utilized Zobrist so extensively all around the diamond a handful of years ago was resident mad scientist Joe Maddon, whose recent Cubs teams Kapler also mentioned. The 2016 World Series champion Cubs were remarkably flexible defensively. In Kris Bryant, they harbored the first MVP to start at least 10 games at three different positions that weren’t the three outfield slots. Rany Jazayerli wrote in The Ringer about Chicago’s flexibility, creating a metric called Flex Score that quantified a team’s positional versatility. The 2016 Cubs’ score ranked in the top three percent out of all teams since 1950. But they were different. The teams with higher scores largely did so out of necessity. They were below-.500 teams. The Cubs, however, did so out of strength. Or, Chicago did so because they wanted to, not because they had to.
Jazayerli found that just threeteams with higher Flex Scores than the 2016 Cubs tallied at least 90 wins. Teams with the six highest Flex Scores that also produced 90-plus win seasonsall had something else in common, something necessary to employ a strategy such as this: a fearless manager unafraid to eschew tradition.
The managers of those teams were Maddon and the following three icons:
- Casey Stengel, who famously brought platooning back into popularity in the 1950s.
- Tony La Russa, whose SABR bio opens with the line, “In a sport where tradition reigns and change may be viewed as heresy, Tony La Russa was considered an insurgent.”
- Earl Weaver, whom Tom Verducci deemedthe “Copernicus of baseball,” and is championed as a pioneer of data-use in the dugout.
That is not to suggest that Kapler will reach the lofty levels of those legends, but he shares their audacity and disregard for convention. This could very well be the story of the 2018 Phillies, and is certainly the most challenging task on Kapler’s day-to-day to-do list. Can he spread around playing time and keep everyone happy and effective?
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Minor-league roster decisions begin
The Phillies leave Florida on Tuesday, but the minor-league camp does not break until Saturday. The affiliate rosters are not yet finalized. There are some intriguing decisions to come, the byproduct of an improved farm system. Some high-profile cuts have happened.
Shane Watson, the 40th-overall pick in the 2012 draft, was released. Watson, 23, was derailed by major shoulder surgery in 2013, but rebounded to find a role in the Double-A Reading bullpen last season. The Phillies just did not see enough; Watson struck out 45 and walked 40 in 83 1/3 innings. He signed for a $1.29 million bonus.
Luis Encarnacion was a big-bonus international signing at $1 million. He played just four games at High-A Clearwater. The Phillies released the 20-year-old Dominican this spring. Encarnacion, billed as a power-hitting first baseman, never found his footing. He hit .217/.272/.306 in 661 minor-league plate appearances. Such is the nature of scouting teenagers.
Hunter grounded
Tommy Hunter has a mild Grade 1 hamstring strain and will begin the season on the DL. That means Victor Arano and Jake Thompson will round out a bullpen that will start the season with nine relievers and four starters until Arrieta joins the club for his debut on April 8 at home against the Marlins.
Hunter said he can throw but not field, so the Phillies decided to be cautious about the whole thing. He will continue his throwing program as the hamstring heals.
“I was on the treadmill and I probably shouldn’t have been,” Hunter said. “I was trying to keep up with 22 year olds. I’m older and a little more overweight than most of these guys. I probably shouldn’t be doing that.”
Updates on three
1. Roman Quinn: The Phillies wanted this to work. Quinn would have been on the roster had the Phillies gone with 12 pitchers. But, with April concerns about their pitching depth, they opted for 13 arms and pushed Quinn to Triple-A Lehigh Valley. That is fine. Quinn, provided he maintains his health, will be a factor in the majors at some point this season. He could be a real weapon on the bench. It is not the worst thing for him to first see regular playing time in the minors.
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Quinn racked up steals at an alarming rate this spring, swiping nine bags in 48 trips to the plate. That averages about 0.19 steals per plate appearance. The Phillies’ two leading base stealers last year, Hernández with 15 and Galvis with 14, each had about 0.02 steals per plate appearance. In other words, Quinn was stealing bases this spring nearly 10-times more than the club’s best base stealers last year. The Phillies asked their speed threats to be aggressive this spring and test their limits. Quinn is obviously not a threat to steal 100 bags, as his spring rate extrapolated over a full season would suggest. But the speed is scary. Kapler threw a lofty Billy Hamilton comp on him this week.
2. Ben Lively: He outpitched Zach Eflin this spring, and he made the Phillies’ decision somewhat simple. Lively does not have the kind of upside Eflin does. But he is a more reliable rotation presence at this point. The Phillies have few assurances in their rotation. If Lively can go five or six innings and keep them competitive, they will be thrilled.
The short bench could force some creative pinch-hitting possibilities. The Phils actually have two pitchers who can handle themselves with the bat. Over the last two seasons, Lively and Jake Arrieta are two of just six pitchers who have posted a slugging percentage above .400 in at least 20 plate appearances.
3. Nick Pivetta: He’ll start the second game of the season, which is a bit jarring because he posted a 6.02 ERA in his rookie season. But, as the Phillies break camp, there is unbridled enthusiasm about the sequencing adjustments Pivetta has applied this spring. “I am not sure I have ever seen Pivetta so sharp,” Kapler said Sunday after the right-hander struck out five in three scoreless innings. –Matt Gelb
Full Count is The Athletic’s weekly notebook on everything Phillies — from in-game observations to rumblings around the team.
Top photo: Jonathan Dyer/USA TODAY Sports
