A new era: The Phillies are finally going to embrace sabermetrics
It is officially a new era for the Philadelphia Phillies. After years of resistance, the Phillies are going to embrace sabermetrics.
The team has created an analytics system, aptly named PHIL, which will … well, we’ll let Matt Breen of the Philadelphia Inquirer explain.
General manager Matt Klentak said he is currently working with a beta version of the custom-made sabermetrics system. Klentak said the system – aptly named PHIL – is a place for the team to store and manipulate data, including scouting reports, medical information, basic statistics, and “refined, nuances statistical information.” The PHIL acronym stands for “Phillies Holistic Information Location.”
“Basically it’s a place to house all of our information and synthesize it and try to manage it and pool it and bring all together,” Klentak said. “That’s what PHIL will provide. I’m new to it. I was not involved in the design of it, but I’m getting more and more familiar with it. We’re making some tweaks to it to make sure it suits what we’re looking to do and what we’re hoping to achieve. It’s close to its official launch.”
Yeah, these aren’t your father’s Phillies.
Honestly, it’s about time the franchise put something like this together. Every single major-league team has an in-house analytics system at this point.
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The Phillies were, famously, unwilling to embrace sabermetrics or analytics during Ruben Amaro Jr.’s tenure. That may have served them well for a while, as the team won a World Series title in 2008. But not embracing the stats hurt the franchise in the long run, and was likely a big reason Amaro was fired.
Now that Matt Klentak is in charge, it’s clear things are going to change. Both he and team president Andy MacPhail stressed that this would happen under the new regime, and it’s good to see everyone act so quickly.
Embracing sabermetrics doesn’t mean the team will instantly be good, or the Phillies will suddenly forget about their scouting department. It’s pretty much assumed that the most successful franchises around the game are able to find the right mix of scouting and stats in their player acquisitions and development. After years of ignoring one side of that, implementing this new system can’t hurt.
[Related: The epic story of the 2015 Royals and their World Series championship]
Welcome to the 21st century Phillies. It may take a while before your club is relevant again, but we’re glad you’re no longer ignoring such a big part of the game. If nothing else, the analytics should prevent you from signing Delmon Young again. That’s always a good thing!
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Chris Cwik is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik
