Sunday Notes: GM Speak, Lucas Sims, Framing, Trades, O’Day

Matt Klentak is more analytical than Ruben Amaro. Unless you’re a stark traditionalist, that’s a big positive for Phillies fans. Philadelphia’s new general manager – a 36-year-old Dartmouth College graduate with a degree in economics – is committed to bringing one of baseball’s least saber-friendly teams out of the dark ages.

Klentak’s approach is information-driven. He came back to the word “information” again and again when we spoke at this week’s GM meetings in Boca Raton.

“Philosophically, I am very much of the mind to use all of the information to make every decision that we make,” Klentak told me. “I’m not a huge fan of operating under any sort of absolutes, but I want to make sure that we’re managing all of the information as well as we can.

“In order to use and manage all of the information, we have to have that information in the first place. We’re going to make sure – particularly this offseason, as we’re rolling things out – that we are bringing in the best data, and the best people to analyze the data, that we can. We’ll incorporate all of that into our decision-making process.”

“Rolling things out,” refers to the analytics department Klentak is building, something that didn’t exist under Amaro. That’s not to say the Phillies lacked what Klentak referred to as “analytically-capable” people – they simply didn’t have a dedicated department and a proprietary system to go with it. The latter is already being built, and an influx of analysts is expected.

Scouting remains crucial to a team’s success, and I asked Klentak what he has planned for that area of the organization. He told me that he doesn’t plan to make “sweeping changes” to that department. What he wants to do is “bring all the information together.” In his opinion, “If there’s such a thing as a secret sauce in this industry, it’s how you blend all of the information, from scouting to analytics to medical information, in your decision-making process.”

Klental clearly has a vision for the new-era Phillies. Will the people he’s answering to give him the resources he needs?

“We have a very committed ownership,” said Klentak. “We have very aggressive goals. That’s why I’m here. It’s why this group is here.”

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Lucas Sims, one of the top pitching prospects in the Atlanta Braves system, is playing in the Arizona Fall League. The 21-year-old is doing so on the heels of an up-and-down season that saw him miss a month and a half due to a hip contusion suffered when the team bus overturned while he was playing for the Carolina Mudcats.

Sims told me that his AFL focus is on repeating his delivery and “being in sync.” He explained that it was “brought to (his) attention that he needed to make a couple of adjustments to be more consistent.” Asked to elaborate, the 2012 first-round pick told me that direction and timing and are the key points.

The hard-throwing righty struck out over a batter per inning between high-A and Double-A this season. He did so with a repertoire consisting of a four-seam fastball, a curveball, and a changeup.

“I guess you could say I am (a power pitcher),” said Sims. “At the same time, an assumption comes with that: You go out and just wing it, and overpower guys. Really, that’s nice, and it’s fun, but the higher up you go, the harder it is to overpower guys. I’m try to learn, and refine the control all of my pitches.”

Sims believes in controlling the inside portion of the plate. When I asked him about Noah Syndergaard knocking down Alcides Escobar with the first pitch of World Series Game 3, his initial response was to say the pitch “was maybe a little too close to his head.” After clarifying that he didn’t feel the Mets’ pitcher was trying to hit Escobar, he opined that “The message was pretty clear, and I didn’t see a problem with it.”

He also doesn’t have a problem with the controversial trade that sent shortstop extraordinaire Andrelton Simmons to the Angels – at least not that he’s willing to admit.

“We got some good players back, so I think it was good for the organization,” said Sims. “We have a great front office. There’s a method to everyone’s madness, and hopefully it pays off.”

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John Mozeliak is one of the best general managers in the game. According to New York Post columnist Ken Davidoff’s rankings, the Cardinals’ head honcho is the best. What makes Mozeliak so good? For one thing, he hires talented people.

Earlier this week, I asked Mozeliak how much weight he puts on his own observations when evaluating talent. His response was, “Very little.” He told me that he trusts his evaluators and his team’s analytical model. Not only that, his “confidence in our decision tree is much higher than it was 10 years ago; it’s grown over time, and that makes my job a lot easier.”

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According to StatCorner, Detroit’s James McCann ranked as the poorest pitch framer in either league this year. Tigers GM Al Avila was likely aware of that fact when I brought up framing this week in Boca Raton. At worst, he knows the rookie catcher needs to improve that facet of his game.

“That’s one aspect we’re working on with McCann,” said Avila. “We feel he improved over this past year. We’ve made it a very important factor throughout our system. We’re developing the awareness to make sure our catchers are doing the best they can as far as pitch framing is concerned. We’re using a lot of video to show them the difference when they do it right and do it wrong, the consequences of balls and strikes.”

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Tyler Flowers ranked as the best pitch framer in the American League this year (per StatCorner). Among all catchers, only Pittsburgh’s Francisco Cervelli graded out higher. It’s a big part of the defensive-minded backstop’s game. Flowers doesn’t bring a lot of offense to the White Sox lineup – his career OPS is .665 – but what he does behind the dish makes him an asset.

“He showed up very good in our own proprietary metrics, as well as in some of the more readily available ones,” said Chicago GM Rick Hahn. “He made framing a priority this year. Not to poof up the charts, so to speak, but because he realized that it’s an important element of any catcher’s game.”

White Sox pitchers appreciate Flowers’ strike-stealing acumen and game calling. The appreciation level of the South Side fan base is significantly lower. Hahn recognizes that, but at the same time, he’s more concerned with catcher value than he is with catcalls from the stands.

“I don’t know how many fans are tuned into the types of things he does well,” Hahn told me. “They’re not as easy to put on a scoreboard as batting average or home runs, which are what the eyes are more commonly drawn to. I think people are probably tired of me talking about his framing, and how he calls games, but that doesn’t make them any less important.”

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Flowers offered an interesting perspective on pitch sequencing when I talked to him this summer. He isn’t a big fan of the term “setting hitters up,” but semantics aside, he does exactly that within a spatial framework.

“The more you can hit quadrants opposite of each other – you go down and away, you go up and in, you go down and in, you go up and away – the more you can make a hitter feel like the strike zone is big,” explained Flowers. “He’s going to have more areas to worry about, and if you can compound that with different pitches, he’s going to have different pitches to worry about as well. From there, you can expand.”

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Al Avila produced a wry smile – a reaction of resignation – when I brought up Detroit’s inability to build a dependable bullpen in recent seasons. He proceeded to give a meandering explanation for the both the past and the future.

Avila opined that the “least risky” way to build a bullpen is internally. Ideally, you “develop your own guys and ease them in, in a less stressful role, then put them into the fire.” You augment by “adding a player here or there” via free agency or trade to round out your relief staff.

There are pitfalls to the best-laid plans, as Avila knows all too well.

“If you draft somebody, or sign somebody internationally, and he comes up through the system and you’re counting on him to take over somebody’s role, and it’s cost-efficient for the organization, and he gets injured, or for some reason doesn’t perform to expectations, that puts a whole monkey wrench in your organization.” said Avila. “It creates a hole and you have to go out and get somebody else.”

All too often, “somebody else” has ended up being a failed fireman. As Avila aptly put it, “There is more than one way to put a bullpen together, and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.”

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I asked Dave Dombrowski the same question. This was a few days before the former Tigers GM – now the man-in-charge in Boston – traded for Craig Kimbrel. (It’s easy to imagine an evil-doer sticking pins into a Kimbrel voodoo doll in the not-too-distant future, isn’t it?)

“At times, they just haven’t performed well,” Dombrowski said of his Motown maladies. “We had some injury factors that have been tough to overcome. We’ve counted on a lot of young guys out there and sometimes they haven’t come through for us.”

Asked if he’s rethought his bullpen-building strategy, Dombrowski said he’s ”rethinking all the time,” but won’t “get into what I’m rethinking.” He did say he’d be using “a combination of our scouting and the analytic aspect of it,” and that Brian Bannister would be heavily involved in the latter.

Now it’s up to Kimbrel to exorcise the Dombrowki bullpen curse.

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A couple of quick notes on Javier Guerra and Manny Margot, two of the four prospects Boston sent to San Diego in exchange for Kimbrel.

Guerra, a 20-year-old shortstop, was the 2015 Red Sox minor league defensive player of the year. A native of Panama, he popped 15 home runs in low-A Greenville, and he considers power “important to my game.” When I asked him at the end of the season where he sees himself hitting in a big-league lineup, Guerra said “seventh or eighth.” He elaborated, in still-developing English, that he’d like to hit third. Smiling, he told me, “I want to be great.”

Margot, a 21-year-old outfielder from the Dominican Republic, didn’t start playing baseball until he was 11 years old. When I interviewed him for Red Sox Magazine earlier this year, he admitted he was “mostly a soccer fan” when he was younger. His brothers played baseball, and when he was 14, Margot “kicked it up a notch when I got to the academy. That’s when I realized my dream was to one day sign a professional contract and play pro ball.”

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Dave Stewart was an outstanding pitcher. A tough-as-nails workhorse, he won 20-or-more games four years in a row and twice led the AL in complete games. He was beast-like in the postseason. In 10 ALCS starts, with the Athletics and Blue Jays, Stewart went 8-0 with a 2.03 ERA. In an equal number of World Series games, his ERA was 3.32.

The death stare that once intimidated hitters has been replaced by a desk job and an eye for talent. Stewart is now 57 years old and the general manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Compared to his GM brethren, Stewart is pretty old school. He professes to incorporate analytics into his decision-making process, but the self-described “baseball brat” acknowledged that “Watching the game with my own eyes is always going to be important.”

When it comes to acquiring and developing pitching talent, what he can’t see presents a challenge. When I suggested that one of the young pitchers on his staff strikes me as his polar opposite – deer-in-the-headlights instead of death stare – Stewart admitted that it’s not always easy to read makeup, especially before a player enters your organizational foxhole.

“Unfortunately, there is no real way to recognize that,” Stewart told me in Boca Raton. “When Orel Hershiser was coming up through the minor leagues, and even in his earlier years in the big leagues, you’d have never known that he was going to turn out to be the competitor that he was later on. It’s tough to look at a guy and say, ‘This guy is going to be a bulldog’ or ‘This guy is going to be a chihuahua.’ Of course, you want the bulldog. You want the guy who is going to be the last guy standing.”

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The team that signs Darren O’Day to a free agent contract will be bringing on board more than a capable reliever. They will also be adding a cerebral reliever. Knowing the sidewinder’s reputation, I asked him what he’d been mulling in his mind.

“There are a lot of things that make baseball beautiful that most people don’t see,” O’Day told me in September. “If you had access to someone like Buck Showalter and the little things he’s thinking about during a game, it would blow your mind. He notices things that most fans don’t.”

O’Day notices things as well, including subtle movement in the batter’s box.

“Earlier this year, Oliver Drake got Josh Donaldson out on a splitter,” recalled the righty. “He’s got a plus splitter and he got Donaldson to swing at a few of them in the dirt. The next day, he got him to swing at another one in the dirt. Before the second pitch of the at bat, Donaldson scooted up about a foot in the box. Drake threw him the same split, down in the zone, and Donaldson hit it up the middle for a single. Little things like that, that most people miss. That’s what I’ve thinking about.”

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Per esteemed analyst Brian Cartwright, Roberto Clemente threw out 102 batters attempting to stretch hits. Behind him were Tony Gwynn (71), Minnie Minoso (70), Carl Yastrzemski (65), and Hank Aaron (63).

Per Bill Chuck of Gammons Daily, Jesse Orosco holds the record for most pitching appearances without allowing a baserunner, 416. Mariano Rivera made 415 appearances without allowing a baserunner.

On November 17, 1954, the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees consummated a trade that involved 17 players, eight of whom were PTBNL. Among those switching sides were Don Larsen, Gus Triandos, “Bullet Bob” Turley, and Gene Woodling.

On this date in 2006, Joe Girardi was named National League Manager of the Year. Girardi was unemployed at the time, as the Marlins had fired him in early October.