From the beginning, juggling position player depth was going to be a massive challenge for Gabe Kapler. He has four outfielders for three spots, five infielders for four spots, and two catchers the Phillies want to get reps.
Creating these lineups has become a collaborative, proactive effort. Kapler isn’t scribbling down names the minuteplayers arrive at the ballpark. No, these lineup cards are initiallydiscussed and generated by the coaching staff and personnel at least a week in advance.
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“I think as we get more comfortable with our data, as we get more comfortable with the league, it could turn into something like 10 [days], but we will never be married to it because there’s so many variables and so many things that might change our approach to lineup construction that we don’t want to lock ourselves in,” Kapler said on Opening Day. “We also want to be able to convey to our players that in our vision, you have eight of the next 10.”
“We’re having conversations with everybody around the coaching room,” Kapler continued. “We’re having conversations with people in various departments. We think about things very collaboratively and I’m very proud of that. There were a lot of people who weighed in on some of these decisions and I love that. We’re not shying away from it, we are embracing it.”
Especially with a rotating cast of characters like the Phillies have, communicating these lineup decisions is key. Explaining to young players why they are or are not playing — especially when they all may have legitimate claims to playing time — is a perpetual task on Kapler’s to-do list that he can never check off.
“We let players know what the plan was for them on that given day or for the next several days,” said general manager Matt Klentak this week in New York. “I would expect that communication style will continue to exist throughout the season.”
Many decisions a manager makes go largely unnoticed. But Klentak and Kapler know that these decisions will be inspected and criticized about as much as any the manager makes, especially sincethe type of lineup flexibility they’re employing isn’t common within this organization.
“Obviously, early in the season, lineup construction is going to be scrutinized more heavily because this is new,” Klentak said. “We know that.”
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After two series, and a 1-4 start to the season, here’s what we know about how the lineup and batting order are constructed.
Lineup staples
Three spots in the lineup haven’t changed in the Phillies’ first five games. César Hernández has led off and played second every game, Carlos Santana has hit in the two-hole and played first, and Rhys Hoskins has hit cleanup and started in left. These are the Phillies’ three most consistent hitters. They should be playing every day, and they are. The second and fourth spots were areas of importance for Kapler coming in, and he vowed to put the club’s two best hitters there. Hernández is hitting .286 and getting on base just shy of a .350 clip from the leadoff-role, as expected. He’s a natural atop the lineup.
Outfield
The outfield is where things get interesting. It seemed, entering the season, that Hoskins and Odúbel Herrera were good bets to play just about every day. That would have relegated Aaron Altherr and Nick Williams to a platoon split in right field. But while the Phillies have followed through in that regard with Hoskins, they’ve given Herrera days off to allow Altherr and Williams time together. Altherr’s above-average range in center makes this possible, even with Hoskins manning left field. Before the pitching controversies in Atlanta, Kapler made headlines by sitting Herrera on Opening Day with Aaron Nola on the mound. Herrera sat again on Wednesday in New York when Nolamadehis second start. This appears to be less motivated by the opposing pitcher and more dictated by the Phillies’ starter of the day.
Nola is the only Phillies starter who posted an above-average ground ball rate last season. Sitting Herrera with Nola on the bump seems built around this. With Nola generating more grounders — he ranked in the 80th percentile among qualified starters in ground ball percentage last season — outfield defense becomes a bit less important. Given that, the Phils are sacrificing some outfield defense when Nola pitches to give Altherr and Williams more time.
Other factors are present in these decisions too. The Phillies are taking the opposing starter’s arsenal into account and matching it with their hitters who have complementary swing planes. That may have been another reason to sit Herrera on Opening Day. Braves starter Julio Teheran is one of the more extreme fly-ball pitchers in baseball. Herrera is much better against ground-ball pitchers, or even pitchers who allow average fly-ball and ground-ball rates, than he is against those who allow lots of balls in the air.
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While small samples of batter vs. pitcher matchups generally aren’t predictive statistically speaking, the coaching staff is looking at them on a more granular level, looking for nuggets of information to help direct these decisions.
“We’re always looking at what actually happened in those at-bats,” Kapler said before the Atlanta series began. “In fact, I was talking to [pitching coach Rick Kranitz] before the game and we were talking about one of their players. There was somebody who was 1-for-5 against one of their guys. Did we look at those at-bats? How hard was the contact and were those swings really comfortable?”
Behind the dish, the Phillies intended to split the first six games evenly between Jorge Alfaro and Andrew Knapp. The snow-out Monday stole a start from Alfaro,givingKnapp three ofthe firstfive. As Knapp is a switch-hitter who bats better from the left side, and Alfaro hits right-handed, the Phillies seem to be determining playing time by which type of hitter the opposingpitcher struggles against more.
The two starters who had the most favorable splits againstright-handed hitterswere the Braves’ Brandon McCarthy and the Mets’ Matt Harvey. Alfaro got the start both nights. On the other three nights against pitchers who struggled more against left-handers, Knapp got the nod.
Scott Kingery has logged his three starts at shortstop and third base, and moved mid-game to the outfield in the 15-2 blowout to the Braves. With more information, we should get a better sense of when the Phillies choose to use him to spell Maikel Franco and J.P. Crawford, both of whom are struggling mightily to begin the season. The pair of infielders are 2-for-26 thus far.
Pitcher’s spot
Another place Kapler vowed to find value was at the bottom of the order. The Phillies have batted the pitcher eighth twice this season, and are one of just two teams who have done so more than once. Only the Mets, who hit the pitcher eighth in all five of their games so far,have done it more often.Crawford is the hitter who the Phils have bumped to ninth on both of those occasions. The move makes sense in theory, given Crawford’s ability to get on base, although he’s struggled to do so this year. Kapler seems to like Nola hitting ninth, but the only other games that Crawford has started, he’s hit ninth instead of the pitcher.
Lineup decisions are sure to draw the ire of fans one way or another, and that outrage is likely intensified given how unusual these tactics are within this organization. That’s the price to pay for having a deep roster of hitters that people want to watch. The GM and the manager both understand this is the case.
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Outside factors will begin to impact this decision-making as well. Injuries, at some point, will knock off options for periods of time.
“While we hope all of our players will be healthy all year long, the likelihood is someone will get hurt at some point,” Klentak said. “Some of these decisions will become easier. For right now, while everybody is healthy and producing, Kap and his group are going to make the best decisions on a daily basis of who gives us the best chance to win on that day.”
“While everybody is healthy and it’s early in the season and the stat sheet is pretty bare, we recognize that it will be scrutinized more heavily,” Klentak said. “As the season progresses and all of our players are receiving a lot of at-bats and a lot of playing time, we feel confident our players aregoing to be playing well. Our team will be playing well. In the end, everybody will be happy.”
In a perfect world, yes. The Phillies have not yet inhabited that world in 2018.
Top photo: Rich Schultz/Getty Images
