Phillies pitching coach Chris Young will not return to the organization in that capacity next season, MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki reports. He’s been offered a different position within the organization. Phillies fans have anxiously been awaiting word on the fate of manager Gabe Kapler, but Zolecki adds that no decision is expected on that front until next week. The Phils will, however, be in the market for a new hitting coach, as franchise legend Charlie Manuel only stepped in as interim hitting coach as a favor late in the year and isn’t expected to return in that role next year.
The ousting of Young is the first domino to fall in what could be a series of substantial changes in the Philadelphia dugout, depending on the fate of Kapler. It’s typical for organizations that hire new managers to give the incoming replacement some say over his coaching staff, so a managerial change could be accompanied by other new faces.
Young, not to be confused with the former big league pitcher of the same name (or the former big league outfielder, for that matter), spent just one season as the pitching coach with the Phillies. Matt Gelb and Meghan Montemurro of The Athletic recently chronicled some of the ups and downs in Young’s first year on the job (subscription required). Furthermore, as Gelb and Montemurro explored at great length in a fascinating read for Phils fans, fear of losing Young led to the dismissal of former pitching coach Rick Kranitz. Young had served as Kranitz’s assistant pitching coach in ’18, but when other clubs called about interviewing him last winter, the Phillies parted ways with Kranitz and promoted Young to ensure they could retain him, per that Athletic report.
The 2019 Phillies pitching staff saw its strikeout and walk percentages, ERA, FIP and xFIP all go the wrong direction, although that can’t be pinned on Young alone. The Phils sent an entire Major League bullpen’s worth of quality relievers — David Robertson, Seranthony Dominguez, Pat Neshek, Tommy Hunter, Edubray Ramos, Victor Arano and Adam Morgan, among others — to the injured list for significant periods of time. The lack of depth in the ’pen led to questionable relievers being deployed with greater frequency and didn’t do the Phillies any favors when trying to squeeze extra innings out of the rotation to compensate. That said, Young also has to shoulder some blame for steps back from several of the team’s starters, some of which stemmed from philosophical changes that didn’t prove fruitful.
As is the case with managers throughout the league, there’ll be no shortage of competition for the Phillies in their quest for a new pitching coach. We’ve already seen the Pirates, Diamondbacks, Mariners and Angels part ways with their respective pitching coaches, and the Mets will likely be on the lookout for a new pitching coach to step in for interim coach Phil Regan. (Dave Eiland was fired in June.) Given the high rate of dugout turnover throughout the league already, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see additional pitching coach vacancies arrive in the coming weeks.
i wolnt be too bothered now if Kapler isnt gone.
I didn’t like the move when they did it. Those young pitchers responded well to Krantiz and it worked. Sadly, Kapler wanted him gone in favor of the ANALytics.
Look where it got them.
I’d have to disagree. Kapler MUST go. As much as I would love to see Kapler succeeed, it’s not going to happen in Philadelphia. He’s a dead duck as Tito was back in 2000. The Phillies already need a new pitching and hitting coach. clean house and start over. Hopefully this time they bring in an experienced manager who can build a quality staff.
Blows my mind when people shoot on analytics, when its the only thing winning?
You mean the Dodgers and Astros use analytics?
Starting pitching, timely hitting, and all starts playing at an all star level is what usually leads to wins.
The application of analytics at the proper moment is what’s key. For every DRS stat, we also have a UZR; it doesn’t take analytics to show us teams like the Dodgers, Astros, and Yankees are chocked full of All-Star players.
The key of analytics is being able to comb through the replacement level guys to see which can give you the greatest WAR they can. Great players playing at the right time is what wins not analytics.
You do realize a lot of those teams built all stars through analytics, right?
ANALytics isn’t winning when it comes to attendance and viewership. The game has gotten flat and boring. As evidenced by the 6.7% drop in overall attendance the last two seasons.
Yawn.
Agreed. Phil’s beat writer Jim Salisbury did a podcast with Corey Seidman and Ricky Botallico last week. In regards to Kapler, Salisbury said he had an anonymous Phils player speak for some of the players say to him, “they need to stop ‘effing with us.” when asked about how much Kapler and his staff give them in terms of analytics.
The staff overdosed the players on analytics and got in the way. The Phillies saw more pitches than any other team in baseball and were 13th in the NL in runs scored. It’s amazing they even went 81-81. Hoskins leads all of baseball in balls hit in the air since the start of 2018, no wonder he’s hitting .237.
Scott Kingery and Zach Eflin, two minor success stories for the year with the team both have the same thing in common. They threw the analytics of Kapler and Young respectively out the window and focused on their own habits and what feels comfortable to them. Kingery faced more 0-2 counts than anyone in MLB in 2018, he stopped worrying about pitches taken and attacked fastballs early in counts and every offensive stat of his went up in 2019. Eflin was up and down and was taking Young’s pitching strategy of throwing high 4 seam fastballs which wasn’t his strength. Eflin was getting shelled. He told Young he’s going back to his old way of throwing more 2 seamers and pitching to contact. Behold, Eflin starts putting up lines of 7-8IP 2 ER or fewer more consistently.
I’m not saying analytics are evil, just that Kapler tried to force so many round pegs into square holes. Coaching is being able to detail and work with each player’s own individual strengths not trying to fit everyone into the same Ike mood style of hitting/pitching the Phillies tried in 2019.
Jett….wish I could give more than one “thumbs-up”
Wish I could upvote this more.
Well put, Jett!!!…Eflin’s success after ditching Young’s philosophy was the final nail in his coffin…I know analytics have their place, but sometimes you gotta go with your eyeballs and gut…
Usually I yell at people who post comments that long but I enjoyed that. Something must be wrong with me today.
I agree with most of your post, however the Phils were 8th in the NL in runs and 14th in MLB. So they were more like an average offense.
I’d like to point out, as someone who follows analytics through BBREF and Fangraphs, that Gabe Kapler actually appears to *IGNORE* advanced metrics. Please don’t complain about analytics when the failing manager in question doesn’t actually utilize them.
Rick Kranitz would be posting a meme of Kermit sipping Lipton if he wasn’t trying to figure out the bullpen. #playoffproblems
HAHHAHAHHA
Rather have playoff problems that playing golf in October. It was a big mistaker by the Phillies to let Kranny go and he’s proved that in ATL.
I think it’s fair to say the mistake was letting Krantiz go and giving the job to Young. Young was a scout who had zero coaching experience at any level. The same pitching staff spiraled in 2018 under Kranitz so it can’t be laid 100% at Young’s feet. The 60-80% of the starting rotation doesn’t belong in a contending team’s rotation. Kranitz is a better coach than Young but it’s not as if the Phillies lost a top 5 pitching coach. The Braves rotation may not have a starter as talented that Nola but their depth and ability as a whole staff is steps ahead of the Phils right now.
he deserves mad credit for getting their pen through the Luke Jackson closing era.
might as well dump Kapler at this point. Phillies were world series or bust with all the moves they made this offseason, and all the money they threw at free agents, and they couldn’t even make the playoffs. I know injuries played a part in it, but they under performed in many aspects–manager needs to take some blame as well.
They got better, but to believe they were WS bound given the strength of the Mets, Braves, and Nats, would be folly. I personally believed some of the analysts that they would win 85 games.
I’m surprised, given the injuries, that they even made it to .500.
The Phil’s should hire Ray Searage immediately.
the most obviously washed up pitching coach? no thanks.
My prediction is Gott becomes pitching coach and the over/under on the number of times Kruk calls Gott “a very funny man” stands at 185.
I love Kruk, but he’s gotta go too. They should hire Jimmy Rollins to work full-time in the booth. At the very least keep Kruk, but replace Schmidt, for as great a player that he was, he’s as bad an announcer.
I don’t think I can disagree with you more. But of course everyone has a different opinion. Rollins doesn’t seem to be able to shut up. Talks over the action too much. Kruk, Davis and McCarthy do well. I will agree with you on Schmidt though.
The one who needs to go is T-Mac. The guy stepped in admirably after HK’s death, but the guy is awful. He forgets the counts, how many outs there are, consistently mispronounces simple words. He’s terrible at play by play. He was on the radio, the listener would have no clue as to what is going on.
I love J-Roll myself, but I believe he has his hands in too many endeavors to commit full time to the booth. I honestly hope Brad Lidge comes in at some point. He’s great on his radio show.
As for Kruk, I like him as the color guy. I find him funny personally. Eespecially with as maddening as the Kapler regime has been. I’d like to see what how he calls them when they win consistently.
I feel like T-Mac is here to stay, so there’s no point of complaining about him. He’a bad, but he’s not the worst. Hopefully Murph never gets promoted, he’s good when he’s in the stands, but awful at play-by-play. Kruk is good during Postgame Live, especially with Bottalico. I wish they would have kept Scott Graham, I seem to remember liking him.
T-Mac doesn’t even finish out the season with the Phillies because of commitments to other sports. Can you imagine that being the case with Harry Kalas and those before him.. T-Mac is clearly expendable if they find a decent replacement. But my fear is that nothing will change. The Phillies like to keep their cronies around as long as possible (Chris Wheeler as a broadcasting example).. I don’t know what happened with Scott Graham but he had a great voice and didn’t fool around like a frat boy. T-Mac seems like a nice, personable guy but he just seems bored calling baseball games.
Jimmy Rollins,love him but he talks way to much.
Maybe they should have chosen the Chris Young that was a former player to be their pitching coach. He was an Ivy League grad and pitched in the majors for 13 years despite not having overpowering stuff.
guys who thrive without velocity are as good for pitching coaches as base stealers who arent fast as 1B coaches. i know its a layman’s perspective, but do you not want the guy who knew how ro overacheive coaching your players to do the same?
Absolutely right. I remember Rickey Henderson saying in an interview one time that stealing wasn’t about speed. It was about knowing reading the situation and knowing when to steal.
I be that was one reason Davey Lopes was so successful as a 1B coach. Makes me even more upset about Doc. He knew what to throw and when to throw it. His work with the Phillies youngsters had Pitching Coach all over it.
Moyer would never have survived without that either.
That’s a potential choice there, Moyer. Also Utley as a first base coach would be a nice choice – name recognition and the single season record for steals in a 100% SB% season.
Easy for Ricky to say when he had speed
How many guys with speed in today’s game can’t steal a bag worth a squat?
Too many.
Well, that’s 50% of the news I wanted to see. Gilligan is gone, let’s make it the Skipper too.
I’d like folks trashing analytics to explain exactly what it is they don’t like about it. To my knowledge no coach in baseball prints out Excel spreadsheets on letter paper, wads them up into a ball, and lodges them in players’ tracheas. So when we say players are smothered with analytics, what exactly does that mean?
I’m definitely not saying there isn’t a balance, and I’m definitely not saying that there aren’t coaches that overdo it, but the sweeping generalizations are a bit much.
Kapler does exactly what you say. im not completely anti-analytics, but i think they are well overused, and Gabe is exhibit A. he lives or dies by the spreadsheet, taking pitchers out at awkward times and sticking with guys like VV and Pivetta simply because the spreadsheet said they “should” be good. he puts ice-cold players in key spots in the order simply because they are hitting the ball hard, and starts guys like Miller and Rodriguez, frequently at the few positions they can’t play. for everything that is wrong with analytics, there is a corresponding Kapler screw-up. all the Phils need is a coach who knows that analytics is a supplementary piece that should be used to identify “potential” hidden gems, make minor lineup tweaks, and to help individual players try to improve their game – if the tweaks in question work for them. unfortunately Kapler does not know this, ans therefore must be replaced.
Hoping Ray Searage is brought in to interview for pitching coach.
Ray Searage would be a big improvement but he’s got to have something to work with. Other than Nola and Eflin I don’t see anyone. The bullpen is garbage you could replace everyone and not lose a thing.
Scouting and player development needs improvement. They aren’t giving the big club anything they can use.
Thank Baby Jesus
I read where Rich Dubee. Might be considered again. Hmm….
Phils need to ditch Krapler and bring in Mike Scioscia. He would be 2020’s version of Dallas Green. Similar situation this year to to 1979. Green replaced Ozark whom had let the clubhouse become a country club with no discipline just like Krapler lets everyone do as they please because he’s afraid to hurt their feelings. Scioscia is one of the last of the true baseball managers still young enough to do the job. I think he’d mesh well with the fans and shock the clubhouse out of their analytics induced coma. If Klentak doesn’t like it he can go too. His approach to assessing pitching is abysmal and he is too caught up in his smarter than thou number worshipping ways to even understand what he’s doing wrong. I still think this team has the potential to be a playoff team and World Series contender in 2020 if they make the right moves regarding pitching and get back to basics.