McCaffery: For young Phillies, winning was no minor thing
PHILADELPHIA » There will be the mascot, colorful and furry. There will be the reasonable snackbar prices. There will be the sing-alongs, the between-innings relay races, the cap giveaways and the postgame concerts.
There will be the instruction, intense and comprehensive. There will be the learned coaches. There will be the patience. There will be the development. There will be progress.
There will be all of that in minor-league baseball, where the oversized outfield message board is designed for the kiss-cam more than it ever will be for the score of the game. The game. The score. Who cares? The Phillies. They care. And it has shown in a surprisingly strong start to a season that could have gone either way.
“I think the culture that (player development director) Joe Jordan has created at the minorleague level here is as good as any in sports,” Gabe Kapler was saying Wednesday, before a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks. “They emphasize both development and winning, and winning as part of development.
“Sometimes, there are organizations that value the player development over the winning environment. And I think the Phillies look at it as the two things working in harmony.”
The Phillies accepted a mid-decade rebuilding mission. They had reasons. The core of their 2007-2011 N.L. East dynasty aged. They were cheap. They had used some farm-system pieces to buy major-league help. It was time. So they built, and as they did, they tried to make it sound important, occasionally trumpeting that one minor-league team was in a playoff, or another was fighting for a championship. To somebody, it probably mattered. Then again, it’s a good thing for the 2018 Phillies that Rhys Hoskins was one of those somebodies.
“I just think we learned how to win with a lot of the faces that are in here now,” Hoskins said. “We learned how to pick up each other in the late innings. We know how each other operates in certain situations. It’s chemistry, is really what it is. We were afforded the opportunity to do that at a couple levels in the minor leagues. So just that familiarity goes a long way.”
Among the teams for which Hoskins was made to wear a uniform with a pig or some such goofy logo was Lehigh Valley, which went 80-62 in 2017. He also played for 89-52 Reading in 2016, and for 79-58 Clearwater and 7365 Lakewood in 2015. Save for a 33-43 experience in 2014 at low-level Williamsport, he’d been conditioned in the farm system to win baseball games.
He was not alone. Scott Kingery played parts of seasons on minor-league teams that were 73-65, 8254, 89-52, 72-68 and 8062. J.P. Crawford was similarly successful. Jorge Alfaro, too. But none of that was designed to send baseball fans onto the boulevards of Lakewood, New Jersey, screaming in delight. It was designed to send baseball fans, some day, to Frankford and Cottman, screaming in delight.
“I definitely think it is very helpful that a good group of guys in here played together and kind of had time to learn how to play together,” Kingery said. “And it is helpful to kind of know what each other is going to do on the field. It’s just that chemistry that we built coming up in the system together, and having that winning culture in the minors.
“And I think that definitely kind of carries over to here.”
That’s how it has seemed, at least early. The Phillies won 14 of their first 21, and nine of their first 10 at home in a new-look clubhouse with many players who were not around when the organizational rebuilding came at a cost of the major-league record. Even Dusty Wathan, who’d managed some of them in Reading and Allentown, was promoted to the bigs, as the third-base coach.
“That’s awesome,” Kingery said. “Because most of the guys played for him in Double A and Triple A. And to have him on the field every day helps. Because it is good to have a familiar face and a guy you played for.”
They played for him, and they were encouraged not just to succeed in the batting cage, but in the standings too.
“Of course, you want to win,” Hoskins said. “But we were given the op\opportunity to learn how we would respond in certain situations. And I think that’s pretty invaluable.”
It might not ensure that they win in September, against veterans who haven’t played a minor-league inning since fans asked for autographs, not selfies. But it helped nudge the Phillies to a decent start. And even if that would be one of those small samplesizes that Kapler rejects, it could provide aid if there is to be a race for a second wild-card.
“In the minors, we saw where guys would come up in a game and get a big hit,” Kingery said. “And that’s carried over to these games, where we have had a different guy stepping up every night.”
As plans go, it was a winner.
Contact Jack McCaffery @jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery