The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
After tearing down a dynasty, Phillies hope to start new one
CLEARWATER, FLA. » For the 2016 Philadelphia Phillies, the most momentous day of the year came 32 days after their season ended. On November 3, the first day it was possible to do so, the Phillies declined the 2017 option on the contract of first baseman Ryan Howard — and happily paid him a $10 million buyout — thus extricating the franchise from one of the worst contracts in baseball history, as well as severing the final tie to their 2007-11 mini-dynasty that produced five straight National League East titles and the 2008 World Series championship.
But symbolism aside, the Howard move was neither an ending nor a beginning, but merely a transactional formality — a data point along the philosophical and cultural shift that has been taking place within the Phillies’ organization for a couple of years now, and that is visible everywhere this spring at Spectrum Field as the team prepares for 2017.
Even as the Phillies try to move beyond their last great era, one built around a homegrown core that came of age together, they are trying to construct the next one.
“Who doesn’t want that?” said 28-year-old catcher Cameron Rupp, one of only a handful of Phillies who have been around long enough to have been teammates with not only Howard, but also Chase Utley, Carlos Ruiz, Jimmy Rollins and Cole Hamels, before the big teardown began.
“That’s what you set out to do from time you’re a kid — win a World Series, win division titles,” Rupp said. “Now that they’re all gone — I don’t want to say there’s pressure, but that’s what we want to be. We want to be the next core group that they build a dynasty or a winning tradition around.”
The current front office regime that took over in the second half of 2015 — president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail and general manager Matt Klentak — inherited the dirty job of getting the franchise out from under the excesses of the past, a job that required, among other moves, the trading of Hamels, Utley and Ruiz, and ultimately the buyout of Howard. Though they speak diplomatically about it now, it has been a painful process, bringing a 99-loss season in 2015 and 91 losses last year.
“In the past they were a little bit of a victim of their own success,” MacPhail said Friday. “They won five division titles in a row. They won a World Series. They had every reason to think they had this thing wired. And you start signing free agents, and it becomes harder to get talent through the system. And they just ran into dry spell. If there’s been one criticism, it’s that they tried to keep the party going too long. There are a lot worse crimes to be accused of in baseball than devoting too much of your payroll to retaining your players. They kept that core together. Unfortunately, health and age took its toll.”
The changes to the major league roster were the most visible, but there have been other equally significant shifts behind the scenes: Once regarded as one of the least sabermetrically inclined franchises in the game, the Phillies, under MacPhail and Klentak, now have a nine-person analytics department, including hires poached from Google, Northrop Grumman, Baseball Prospectus and a couple of smaller Silicon Valley start-ups.
“It was clear that ownership was very interested in analytics and concerned that the Phillies were not embracing it to the extent they should,” MacPhail, 63, said. “So it was obvious that, ‘Gee, if you want this gig you ought to have an analytical bent.’ I can’t pretend at my age that I am analytically bent. But I’m interested in doing everything as well as we can. And I knew Matt well enough to know he’s the same way. You could call it being a generalist.”
Not surprisingly, the Phillies chose the same path blazed by the successful rebuilds of teams such as the Astros and Cubs — who downsized at the big league level and stockpiled prospects, then built back up again (and spent big money to supplement the roster), when the time was right. Last year, on their way to a 71-91, fourth-place finish, the Phillies fielded the second-youngest team in the game, with an average age of 26.9 years.