Phillies bench coach Larry Bowa is never shy about sharing his opinions. (Frank Klose/SportsTalkPhilly)
By Tim Kelly, Sports Talk Philly editor 
If you thought a two-game winning streak was enough to make Philadelphia Phillies bench coach Larry Bowa feel good about what's otherwise been a disastrous first half of the 2017 season, you were wrong.
Bowa joined Mike Missanelli on 97.5 The Fanatic this afternoon, and when asked how he's pushing through what's been a rough season, Bowa gave this answer:
"We've had guys that have gone backwards this year. The industry — when I say the industry I'm talking about the entire baseball industry — I think we are getting caught up in velocity off the bat, spin ratio from the pitcher, hitting in bad luck. To me, these have nothing to do with winning and losing. You need character, you need guys that are fighters – sabermetrics do not measure that. I do not care what organization it is, you need to get guys that are going to stick their nose in the dirt, that are going to battle tooth-and-nail for 27 outs, nine innings, and the game has changed so much that everything is centered around the sabermetrics part of the game. And, I agree there are certain things about sabermetrics that are very helpful for the industry, but when you put together a team and you concentrate 100 percent on spin ratio, exit velocity, hitting in bad luck – I never heard of that, hitting in bad luck. Over the course of 162 games, Mike, everything evens out."
Naturally, Missanelli followed up this answer from Bowa, which felt as though it was something Bowa planned to say in the interview regardless of whether he was prompted, by asking if Bowa thinks that the Phillies organization specifically is relying too much on advanced statistics:
"I'm saying baseball in general is relying too much on sabermetrics. I think there's a certain part of it that you use, and other parts just go a lot on makeup, a guy's heart, a guy's desire. Those numbers cannot be measured."
So Bowa didn't outright say that he thinks the Phillies specifically are using sabermetrics too much, but you got the impression that off-the-record, that's how he feels.
If that is how Bowa feels, he's not alone. Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports noted in a column last week that some think that general manager Matt Klentak is too analytics-driven:
The Astros’ Jeff Luhnow, Royals’ Dayton Moore and Pirates’ Neal Huntington are among the other GMs who endured similar skepticism, only to succeed over time. Klentak is less experienced than many GMs were at the time they took over — he had not previously run a department — and the perception among some in the industry is that he is overly reliant on analytics. (Klentak consistently has said that he uses all of the information available to him.)
Here's the thing: Klentak's strong focus on analytics probably was the biggest reason that he was hired as general manager. His prior connections to president Andy MacPhail certainly helped his case, but if the Phillies wanted someone who simply had a great resume and seemed to be a well-rounded candidate, J.J. Picollo would be their general manager now. But John Middleton was bothered by the (probably correct) perception that under the previous regime, the Phillies had fallen behind the curve in terms of embracing next-level tools. So, Klentak was hired to be the team's general manager, the team increased the size of their analytics department and created a new analytics system called "PHIL."
If Klentak's moves are heavily analytics-driven, that would seem to be what the Phillies wanted when they hired him. No one is suggesting that instincts shouldn't be taken into account when making decisions, but it is true that often advanced statistics can predict a decline or hot-streak before instincts can.
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MacPhail, who is more of an old-school baseball executive, in theory, should balance Klentak out a bit.
Bowa actually probably isn't anti-sabermetrics. But as someone who has been around the game for as long as he has, he seems to wish they didn't have as much of an influence. With mounting pressure on manager Pete Mackanin and his coaching staff, this may have been Bowa's way of suggesting that the team should alter its approach a bit. It's entirely possibly, if not likely, that the Phillies will make some changes to their coaching staff after the 2017 season. Without a ton of job security moving forward, Bowa may want to go down swinging with the bat that picked, as opposed to a bat that Klentak and the front-office feel like makes the most sense for him to use. That's at least the vibe you got from listening to him this afternoon.
The biggest problem for all parties involved is that Klentak inherited a less than ideal situation, and much of the young talent that he inherited hasn't been able to stay healthy and/or produce at the clip expected. How the team goes about trying to correct the disappointing seasons of Maikel Franco, Vince Velasquez and Odubel Herrera, among others, seems to be where there is disagreement.
