By Tim Kelly, Sports Talk Philly editor 
Philadelphia Phillies bench coach Larry Bowa joined 97.5 The Fanatic's Mike Missanelli last Thursday, and suggested that he believes that baseball focuses too much on Sabermetrics. Not a person on the planet believed that Bowa wasn't suggesting that the Phillies specifically value analytics too much. It led to me to wonder whether there is a growing disconnect between general manager Matt Klentak's front-office and manager Pete Mackanin's coaching staff.
Klentak joined Missanelli for an extended interview Thursday, and said that he doesn't believe that the Phillies place too much of an emphasis on Sabermetrics:
"I don't think so, but again, I probably wouldn't since I'm the one calling the shots around here. But, I don't. My tagline and the narrative that I've tried to promote here really since the day I got here is not that 'we're about analytics', it's that 'we're about everything.' And we have to look at all the information to make our best decisions. And we've added scouts – we just finished our amateur draft process and [Phillies director of amateur scouting] Johnny Almaraz, he's a scout's scout. That's what he's been for his whole life, born in this game, he's been a scout forever. Johnny's ability to manage all the information and look at all the different components to make decisions in the draft, that's what we're about. It's not about just looking at someone's walk-rate or exit velocity, or any one of those things. We will look at those in conjunction with everything else and the 20 different looks that our scouts have gotten at [2017 first round pick] Adam Haseley, for example, and put all that together and make the best collective decision. And that's true in the draft, that's true in player development, that's true in professional scouting, or when we are trying to figure out who to sign as free-agents or make trades with. That's the way we are gonna go about it, that's the way we've been going about it, it's the way we're going to continue going about it. And the area that this organization needed to put some focus on over the last two years to catch up to the industry was on the analytics, so that's the one that gets a lot of the attention. But I don't think that we put too much stock in that at all. I think we have a very healthy balance of looking at everything."
It's easy enough to say that perhaps the front-office and coaching staff have differences of opinions on how much of a role Sabermetrics should play in the team's day-to-day operations, but can still co-exist. But in Bowa's quote on Sabermetrics, he scoffed at specific metrics that Klentak had mentioned in another interview, which, at the very least, is a bad look:
Klentak on Franco on May 30: No, and we are committed to giving Maikel more time to get out of this. We believe in him, we have confidence that he will. There's a lot of indicators, whether you are looking at his exit velocity and his launch angles. Again, I don't want to say that he's been a victim of bad luck by itself, that's not the only thing. But there are reasons to believe that he may get out of this. And that could happen today, it could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week — we don't know. But we are committed to showing confidence in this kid and finding out what he can do, and that's really the end of it. Right now, he's important to us and we need to show confidence in him and let him go out and play.
Bowa on Sabermetrics on June 29: 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."
Bowa isn't the only person to seemingly question whether the Phillies lean too much on Sabmertrics. Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports noted in a column last month that some think that 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.)
Perhaps these anonymous executives that Rosenthal spoke to have a point. Or perhaps they are scouting/instinct-driven executives that have disdain for the growing role that analytics play in the sport. The truth may lie somewhere in the middle.
Without being involved in team's day-to-day operations, it's hard to know whether Klentak's front-office does overvalue Sabermetrics. With many of the players at the major league level either signed or drafted during the Ruben Amaro Jr. era, it's also hard to know whether a heavy reliance on analytics, if one even exists, will lead to success for the Phillies.
What's clear is that the narrative of the Phillies being too analytics driven is very much out there. John Middleton seemed hell-bent on the front-office becoming more analytics driven after the previous regime had, as Klentak mentioned, fallen behind in that regard. Some seem to think they swung too far in the other direction.
