For Joe Girardi, ‘What’s Next’ Beats ‘What If?’

“We didn’t use some of these things,” Girardi said. “Now the Yankees are very analytical, and I love that stuff — I was Binder Joe, people made fun of it — but some of the other technologies that are out there, I learned. When you’re around 16- and 17-year-old kids, you’re learning that they communicate different than maybe a Derek Jeter or a Jorge Posada did. It’s a couple different generations. So you get to be around it and you get an idea — ‘OK, this is coming, too.’ You need to be prepared for this.”

The Phillies are a largely veteran team, with high expectations. They struggled down the stretch in each of the last two seasons under Gabe Kapler, finishing 80-82 in 2018 after leading the National League East as late as Aug. 12 and 81-81 in 2019. General Manager Matt Klentak wanted to keep Kapler, but the owner, John Middleton, said he was concerned about the late-season collapses and wanted a more experienced leader.

Kapler, who now manages the San Francisco Giants, was in his first major-league managing job with the Phillies and relied heavily on modern metrics. The Phillies had been late to baseball’s data revolution, then seemed to embrace it too tightly. In Girardi, Middleton sees a better balance.

“We talked very intelligently about how analytics tells you what happens over a thousand or 10,000 events, but it doesn’t mean that on a Tuesday night in July in the bottom of the seventh inning — this player against this pitcher, with their thousands of data points — something’s not going on that should push you in another direction,” Middleton said.

“Because that decision on a Tuesday night in July, it’s about that particular moment, and what’s going on with that game and that player. Has he been hitting well, or is he scuffling? Has that pitcher been throwing lights-out for the last two weeks? That gets lost in the thousand data points of analytics, and you have to be smart enough to understand that.”

Middleton has authorized lucrative free-agent deals in each of the last three off-seasons, with outfielder Bryce Harper and starting pitchers Jake Arrieta and Zack Wheeler all averaging more than $23 million per season. The former Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius signed for one year and $14 million this winter, and left fielder Andrew McCutchen enters the second season of a three-year, $50 million deal.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/sports/baseball/phillies-joe-girardi-yankees.html