By Jenny Masters
The Phillies got swept out by the Braves last night in Atlanta, slamming the door on their faint playoff hopes and ensuring a complete decade has passed since the Phils had a Red October.
Just to put it into context, the last play the Phils made in the playoffs occurred in 2011, when they won 102 games but were knocked out in the first round by the St. Louis Cardinals.
And the last out in the fifth game was made by Ryan Howard, who tore his Achilles tendon trying to get out of the batter’s box.
That is what is called a metaphor.
The Phils have been in the weeds ever since.
Dave Dombrowski has taken the first step in a rebuild of the player development area by hiring Preston Mattingly to run it.
Good luck with that.
It is going to take years to turn around what The Athletic’s Matt Gelb calls a “toxic” vulture:
Multiple members of the organization described a “toxic” culture in player development. There was backstabbing and browbeating. There were not just mixed messages, but messages that were designed to mute certain employees. There was working for credit — and credit only — and those who fell into job-preservation mode. There were people, both tenured and newer employees, who no longer felt empowered to coach. Player development blamed scouting for a lack of talent and scouting blamed player development for a lack of progression. Bryan Minniti, who was fired in August, was in charge of both departments. The players were caught in it all — cogs in an organization that could not articulate an actual player-development philosophy.
The Phillies, under Andy MacPhail and Matt Klentak, invested millions in technology to advance the farm system. The organization was far behind and attempted to take a shortcut by latching onto Driveline Baseball, a trendy think tank in suburban Seattle that specializes in velocity training for pitchers and hitters. The Phillies hired people associated with Driveline and entered into an exclusive and expensive agreement with the company that allowed for in-person and remote assessments, access to consultants, and educational materials. That agreement will soon expire, according to sources, and it will not be renewed.
The Phillies, a team executive said, discovered the Driveline culture did not embody the kind the Phillies wanted in their farm system. Feedback was handed down and rarely traveled up. Perspectives that challenged Driveline precepts were not considered valid and, worse, not respected. The Phillies made dozens of staff changes, but important holdovers were asked to do things they weren’t capable of doing, or just did not want to do because they had contempt for the person telling them to do it, according to team sources. Grudges festered both ways.
But Driveline was not the main problem, some inside the organization insist. It was a symptom of a larger issue: The Phillies had no identity in player development because they were trying to be everything while not doing anything well.
The Phillies on Wednesday introduced Preston Mattingly as the franchise’s next director of player development. Mattingly, 34, has been around high-level baseball all his life but he has never run a department, let alone a department the size of an entire minor-league system. In the coming weeks, Mattingly is expected to enact comprehensive changes.
