During the final years of Ruben Amaro Jr.’s tenure as general manager, the Philadelphia Phillies had the reputation of being well behind the curve in the area of sabermetrics. Last year, ESPN The Magazine ranked the Phils dead last (122 of 122) among all major North American sports franchises in terms of their use of analytics.
These observations weren’t just coming from outside of the organization, either. Since stepping into the limelight, John Middleton has emphasized that he wants the organization to improve its statistical analysis.
Amaro, who dramatically changed roles this offseason to first base coach of the Boston Red Sox, is now saying that the Phils’ analytic disadvantage was overblown. From an interview with FanGraphs’ David Laurila:
“I’ve always believed in analytics. I just didn’t make it all public (in Philadelphia). I thought it was more of a competitive advantage for me to keep our thought-process about analytics closer to the vest. We didn’t boast about what we were doing — we didn’t discuss it openly — because I didn’t think it was anybody’s business but our own as to how we evaluated.”
If what the Phillies were doing can be considered a competitive advantage, that is certainly news to the rest of Major League Baseball. Under Andy MacPhail and Matt Klentak, the Phillies (with a fancy new computer!) will attempt to catch up to the rest of the league while trying to find the right balance between new-age and old school scouting techniques.
As for Amaro, he landed with an organization that is moving the other way on the sabermetric spectrum. Ready for a new challenge, he believes his time in Philadelphia has been at least slightly mischaracterized:
“We got a little more aggressive, as far as building our analytics department, probably three-or-so years ago. It did maybe become a little more public then. But that doesn’t mean we weren’t utilizing analytics to some degree earlier than that.”
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