FanPost

Some General Thoughts on Player Development (Relevant but not Specific to Phillies)

My thinking on this is admittedly still vague and semi-formed, so be gentle. Hopefully it's enough to get a discussion going at least.

One of my college classmates once told me a story that had been related to him by a high school friend of his at the Berkeley school of engineering, which may very well be apocryphal. Supposedly, in his speech at orientation, the engineering dean had told his incoming freshmen, "It's not our job to teach you. Our goal isn't to help you succeed; it's to help you fail. Society doesn't need this many engineers. Those of you who deserve to make it will succeed on your own: in fact, you'll shine all the more. The rest of you can transfer to liberal arts."

That kind of viewpoint might be unethical or incorrect, but it's not illogical. Maybe there is a tradeoff between maximizing the number of people who succeed, and maximizing the amount of success achieved by those who do succeed. Some of you might remember a very extreme version of this dilemma portrayed in the film Whiplash. Maybe true greatness is most likely to blossom when more obstacles are put in its path.

There are non-pedagogical parallels too. For example, the correlation between high pitch counts and career-altering arm injuries is pretty unassailable at this point, but that doesn't necessarily disprove what the Nolan Ryans of the world have theorized: that pitch count limits on young pitchers are the reason why there are no true Ryan-or-Seaver-esque, 300-inning "horses" anymore. It could be that putting young arms through the meat grinder both increases their risk of injury and enables those lucky enough to survive unscathed to take their careers to the next level.

So here's how I think this relates to the Phillies. It isn't news at this point that the Phils have rebuilt their farm system and are now rich in young talent for the first time in a while. How should they go about developing that talent? Every Phillies fan is eager to see the big league club turn things around. And I think it's fair to say that many fans and observers (especially in the talk radio set, but not just them) are temperamentally, if not philosophically, inclined to take a Thunderdome/ Royal Rumble approach to player development, not unlike the approach that the Berkeley engineering dean took toward his incoming freshmen. Throw them in the pool, as soon as you have any plausible excuse to do it. If you have it, you'll swim. And if you drown, someone else will take your place.

Is that approach wrong? I don't know. I guess it's an empirical question. But just speaking for myself, given the empirical uncertainty, I hope the organization does everything in its power to go as far to the opposite extreme as it can. I would just rather root for the success of many than the greatness of a few.

Because we know for a fact that there are late bloomers. There are players who fall through the cracks. There are guys who fail in one situation only to put it together when given a new opportunity somewhere else. I'm sure you can all think of many examples, not just in baseball or even in sports, but in all walks of life. Success isn't inevitable for the "deserving" and life isn't fair. If the Phillies really make it a point to put each prospect in the best possible situation to succeed, and to give each prospect as many chances as possible to succeed, then more of them will succeed.

And what does putting every prospect in the best situation to succeed entail? First, I think it means being patient and not giving up on anyone until you absolutely have to because of, say, roster rules or contract situations. Second, I think it means not "pre-deciding" which prospects will turn out to be the best big leaguers while being dismissive of the more middling ones, but instead, actively behaving as if you think they can all make it and want them to: giving them all as much of an opportunity to succeed as you can and keeping in mind that you could be wrong about those you don't believe in. Finally, I think it means studying and investing in the mental and psychological side of player development, and making a real effort to implement any insights gained. The internal aspects of athletic performance are the great undiscovered frontier in sports. Sabermetrics taught us to disregard uneducated, folklore-driven assessments of players' "makeup" and "character," but the next step should be to fill that void with an educated, evidence-based approach to the mental side of the game. Psychology might be a less objective discipline than math or physiology, but it's still a science with a body of academic knowledge. In fact, if the organization could really do its best to truly understand each of its young players, then the whole dilemma of whether to throw them into the pool or hold their hands could disappear. They could take a targeted approach to each player - not just with his swing mechanics or pitch mechanics but his mind as well.