The Phillies this offseason brought over Matt Klentak from the Angels to fill the GM role and help move along the club's push into data analytics. The club's new custom sabermetrics system, which carries the acronym PHIL (Phillies Holistic Information Location), is now the central destination for all public and proprietary data within the organization. This includes medical information, scouting reports and statistics. While Klentak emphasizes PHIL is going to be a key piece of the puzzle, there is more to roster building than just numbers. Klentak: "There may be some decisions that lean more heavily in the direction of analytical research and there may be decisions we make that lean more in the direction of our scouting or medical opinion. As an organization, in order for us to make the best decisions as possible, we need to be able to assess all the information. If we have good information, I am confident we will make good decisions.”
NO STONE LEFT UNTURNED: Klentak refuses to dismiss any piece of data that may pop up during the course of research. He said, “Beauty can be in the eye of the beholder. I am not a believer that we’re in a position to discredit anything. The number one thing that we are hoping to achieve here is to make sure we are using all of the information available to us and not ruling out anything.” Despite being one of the last teams in MLB to embrace sabermetrics, the Phillies have made up for lost time since hiring Klentak and new team President Andy MacPhail. The emergence of co-Owner John Middleton as a supporter of analytics also has Klentak excited about the future. Klentak: “We’ve made a pretty significant investment in that area this winter, both in terms of capital, as well as infrastructure. I would expect that we would continue that effort as we move forward.”
FRESH OUTLOOK: The Phillies this offseason also made several key hires to bolster their research department. The addition of former YouTube Quantitative Analyst Andy Galdi as Dir of Baseball Research & Development marks a stark departure from the team’s traditional approach. Klentak believes bringing in people from the outside can only be helpful. He said, “We tend to be a copycat industry within baseball. Bringing in a fresh perspective is a healthy thing.” Even with all of the moving pieces this offseason, the transition has been relatively seamless for the former Dartmouth baseball player. Klentak praises the organization for willingly embracing the changes in such a short period of time. Klentak: “The reception has been remarkably positive. We have a very good group of people that have been open to new ideas and accepting of the collaboration that we are putting forth. I have no complaints at all. It has been a very smooth first five months.”
