The Phillies are currently in a playoff spot thanks to a variety of factors, one of which is the contributions from their young players. Last January, the Phillies were staring at a long of questions about how they would have a deep enough lineup to outscore their other problems. Part of the problem was that in 2021 all of their young hitters had regressed. As I detailed on this site, every young hitter who came in contact with the major league hitting staff had the same spike in ground ball contact, and a reduction in pull side contact.
For some background, in 2020 the Phillies hired Joe Dillon as their major league hitting coach. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a cancellation of the minor league season and instead there was a Alternate Site were the major league coaching staff had large sway. In 2021, the minor league season happened, but COVID restrictions meant that AAA was grouped in with the major league coaching staff and not the minor league coordinators.
The focus of the January piece was on three minor leaguers Matt Vierling, Nick Maton, and Rafael Marchan, with a look towards Johan Rojas and then major leaguers Alec Bohm and J.T. Realmuto. We are going to throw Realmuto out for now, because he has had a weird year in the majors and we know his timing was off early and now his timing is very on. It is hard to draw conclusions from his start, current, or composite.
The Phillies biggest surprise over the last two months has been Alec Bohm. Bohm looks like a slugger, and hits the ball hard like a slugger, and posted power that was more Ben Revere than Bryce Harper. The last two seasons, he has pounded the ball in into the ground, settling for balls the other way rather than pulling the ball for power. While it has always been a bit of a problem for Bohm, that problem accelerated when he reached the majors. We can see the ground ball rate here spike for the two years and then make a dramatic turnaround this season.
| GB | FB | LD | BIP | |
| 2019 | 42.3% | 39.8% | 17.9% | 402 |
| 2020 | 53.2% | 25.4% | 21.4% | 126 |
| 2021 | 53.1% | 22.6% | 24.2% | 318 |
| 2022 | 42.6% | 29.4% | 28.1% | 310 |
Obviously this isn’t the final form of Alec Bohm, but if you removed 2020 and 2021 and just had a progression from the minor league numbers to the majors you would assume it was the same player.
Unfortunately when it comes to the other guy on the Phillies who hits the ball hard on the ground constantly we do not have the 19 to 22 progression because Matt Vierling made adjustments during his time away during the pandemic. What we can use as a proxy is his AA->AAA->MLB splits. In AA last year, Vierling had his big breakout with a ground ball rate of 39.7%, that would rise to 50.3% in AAA and 53.8% in the majors. This year that is 43,5% in AAA and 42.3% in the majors. Now Vierling has not fully translated that, and his 7.8% HR /FB rate leaves some to be desired. Vierling is still a work in progress, but you can start to see his ability to drive the ball starting to show up more.
The newest re-addition to the majors has been Nick Maton. Maton prior to the pandemic shutdown had a reputation as a fastball hitter who had surprising exit velocity and ball in the air quantities that indicated surprising power for a middle infielder. That seemingly evaporated in 2021 (he was at the alt site with no official games in 2020), but that has roared back this year with big games in the majors already.
| GB | FB | LD | BIP | |
| 2019 | 32.9% | 47.4% | 19.7% | 310 |
| 2020 | 0 | |||
| 2021 | 41.3% | 34.5% | 24.2% | 223 |
| 2022 | 29.6% | 50.3% | 20.1% | 169 |
The consequence has been that Maton is hitting for power again. It was enough promise and positive momentum that the Phillies had planned on him starting games after Segura’s injury before he got injured, and now have put him on the bench of the major league team now.
Rafael Marchan has long lacked in power, but he has had a great feel for contact. The contact ability has come back strong in the form of a 8.6% BB% and 12.3% K% in AAA this year. He is also driving the ball more, that shows in the batted ball data, where he has dramatically cut his walk rate and put the ball in the air more, and that has led to a career high .148 ISO and the first home runs he has hit not in the majors (a .254/.344/.401 line overall). We can see his trends here, looking much like the others.
| GB | FB | LD | BIP | |
| 2019 | 43.2% | 32.8% | 24.0% | 271 |
| 2020 | 33.3% | 16.7% | 50.0% | 6 |
| 2021 | 47.4% | 34.2% | 18.4% | 234 |
| 2022 | 35.6% | 46.2% | 18.2% | 132 |
Those are the major league members of the Day Care, which has been at the center of multiple comebacks this year, and almost as importantly for the team, allowed the Phillies to focus on a center field upgrade who they are looking to fix as well pitching help. It also allowed them to let go of Didi Gregorius and Odubel Herrera.
So we can see the immediate bounce back fixes to the young players in the majors. We should also expect to see similar growth elsewhere. The long time hitting star was Logan O’Hoppe who took the pull and in the air part to the extreme, but it allowed him to tap fully into his power. We are seeing some unexpected breakouts too. AAA OF Dalton Guthrie started showing signs of life in the second half of 2021, and has continued that this year while hitting the ball more in the air more for power.
A lot of what has been preached it seems in the majors and minors has been swing decisions and timing. That has gotten hitters in the position to drive the ball in the air and catch up to fastballs while not being exposed to breaking balls. The player in the minors where we see the idea of swing decisions to the most prominent is Simon Muzziotti.
Muzziotti has long had a reputation as an aggressive slap hitter who lacked in power and on base ability. He missed 2020 for the obvious reason, then missed much of 2021 due to a visa issue, and now has missed much of 2022 due to injury. But in the AFL in 2021, Muzziotti showed an uncommon amount of patience, walking 15 times to 13 strikeouts in 83 trips to the plate. The power wasn’t present, for Muzziotti, but he was being more selective at the plate. His largest sample size this season is in AA, where he is walking at a career high rate, and very surprisingly a career high ISO rate of .196. Muzziotti has long had his fans of how hard he could potentially hit the baseball, because he is fairly solidly built and generate solid bat speed. He is tapping into that power by hitting the ball on the ground about 12 percentage point less, trading that almost all for fly balls. The Phillies just promoted Muzziotti to AAA, so it will be interesting to see if that holds up against better pitching, but the increase in power has started to change his overall trajectory.
Overall the Phillies hitting dev has been much maligned (including by this author), but after some bad coaching in the majors the past two years, the major and minor league staff has reversed the course and the payoff has been young players contributing in the majors. Outside of Logan O’Hoppe the dev team has not had a big time player to hang their hat on, but we are seeing some growth in players like Muzziotti where some of that growth is translating to meaningful development and outlook changes for players in the system.