When the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates in extra innings on September 26, they clinched a wild card spot in the MLB 2023 Postseason. Phillies fans everywhere, including many at MFS, are teeming with excitement – the Phillies barely fell short in their postseason campaign last year, losing to the Houston Astros in the World Series. After sweeping the Miami Marlins at home on October 3 and 4 in the wildcard round, the Phillies entered the National League Division Series with tremendous momentum.
While fans are thrilled, these wins have an even greater impact on the Philadelphia Phillies organization itself. Unbeknownst to many Phillies fans, the Phillies’ Front Office has been thrust into a completely different dynamic.
This dynamic, while high stakes, calls for a certain skill set. Those working in the front office need to be committed to the team, well-versed in their respective fields, and steadfast in their methods. Read on for a glimpse at the postseason from a perspective not usually seen: The entirely new task the postseason presents for the Research and Development, Business Analytics, and Player Development Departments.
Research and Development
As put by the Phillies’ Assistant Director of Quantitative Analysis Pat McFarlane, the Research and Development (“R&D”) Department “makes sure that all areas of baseball operations have everything they need in order to conduct data-driven decision making.” McFarlane’s skilled team of Quantitative Analysts are tasked with building player predictions, assessing the statistical advantages of in-game tactics, and, over time, constructing evaluation models.
The postseason alters the systems used in R&D as the department tries to build the team as a consistent World Series contender. To meet this goal, R&D needed to begin focusing their resources towards major league-related projects as the regular season approached its end.
McFarlane mentioned the significance of one particular technique, “Advanced Scouting,” and its importance in providing the Phillies every advantage on the field: “[Advanced Scouting is] scouting the opponent that you’re going to face, or group of opponents that you’re likely to face, and trying to exploit anything you find. Whether it’s through the predictive models that you have built already, on the quantitative analysis and data science side; whether it’s looking at video trying to pick up on tendencies of the opponent, in whatever way shape or form … so we increase that amount of work and support on the R&D side this time of year.”
But in the postseason, nothing is set in stone. A team won’t know their next opponent, if they’re fortunate enough to move on, until mere days before the series. McFarlane said that this uncertainty calls for additional speed and assistance in R&D: “You’re not always guaranteed to advance. So, the focus very much becomes singular on a particular opponent … should the series start to go well, then you can start to think about preparing for the next one … it’s a combination of increased support from R&D, but having the opportunity to focus on a singular opponent is really crucial this time of year.”
Regardless of the time of year, R&D plays a crucial role in the analytics behind the team’s decisions. McFarlane added, “The thing that makes our work so important is the fact that it can scale. The great thing about a mathematical model, if you build it generally and ensure that it’s robust, is it just enables you to have increased scope in terms of the inferences you’re able to make across the league.”
Business Analytics
The Business Analytics department encompasses the business side of the Phillies, including the sales system, food and beverage system, and retail system. The department also works closely with ticket sales in the secondary market, making significant contributions to primary versus secondary price analysis. By utilizing over 25 different data sources programmed to analyze data in real time, the department can make data-driven business recommendations.
According to Josh Barbieri, the Business Analytics Director, Business Analytics and R & D use similar methods in some circumstances, similar in some of their methods but have different goals: “R&D is trying to win on the field. The Business Analytics team is trying to help the Phillies run operationally better.”
The Business Analytics Department is also influenced by the MLB themselves during the postseason. Barbieri said that, for Business Analytics specifically, “a lot of the inventory is controlled by MLB. So there’s different allotments for different people in the postseason. And that limits, to some extent, what we can do with the inventory … That could involve pricing and things like that.” This change has a direct impact on fans and their experience with the postseason, such as the spike in ticket prices.
Noting the change in mindset in his department during the postseason, Barbieri continued: “As for us, it’s like a separate season in its own right. It’s the most exciting season to be [a] part of, but from our group standpoint, we have to [prepare] for 81 games the same way we [prepare] for, hopefully, 13 wins in the postseason.”
Barbieri, who has been with the Phillies for 22 seasons, also noted how business analytics has grown exponentially in recent years. Barbieri was part of the introduction of business analytics to the Phillies back in 2010 and has since seen it boom in other Philadelphia sports as well: “It’s a formalized area. You can get a degree in it. Businesses have this as a department. We have our counterparts at each one of the teams: … the Union, the Sixers, the Flyers, the Eagles.”
Player Development
Beth Greenwood began her R&D Fellowship, an extended internship, with the Phillies in August of 2022. Something unique about her fellowship is the duration — over a year later, the fellowship is ongoing, and Greenwood will be with the Phillies for another six months. Greenwood has spent time with both R&D and Player Development, but is currently working with the latter at the Carpenter Complex, the Phillies’ Minor League facility, located in Clearwater, Florida.
Currently, Baseball Development is working with Phillies players who are not actively on the 26-man roster but could potentially be called up. Greenwood refers to this as the organization’s “Stay Hot” camp: “[These are] players who are staying ready in case there’s an injury on that 26-man roster. And so a lot of them are Triple-A guys who have been optioned, or there are some guys who we got later in the season. They’re now down at the complex getting ready in case someone gets hurt so that they’re ready to go up during the postseason … [We are] just keeping them ready. Keep[ing] them sharp.”
As a catcher for the USA Women’s National Baseball Team, Greenwood’s experience lends itself to coaching within her department: “It’s a big mix of players that we’re working with. It’s kids as young as 17, 18, or 19. Or, for example, one of our 40-man players was injured, and so it was working with him … You’re working with … the top and then … the bottom level players.”
As with the other departments, the uncertainty of the next matchup poses difficulties. Greenwood said that the team works around those challenges by trying to cover all bases for the next potential matchup: “Normally during a season you know your schedule, you know who exactly you’re gonna play, right? So you can, kind of, prepare for it and what’s gonna happen, but this past week, a couple other people in our department [and I] have been preparing for all the different possibilities of who our opponent could be.”
Greenwood noted the importance of additional methods of coaching that will benefit the players in their preparation: “We’ve been helping out with a lot of advanced video. We’re just preparing for our different opponents. Because during games, or pregame, they’ll have iPads with videos of their opponent. It’d be last 20 matchups, or last 20 swinging misses, [or] last 20 hard hit balls. We’re seeing what was effective and what wasn’t effective against opponents, so they can game plan going forward.”
