Rob Neyer at ESPN.com and Bill Baer at CrashburnAlley.com both brought to our attention a quote from Phillies front office exec/scout Charlie Kerfeld [link]:
"Since I've been here, we don't have an in-house stats guy and I kind of feel we never will. We're not a statistics-driven organization by any means. I'm not against statistics. Everybody has their own way of doing things. But the Phillies believe in what our scouts see and what our eyes tell us and what our people tell us."
It shouldn't be a shock that the Phillies don't pay much attention to advanced statistics. Take a look at the way they tend to obtain pitchers with mediocre strikeout to walk ratios or high fly ball rates.
What's amazing to me is how good a team the Phillies put together with one hand tied behind their back. Most of the best teams these days use two hands, advanced statistics and scouting, to compose their player personnel. The question I would ask is, how long can the Phillies do this?
It remains to be seen of course. One thing that helps is having a top-ten payroll. Then, when you make a mistake in scouting, such as, oh, say... Adam Eaton, you can cover up your mistakes. You can afford to release him and pay him to stay at home rather than torpedo your season.
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I've never understood the idea of ignoring sabermetrics. If you do, it means that somewhere, you are drawing a line and not crossing it. In other words, lets say the Phillies are oblivious to wOBA but they do look at OPS. Why did they draw the line there rather than at, say, batting average?
To me, if you once saw a value in batting average, it stands to reason that you should then see a value in on-base average, and then later a value in OPS and then later wOBA and so on. You mean to tell me the Phillies don't even look at batting average? Of course they do. So if you are into numbers to that extent, why not do a few more mouse clicks and look at more advanced stats?
