The World of Gabermetrics

You'd think based on the decisions that Philadelphia Phillies manager, Gave Kapler, made yesterday that it was some sort of Aprils Fools joke or something like that. It certainly wasn't the first time this season that Kapler has been criticized for a decision he made.

Kapler entered hot water right from the get-go on Opening Day when he decided to pull ace, Aaron Nola, after 68 pitches into his start. Mind you, Nola was cruising along with no visual signs of fatigue or anything wrong physically, which makes the decision more questionable. Right after pulling Nola from the mound, Kapler handed the ball over to reliever, Hoby Milner, who ended up dishing up a home run to the Braves All-Star first baseman, Freddie Freeman.

The Phillies later went onto lose that game with a final score of 8-5. The antics continued yesterday when the Phillies fell to the Braves, 15-2, in a game that included a huge debacle about which reliever was coming in next and found Braves skipper, Brian Snitker, ejected from the game for arguing the whole thing with an umpire.

Simply put, Vince Velasquez started yesterday's game and gave up 9 hits, 4 earned runs, 2 walks, and only recorded 4 strikeouts, which certainly didn't help to set the table for the rest of the game. Once again after Velasquez was pulled, Hoby Milner came into the game to finish the third inning before a handful of other relievers made an appearance and centerfielder, Pedro Florimon, pitched the 8th due to the bullpen being overused.

Essentially, as Phillies beat writer, Todd Zolecki, pointed out on Twitter, Philadelphia needed 21 different pitchers to navigate through 28 innings of work down at SunTrust Park and that certainly isn't a good thing given where we are in the season. Sure, it is fine to be experimental in this game and try to embrace new ideas, but this whole saga with Gabe Kapler the past three days, has put a whole new meaning to the word: Sabermetrics, errr I mean, Gabermetrics.

Looking over his entire career, Gabe Kapler has always been someone who isn't afraid to think outside of the box and use unconventional wisdom to navigate himself throughout a game. On Opening Day, that was illustrated by Kapler's comments about how rather than having set roles for every reliever in the bullpen, he was going to use relievers whenever and basically operate with a colser-by-committee.

As we've seen before, when relievers don't have set roles, they usually don't experience a tremendous amount of success because no one knows when to prepare to come into the game and it certainly doesn't help not having a set closer. Granted, this is based on only three games, but it doesn't seem like a model that is going to turn into long-term success.

In addition, Kapler has mentioned the idea of using positional players as relievers when needed, to prevent the bullpen from becoming overused and exhausted. If that is how he thinks he's going to be able to operate things come the middle-to-latter part of the season, he better think again. Positional players train and prepare to play their respective positions on the field not prepare to be used as a reliever whenever needed throughout the course of a game. As stated before, it's fine to experiment with different things in this game and try to see if some of those out-of-the-box ideas work, but this is something that is deemed for failure from the get-go.

If the Phillies want to have any success, they need to have a solid game plan and be able to identify a set of relievers that they know they can count on in certain situations. The whole idea of Gabermetrics is great and all, but at the end of the day, if you don't have more wins than losses and are relevant in terms of the standings, then it does absolutely nothing but frustrate your fan base, make the players lose trust in their manager, and cause a bunch of other unneeded havoc especially off the field in the clubhouse.

The Gabe Kapler experience is either going to end up being a really good one for the Phillies and their entire fan base or a really bad one. There's not much middle ground when it comes to the philosophies of Kapler or his unconventional ways of thinking.

Luckily, the Phillies have today off which means that the Phillies, more specifically Gabe Kapler, need to sit back, take a deep breath, and learn from the experiences that they went through the past three days. Kapler might refuse to divert from his current ways of thinking and it will be interesting to see if he does come the next series or the next month, but he certainly needs to be careful.

The last thing the Phillies need is an overworked, exhausted bullpen come the end of April with no real results and no one to help them win late ballgames in the middle or later part of the season. That's why it is so important for us to let this youth movement play out before declaring the Phillies as potential surprise contenders.