Phillies to bring back Kevin Long, hope better offensive approach works
The Phillies are bringing back their entire 2024 major league coaching staff, including hitting coach Kevin Long, in 2025.
After three straight years of the bats going cold in the final days of the season, the Phillies are prioritizing continuity.
“To me, it was pretty simple in that regard,” Dave Dombrowski said Tuesday at his end-of-season press conference. “It’s hard for me — anytime you do have a disappointing finish in which we did — it’s hard to put that on their backs in that case. I think we all share collectively in what happened. But putting that on any of their individual backs, I think, wasn’t the right thing to do.”
After last year’s loss in seven games to the Diamondbacks in the National League Championship Series, the Phillies did not retain assistant hitting coach Jason Camilli and hired two new assistant coaches, Dustin Lind and Rafael Pena, and restructured their hitting program.
Some of the changes were made with chase rate in mind. From Games 3 to 7 of the NLCS in 2023, the Phillies chased 38% of pitches out the zone, up from around 24% in Games 1 and 2, when they scored a combined 15 runs and flew to Arizona with a 2-0 lead.
It was clear the D-Backs had a plan to expose the Phillies’ aggressiveness and it worked. The Phillies got out of their groove and they spent the offseason devising a plan to get back in the zone.
There was some progress, especially early in the season when the Phillies were locked in and crushing teams regularly behind Alec Bohm’s early-season hot streak, MVP caliber stretches from Bryce Harper and Trea Turner and good performances from injury replacements such as Edmundo Sosa and Rafael Marchan.
But the chasing issues were brought to the forefront again when opposing teams began having more consistent success throwing fewer fastballs in the zone and more breaking pitches. In August, then Mariners manager Scott Servais praised his advanced scout Sam Reinertsen for the intel he provided on the Phillies lineup.
“We don’t see the Phillies,” Servais told reporters on Aug. 2. “We see them once a year. You never know how they’re going when you see them. He nailed it. The scouting report we had before the game was right on point. So, credit to Sam.”
When asked if the Phillies lineup became too easy to pitch to at times, Dombrowski agreed, but said it’s a problem all teams are facing.
“The unfortunate part is you have a tendency to focus on only your own club, right?” Dombrowski said. “This is a down time from an offensive perspective in professional baseball. What was the average? .243 at the end of the year? Most of our hitters were better than .243. You see the scores in most of the postseason games, there is not a lot of run production taking place.”
He is right about offense being down around the sport. The league-wide OPS dropped from .734 in 2023 to .711 in 2024. The Phillies’ team-wide OPS dropped from .765 in 2023 to .750 this season.
“At times, we are vulnerable to being pitched well, as are other clubs. … It’s something we’ll look at. We’ll take a look at trying to address and see if we can make some changes.”
The big change they are going to make is a greater emphasis on an all-fields approach. They think staying on the ball a little bit longer will make them less vulnerable to low pitches out of the zone — and will ultimately lead to a lower chase rate and a more balanced lineup.
“I’ve spoken to it many times. I think we really have to get them to buy into using the entire field,” Thomson said. “I know everyone talks about chase rate. I think just doing that will cut down on chase rate because you’re going to stay on the ball a little bit better.
“You watch the Yankees game. I pulled up all their base hits. Everything was from gap to gap last night. If you do that, you have a chance to cover all pitches in any zone and you’re not going to be susceptible to offspeed away, especially. … These guys are so strong, our power guys. They can hit the ball out of any part of the ballpark. You just have to be able to stay on the ball.”
Maybe it’s all about having a different approach to messaging. Instead of directing hitters to focus on avoiding a negative outcome, like chasing, telling them to strive for a more positive outcome, a base hit the other way, could work for a group of accomplished hitters that are more set in their ways.
But the Phillies are confident that Long and his assistants are the right coaches to continue delivering that message. The veteran hitting coach and two-time World Series champion has a long history with manny of the hitters on the roster. Harper, Turner and Kyle Schwarber have known him from their days with the Nationals. Thomson and Long spent years together on the Yankees coaching staff.
Long was seen as a potential managerial candidate two years ago during the Phillies’ World Series run in 2022. The Phillies were thrilled when they were able to sign him away from the Nationals after the 2021 season. He was credited for helping facilitate the growth in young hitters such as Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh. Both regressed this season. The Phillies lineup as a whole looked tight in three out of the four games of the NLDS this season.
But they’re not pining the blame on Long and his coaches.
“If you go around baseball and you talk to every baseball person and say, Ok, give me your top five hitting coaches in baseball? He’s going to be on almost every list,” Thomson said. “He’s going to be No. 1 on a lot of lists.
“I think it’s a random game. People get sped up. You gotta be able to slow them down. Even if they have the opposite field approach, still they get sped up at times. We have to make sure that they’re doing the little things, pass the baton, trust your teammates, and keep the line moving.”
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