Monday, March 29, 2010

“Change in draft philosophy led to Phillies' success - Philadelphia Daily News” plus 3 more

“Change in draft philosophy led to Phillies' success - Philadelphia Daily News” plus 3 more

Change in draft philosophy led to Phillies' success - Philadelphia Daily News

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 02:12 AM PDT

What's changed, he said, is how the Phils go about conducting their draft.

"About eight years ago, we decided when we evaluated players that instead of having two boards with high school and college pitchers together and high school and college position players together, we decided we'd have four boards," Wolever said.

So now the Phillies have separate boards for high school pitchers, college pitchers, high school position players, and college position players.

"By doing that, it has given me more options when we sit there on draft day," Wolever said. "I can look at the board and say, 'The ceiling of this high school kid looks like it has a chance to be more than this college guy that we're picking in a comparable round.' "

A player with a higher ceiling is a kid who may be inexperienced but has a great deal of potential, as opposed to an older player who may be more polished but also may already be as good as he'll ever get.

In recent years, the Phillies have been exceptionally successful at picking high-ceiling high school pitchers in the first round. In addition to Brett Myers in 1999 and Cole Hamels in 2002, they used first-round picks on Gavin Floyd in 2001 and Kyle Drabek in 2006.

Floyd, after a shaky start as a pro, has emerged as a solid big-league starter for the Chicago White Sox and Drabek was a good enough prospect to become the centerpiece in the trade package that the Phillies sent to Toronto to get staff ace Roy Halladay.

Wolever said that because the Phillies have had such low draft position recently, they have been more inclined to go with a high-ceiling high school kid than a polished college player who may be peaking. Another benefit of selecting high school kids is that they are developed in the Phillies' minor-league system rather than by college coaching staffs.

"No doubt," Wolever said. "My belief is . . . our development group is outstanding. Gorman Heimueller has been here a long time and he is one of the best at developing pitchers."

Heimueller is the Phillies' minor-league pitching coordinator.

"I feel like it's good if we can get them here and monitor their innings and don't let them get into habits we have to break if they go to a college program," Wolever said. "We won't have abused arms, because we really monitor what they do. I feel the same way about the way we teach hitting."

Wolever said he has seen college players regress after high school because of the way they are taught.

The Phillies scouting director cited outfield prospect Michael Taylor - who was sent to Toronto as part of the Halladay trade and immediately shipped from the Blue Jays to Oakland - as an example of a career damaged by college baseball. Taylor played on the same Florida high school team as Kansas City star pitcher Zach Greinke and Wolever became familiar with Taylor while scouting Greinke.

"He was a big kid, loose and easy with a great swing who had a chance to be a big power guy," Wolever said of Taylor. "When he went to [Stanford], part of that game was taken away from him. He went to Stanford and he regressed - he got slower, he got stiffer. We all felt like his swing went backward and regressed. It wasn't a fit for him."

The Phillies still took Taylor in the fifth round because Wolever recalled what he looked like in high school.

Wolever said the Phillies have also put greater emphasis of makeup and character in the last few years.

"I think without good makeup and character a guy doesn't really have a chance to achieve what he should be," Wolever said. "We really spend a lot of time on that. I think we're only as good as our area supervisors and I trust them completely. A lot of us have been together a long time and we spend a lot of time in [the players'] homes. We visit the kids and go and ask a lot of questions."

The Phillies, like all teams, administer psychological tests to players they may draft. The tests are conducted by Rick Joneson, a psychiatrist from Carroll, Iowa.

"It takes about 30 minutes and it gives a pretty accurate read on things such as how they will handle failure and those types of things," Wolever said. "We started using his testing about four years ago."

Considering the Phillies have won a World Series, back-to-back National League pennants and three straight N.L. East titles, the team obviously found a way to get better at obtaining the things they were looking for from drafted players.

If you look at the 13 years before Wolever and former Phillies assistant general manager Mike Arbuckle arrived in Philadelphia, the list of draft picks is mostly laughable. The Phillies had four players who became all-stars (Darren Daulton, Mickey Morandini, Mike Lieberthal, and Tyler Green) and zero became superstars.

And when you scan the list of first-round picks from that era - John Russell, Ricky Jordan, Pete Smith, Trey McCall, Brad Brink, Pat Combs, Jeff Jackson, and Chad McConnell are in the group - and it's easy to see why the Phillies fell off the map as a viable entertainment option in Philadelphia.

"When Mike and I got here, I thought we had a lot of nice polished college players that really had no ceiling - and we didn't have any international program," Wolever said. "I'm always a big believer in expanding the pool, whether it's internationally or whatever."

The Phillies' international program, directed by supervisor Sal Agostinelli, has since been built from nothing to a strong force that is responsible for the contributions of catcher Carlos Ruiz, who was signed out of Panama for the paltry sum of $8,000 in 1998.

It's the draft, however, where the Phillies have found superstars and lively young pitching arms that have helped them average 91 wins the last three seasons.

"Starting with the 1993 draft, we wanted to achieve a balance of picks," Arbuckle said by phone from Arizona, where he now works for the Kansas City Royals. "We wanted some high-ceiling high school guys mixed in with some safer college guys."

Since then, the Phillies have watched two college position players, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, and one high school shortstop, Jimmy Rollins, develop into superstars. At the same time, high-ceiling high school pitchers such as Myers and Hamels became part of a starting rotation that was good enough to win the World Series two years ago.

 

Contact staff writer Bob Brookover

at 215-854-2577 or bbrookover@phillynews.com.

 

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The Pep Guardiola philosophy that spells danger for ... - Evening Standard

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 04:43 AM PDT

In football management, the good have tended to start young. Sir Alex Ferguson won his first Scottish Premier League with Aberdeen in 1980 when he was just 39; Giovanni Trapattoni won his first Scudetto with Juventus aged 38, while Arsene Wenger was also 38 when, in 1988, he led Monaco to the French title.

After winning the Champions League last May, Barcelona coach Josep Pep' Guardiola also joined that list. Last season, he steered the club that he once captained to the Spanish League title, aged 38. But before he turned 39, Guardiola had also lifted the Spanish Cup, the Champions League, the Spanish Supercup, the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup.

Ferguson had been managing for six seasons, though, before claiming his first prize, Trappatoni for five and Arsenal's French genius had seven seasons of experience under his belt prior to upsetting the French applecart with Monaco.

Guardiola had been coaching for precisely 12 months when he took over a wounded, torpid and apparently spent Barca squad and turned everything on its head.

Whether it was the remarkable drama of their Champions League semi-final win at Stamford Bridge last season, the scintillating 6-2 destruction of Real Madrid at the Bernabeu or the fact that by last month Guardiola's team had played 100 matches, won 71, lost only 10 and scored 242 times, the world fell in love with what this young man has achieved.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic told me that he left Inter and moved to Spain because: "Barca produces football which the world will love to play in 2015 and 2020 — they show the future."

Now, ahead of Wednesday's enormously important and attractive Champions League quarter-final at Emirates Stadium, the eulogies are still flying at this elegant, articulate but hugely driven man.

At the weekend, Wenger was part of a jury, which included Ottmar Hitzfeld, Vicente del Bosque, Didier Deschamps and Marcello Lippi for the Journal de Dimanche Coach of the Year' award and Guardiola won it hands down.

"Winning all six trophies he played for in his first season was incredible but they included both the Champions League and the World Club trophy which few coaches manage to bring to their CV," said Lippi. "But above all, he's created a system of play which is both effective and spectacular."

Guardiola has had to work hard for his achievements. The saturnine Catalan puts in the same level of preparation for every match as Jose Mourinho, who boasted of watching Inter Milan's first-leg win over Chelsea seven times.

Guardiola is elegant, well-dressed and versed in poetry, politics, philosophy and fashion, while his wife, Cristina, is the daughter of a clothing and fashion scion in the Catalan capital.

Indeed, Cristina is so long-suffering that the first negotiations for him to become Barca coach in May 2008 began a couple of hours after she had given birth to their third daughter, Valentina.

As the doting parents were beaming down at the gurgling youngster, a knock came at the door of the hospital room and Barca president Joan Laporta interupted the celebrations.

Home is very much in Barcelona, yet Guardiola had talks with Paul Jewell at Wigan, met Sir Alex Ferguson and mulled over a move to Old Trafford and even trained with Manchester City before opting to play on at Brescia after his six League titles and two European trophies as one of Barca's great midfielders before returning to take charge of the team.

It is easy to understand why he was so much in demand on hearing his philosophy on the game.

"Since I took the job our play has been marked by brave, attacking football," said Guardiola.

"Sometimes we've been bold and, occasionally, I think we've played audaciously.

"It's a philosophy of football. Win or lose I want us to show who we are and what kind of football we believe in. I want my team to go out and be themselves.

"Those of us lucky enough to work at this level in our profession must never forget that it's only a sport.

"We live in a world where everything is spiraling in cost and many people need to make a big sacrifice in order to go and watch a game of football.

"So for me it all makes sense, the effort, the work the planning the concentration and the discipline if you do it for the people. The manner in which we play is a demonstration of the respect we have for the people who pay for a ticket or pay money to watch matches on television."

The Pep philosophy is all about hard work, excellence, hunger to be the best and dressing well while you do it. He is steely, too. Ronaldinho and Deco were both kicked out when it became clear to Guardiola that they had little to contribute.

Striker Samuel Eto'o, first-goal hero of that victory over Manchester United in Rome, was also shown the door.

Recent criticism from the agents of Yaya Toure and Zlatan Ibrahimovic over the amount of game time their clients were receiving were met with curt response. "Keep your agents under control," he told both players.

Guardiola's second season in charge has not been as trailblazing as his first, partly because of injuries to players, while his side now play a slower passing game now that Eto'o is gone to accommodate Ibrahimovic's style. There is also the internal feuding that accompanies any Spanish presidential election — Laporta will be replaced at the Nou Camp at this summer's elections.

Any thoughts that this, along with Andres Iniesta's absence, will help Arsenal's cause should be short-lived.

Barca are still neck and neck with Real Madrid at the top of La Liga and Guardiola's record against the Gunners is a good one. He was captain in both group games in 1999 — a 1-1 draw in Barcelona and a 4-2 win at Wembley, which was their first defeat of an English club in England for 39 years. His record against Wenger also includes 1-0 and 2-0 defeats of Monaco in the 1993 Champions League.

But for all the tributes, praise and admiration just like Messrs Ferguson, Wenger, Lippi and Trappatoni, Guardiola is a winner.

Fantasy football will be a by-product at Emirates Stadium on Wednesday. Winning comes first — no quarter asked or given.

 Add your view

Come on Barca!!

- Kev, London N1

As much as I want Arsenal to beat 'em. It just doesn't look likely that they will

- Tony C, London

He might be some sorta deity to you but this Barca team remains very beatable more so by this Arsenal team. Over the weekend Real Mallorca needed to be slightly bolder - i saw enough to see lots of vulnerabilities in this Barca team.

- Hikidun, London,UK


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