Phillies’ defense as responsible as Rhys Hoskins’ power for win over Nationals | Bob Brookover

Somebody once said that pitching and defense wins baseball games and everybody believed it. Whoever said it, though, definitely did not watch the 2018 Phillies. Sure, pitching won them a lot of games in the first four months of the season, but the Phillies’ defense seemed to do them in at every turn.

The standard metrics such as fielding percentage and defensive efficiency ranked them 29th and 28th in baseball, a significant dip from the year before when the team was seventh in fielding percentage and 16th in defensive efficiency. The more advanced metrics that you can find on Fangraphs.com were only slightly kinder to the Phillies last season. That site had the Phillies ranked 22nd in baseball, way down from seventh in 2017.

Theories abound as to why the Phillies’ defense took such a nosedive in manager Gabe Kapler’s first season. A more prominent use of the shift was one suspected culprit. The Phillies used the shift 22.1 percent of the time last season according to baseballsavant.com. Two years earlier they had used it less than 10 percent of the time.

It had its vocal detractors with pitcher Jake Arrieta leading the way.

The Phillies were especially bad up the middle last season. Rookie Scott Kingery was asked to play shortstop, a position he had not played since high school. Second baseman Cesar Hernandez and center fielder Odubel Herrera both took giant leaps backward after being ranked among the top five by Fangraphs.com the year before. Catcher Jorge Alfaro was tied for the major-league lead with 11 errors and tied for sixth with 10 passed balls. And, of course, Rhys Hoskins looked entirely uncomfortable moving from first base to left field.

That’s why it was so refreshing to hear Kapler’s opening statement following Monday night’s 4-3 win over the Washington Nationals at Citizens Bank Park.

“I don’t know if I’ve had a chance to say this, but I think the defense was the story of the game,” the manager said. “I think that’s the first time I’ve really been able to focus on that.”

Kapler did not get into many details at the end of last season as to why the Phillies were so bad defensively, but he promised they’d be better in 2019. It would have been hard to be worse, but so far this season the Phillies have been considerably better and it showed up big time in this game.

They’ll show highlights on ESPN and MLB Network Tuesday morning of Rhys Hoskins’ two home runs because TV digs the long ball, but Bryce Harper, Maikel Franco and Andrew McCutchen deserved just as much credit despite the fact that none of them contributed a hit. And, in addition to his two home runs, Hoskins played an outstanding first base with a nice pick, a nice stretch and a nice play on a ball that bounced off the first-base bag.

“We’ve made [defense] a priority and we’re going to continue to make it a priority, sticking to the routines that we’ve been doing with Bobby [Dickerson] and hopefully see the same results we’ve been getting so far,” Hoskins said.

Harper’s pivotal defensive play came in the top of the fourth inning with the Phillies already down, 2-0. Ryan Zimmerman tried to score from first base on a ball in the right-center-field gap that was hit by Kurt Suzuki. Harper prevented the ball from getting to the wall, then made a strong throw to shortstop Jean Segura, who made an even stronger play to catcher J.T. Realmuto at the plate.

In the bottom of that inning, a two-run home run by Odubel Herrera evened the score and in the next two innings Franco made a couple of outstanding plays at third base, setting the stage for sixth and eighth inning home runs by Hoskins.

More great defense would be needed before it was over.

It became a nervous ninth for the Phillies when Brian Dozier opened the inning with a solo home run off Pat Neshek and Anthony Rendon followed with a double. But McCutchen, who had thrown out a runner at the plate in Sunday’s 2-1 win over Minnesota, saved another run by running down a Juan Soto line drive for the first out of the inning. Neshek managed to get the final two outs after that and the Phillies celebrated their 7-2 start to the season.

Like Hoskins, Kapler credited infielder instructor Bobby Dickerson for his work in improving the defense. He also complimented first-base coach Paco Figueroa. Both men also work on positioning the defenders and Kapler admitted he shifted too often last season in an effort to give the team an edge.

The Phillies had shifted only 9.8 percent of the time through the first eight games. Only the Mets had shifted less.

“We’re positioning our defenders a little more conservatively than we did last year," Kapler said. "I accept responsibility for shifting our defenders a little too aggressively at times and a little bit too risky at times last season. I thought we improved [defensively] from a personnel standpoint and I think our coaching has received an upgrade and that’s not meant to be disrespectful to anyone prior,” Kapler said. “But Bobby is one of the best infield coaches in baseball. It was a really important point of emphasis for us and Matt [Klentak] did a tremendous job of addressing it and we continue to think about it nonstop.”

Whatever they are doing they need to keep doing it because it’s working.

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