Alonzo Powell arrives in San Francisco after spending the past two seasons working for a Houston Astros’ organization that tore down the foundation to build up a World Series winner.
Curt Young comes to the Giants after working 13 of the last 14 seasons with an Oakland A’s franchise that’s received acclaim for its “Moneyball” approach and ability to do more with less.
Together, the Giants’ new hitting coach, Powell, and their new pitching coach, Young, are charged with rehabilitating a club that finished 64-98 and a franchise that’s attempting to push further into the modern world of analytics and sabermetrics. Though Powell is tasked with crafting a sustainable offensive approach for a cavernous ballpark with a power-deficient lineup, Young’s challenge of replacing a Giants’ coaching legend, Dave Righetti, is equally difficult.
While the pair will obviously be judged by the Giants’ ability to orchestrate an immediate turnaround from their last-place finish in the National League West, Powell and Young will also be evaluated on their ability to implement a more analytical approach in San Francisco’s dugout on a daily basis.
During an introductory conference call with reporters this week, Powell and Young discussed their backgrounds in analytics-minded organizations, and shared how they planned to apply advanced metrics into their coaching styles in the coming season. A common theme for both coaches is that while analytics will govern many of the decisions they make, they don’t intend to completely overhaul the type of information players are receiving on a game-by-game and series-by-series basis. Instead, Powell and Young will allow analytics to influence their own decision-making, and divulge information they deem critical for players to gain a specific edge.
“Anything that you can add to what pitchers need to do to be successful in what they’re doing is going to add a positive impact in what they’re doing,” Powell said. “All the resources that we have now to coach and learn about different players, whether you’re looking at it as how we get hitters out or what a pitcher will need to do to be successful. There’s going to be a definite mix of both, just common sense and what it takes to be a great pitcher and anything that we can learn from the numbers side of it to help these guys is going to come into play.”
Powell added to Young’s thoughts, indicating that while there’s no shortage of information available to coaches and players in terms of their performances, personal instruction is key to helping a player work toward any end goal.
“It’s a big mixture of both,” Powell said, when discussing providing information and offering a personal touch. “You have to understand the information that’s out there. But you also have to understand how to utilize that information. You don’t want to flood your players with too much information. The challenge is to everybody involved is what can you do to make the organization make players better? That’s our challenge as a coach to get that information to the players so hopefully they can utilize it and get themselves better.”
After the Giants elected to reassign Righetti to a front office role and shift Hensley Meulens from his job as the team’s hitting coach to the Giants’ bench coach, general manager Bobby Evans told reporters the franchise would likely seek coaches with a background incorporating analytics into their coaching style to fill the team’s voids. Evans said that finding new perspectives was critical for the Giants, and that’s likely one of the many reasons San Francisco searched outside the organization for different voices.
When Evans introduced Powell and Young to reporters, he admitted that because baseball has become so focused on advanced metrics, nearly every candidate the Giants could have talked to would carry a perspective informed by analytics.
“It’s (analytics) just so widespread in the game now that it’s hard to get away from guys that have a sense of the value of the information that’s out there and these guys were no different,” Evans said. “It’s hard to find organizations that don’t have staffs that are really trying to balance out the information out there. I think that again, I’m very proud of the fact that our coaching staff for the last decade has continued to dive deeper into what these levels of information and numbers mean and that goes back to when Bochy first got here and it’s continued.”
Broad-based discussion of analytics and sabermetrics are a positive sign for a Giants’ organization that’s been perceived as a slow adopter of analytics compared to its peers, but it’s impossible to glean finite conclusions from the new coaches’ opening statements. Powell said openly that he didn’t want to provide a concrete example of how an analytical approach aided a specific Astros’ player last season, and it’s unlikely Young would have budged if asked.
But regardless of what Powell and Young were willing to divulge, it’s clear the Giants’ front office sought coaches with experience implementing advanced metrics into their coaching styles. How effective each coach is at accomplishing this with the Giants won’t play out until next season, but both Powell and Young appear to have an understanding of the expectations laid out in front of them, and a desire to break up the status quo.
And after a last-place finish in 2017, it’s clear the status quo needed to change.