Do Phillies hitters have to change their approach? Here’s Kevin Long’s plan for each.

CLEARWATER, Fla. — The scouting report didn’t lie.

“We knew going in,” hitting coach Kevin Long said, recalling the Phillies’ meeting before Game 4 of the divisional round series against the Mets last October, “that [José] Quintana doesn’t throw strikes.”

True to form, Quintana uncorked two consecutive pitches in the strike zone to the first batter of the game, then not again until the fifth inning, according to MLB Gameday data. All the Phillies needed to do was stay disciplined, and the veteran lefty would have to venture into the zone with his mostly hittable stuff or else walk the ballpark.

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Yet when Long looked out at the Citi Field scoreboard before the sixth inning, Quintana had thrown 71 pitches, allowed only two hits, and held the Phillies to one (unearned) run.

No wonder, then, that Trea Turner assessed the 2024 Phillies’ untimely demise — they batted .186 (24-for-129) with eight extra-base hits and 38 strikeouts in the four-game vanquishing by the Mets — with this lament: “Personally, I think we get ourselves out. I don’t think it matters who’s on the mound”

It was a scathing indictment. Accurate, too.

“Mm-hmm. That’s the truth,” Long said last month in a wide-ranging interview on the eve of the Phillies’ first full-squad workout. “If I don’t have to throw a strike and I can get somebody out, why wouldn’t I do it?

“Those are the things that we’ve got to get better at.”

No question. But how? Because although Turner’s observation caught the attention of president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, the Phillies brought back the identical lineup save veteran left fielder Max Kepler, who signed for one year as a free agent and is ticketed to bat in the lower half of the order.

Six of the nine everyday players — Bryce Harper, Turner, J.T. Realmuto, Nick Castellanos, Kyle Schwarber, and Kepler — are in their 30s, each with a decade or more of major-league experience and a total of 18 All-Star selections. They’re coachable, but they’re also set in their ways. In many cases, that means an aggressive approach that involves swinging at pitches out of the strike zone.

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Old dogs have been known to learn new tricks. But at a certain point, isn’t it also true that veteran hitters are who they are? Especially when they’ve been successful that way?

Dombrowski and others asked those questions during organizational meetings last October. Long, widely regarded as among the best hitting coaches in the sport, was in attendance. He gave his input and listened to others.

His conclusion: The Phillies can make changes to their overall approach at the plate. But they also must resist overreacting to ill-timed slumps, be it a four-game muting by the Mets or an 11-for-63 (.175), 21-strikeout silencing at home in Games 6 and 7 of the 2023 NL Championship Series against the Diamondbacks.

“I just think we’ve got really talented players who are really good, and in a short series, when you lose, it changes quick,” Long said. “Were there some approach issues? There’s always going to be approach issues. Was our strike-zone discipline [lacking]? We swung at 30% out of the zone, which was better than we did during the year at times. The Mets actually chased more than we did. So, does that make their [approach] better?

“Could we individually have done some things better? Yeah, there’s a couple of things we could have done just a little bit better. It just didn’t work out.”

Dombrowski emerged from the October meetings with an edict that he said was “going to fall into Kevin Long’s hands.” He wants the Phillies to focus on using the whole field more often rather than trying to pull the ball.

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Rob Thomson echoed that talking point. The manager pointed to the Yankees as an example of successfully staying through the middle of the field in the postseason. Thomson also suggested that several hitters, notably Turner, will be less susceptible to swinging at pitches out of the strike zone if they focus on hitting the ball the other way.

Long doesn’t disagree.

“But I think our guys do a pretty good job of using the whole field,” said Long, whose opinion is backed by the numbers. As a team, the Phillies had the second-highest rate of batted balls to the opposite field (26.0%) in the regular season last year, trailing only the Yankees (26.3%).

If anything, the idea of using the field might be a matter of messaging. Because after the Diamondbacks exposed the tendency of many Phillies hitters to expand the strike zone, the organizational focus last spring was on “chase rate.”

Actually, it was more like an obsession.

“It’s become like a bad four-letter word,” Long said. “I think chase can become a detrimental word to some of these guys. They don’t like to hear it. Well, I get that. But what can we do to help them understand how important it is to command the strike zone day in and day out?

“If you do that, do you become a little bit more passive? Yeah, because you’ve got to decide whether to swing or not instead of being swing, swing, swing, swing, swing, swing all the way. You could still be in swing mode, but you’ve got to be cognizant of the pitch, the location, the speed of the pitch, which these guys are fully capable of doing.

“And it’s not everybody, so it’s not fair to say that about everybody. But there’s certain guys that got to do a better job with it, 100%. They just need to be a little bit more aware of it, so I’m going to press harder.”

On some hitters more than others. Because as Long notes, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to why the offense went cold in back-to-back postseasons.

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The Phillies have conceded that Castellanos, for instance, will always be prone to fishing out of the zone, especially for curveballs and sliders. In trying to reduce his chase rate early last season, the Phillies inadvertently messed with his swing, contributing to a brutal April and May. So, Long said he pays more attention to Castellanos’ swing mechanics. When the righty-hitting slugger is balanced and aligned, he tends to put even bad pitches in play.

But Long knows Turner can exhibit better strike-zone discipline because he has seen him do it. Turner swung at only 26% of pitches out of the zone through seven major-league seasons, including the 3½ when Long coached him in Washington. In two seasons with the Phillies, Turner’s out-of-the-zone swing rate has risen to 34.7%.

“We’re not going to get Nick down in the 20s [in chase rate]. It’s just not going to happen,” Long said. “Trea is much different. Because he’s shown multiple seasons of being able to control the strike zone. Can an old dog learn a new trick? In this case, he’s got to go back to some of the simple tricks that he had in his bag. And I know he can do it.”

In Realmuto’s case, Long believes he can add points to his on-base percentage by not expanding the zone as often on two-strike pitches. Schwarber is working on reducing his bat movement before the pitch to take a more direct path to the ball, possibly helping to cut down on strikeouts. Johan Rojas can be more consistent with his swing to produce fewer ground balls, according to Long.

Then, there are Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh. Stott, who played through a nerve problem in his right elbow, regressed last season because he was indecisive on a plate approach; Marsh didn’t make enough contact, his strikeout rate climbing to 32.4%. Neither had much success against left-handed pitching.

But Long is stressing a change in their self-image, too.

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“My challenge to those guys is, think of it more like you’re the superstar on the team,” Long said. “And they’re not. But if they were with the Marlins or the Pirates, or some of these other teams, guess what? They’d be hitting third and fourth in the lineup, or leading off. There’s no doubt in my mind. So, I want their mindset to be, ‘I can really, really impact this game. Me.’

“I think they get caught up in, ‘I don’t always have to be the big performer.’ Well, no. Try to be that guy. Be the superstar, be the man out there, because you’re really good. Stott, be more aggressive in hitters’ counts. I want them to have that mentality that they’re the main guy on the team and see what happens.”

As Long sees it, marginal improvements from every hitter will add up to overall gains for an offense that scored the fifth-most runs in baseball last season and ranked in the top five in most other categories.

And if it doesn’t happen?

“When you lose [in the playoffs], people lose jobs,” Long said. “There’s pointing fingers. Whatever the hot topic is, the media’s going to run with it. Good, bad, indifferent, that’s just the way it is.

“We’ve got the same bunch in there, and that’s where we fall into this thing of, are we going to see guys doing the same thing? I hope not. I hope not. We’re talking about it. We’re trying to address it.”