As Phillies open minor-league camp, challenges await after a season without games | Scott Lauber

The last day of spring training usually has a jailbreak vibe to it. Bags are pre-packed. The plane is fueled up. After seven weeks of tedious workouts followed by games that don’t count, most players can hardly wait to skip town and get on with the business of opening the season for real.

But this year, the whole ritual was more like a shift change.

As soon as major-league teams cleared out of their training facilities in Florida and Arizona this week, minor leaguers began to check in. For most, it marked the first time they have put on a uniform in more than a year. You can imagine the mood.

“Pure excitement,” Phillies farm director Josh Bonifay said by phone.

But the pandemic has changed so much about player development, the lifeblood of every organization. Less than half of the Phillies’ nearly 250 minor leaguers played in games last year, either in scrimmages at the alternate training site (triple-A substitute) in Lehigh Valley or against actual opponents in the Florida instructional league last fall or winter-ball leagues overseas. They were the lucky ones. The majority hasn’t played competitively since the 2019 season.

The challenges, then, will be immense as the minor leagues get up and running again.

Bonifay could talk for hours about the logistical undertaking of bringing 215 players and staff to minor-league camp in Clearwater, Fla., while adhering to Major League Baseball’s health and safety protocols -- all on shorter-than-usual notice. He called it “an incredible organizational effort” and praised the work of the player-development staff, including longtime director of minor league operations Lee McDaniel.

» READ MORE: Inside the Phillies’ process of developing minor-leaguers in a year without games | Scott Lauber

Then there’s the baseball element and the difficulties in making up for lost time. Two of the Phillies’ top prospects -- right-hander Mick Abel and center fielder Yhoswar Garcia, both 19 years old -- are still waiting to make their professional debuts.

At present, the Phillies’ full-season affiliates -- triple-A Lehigh Valley, double-A Reading, high-A Jersey Shore, and low-A Clearwater -- are scheduled to open their seasons on May 4. Between now and then, players will ramp up in two locations: Lehigh Valley and Clearwater.

“Normally you ask players to come in ready to compete because you only have seven days before [exhibition] games start,” Bonifay said. “We are going to take our time a little more, just to make sure muscles are prepped, bodies are able to take care of the amount of work. There’s going to be some players who have not seen the field for almost two years competitively.”

Indeed, 2021 is shaping up to be almost as unique as 2020 down on the farm.

The announcement came early last month. Rather than opening the triple-A season in April, as scheduled, MLB pushed it back one month to allot extra time for more players, staff, and fans to get vaccinated.

Thus, the temporary return of the alternate training site -- this time with a twist.

Teams may still call up only the players who are stationed at the alt-site. But unlike last year, when those players were permitted to scrimmage only within their own camps, they will face actual opponents this month.

The Phillies have 30 players in Lehigh Valley, including lefty reliever JoJo Romero, top pitching prospect Spencer Howard, infielder Scott Kingery, and outfielders Mickey Moniak and Odúbel Herrera. They will play 19 games (10 at home, nine on the road), according to Bonifay, against their Yankees and Mets counterparts, who are based in Scranton and Brooklyn, respectively. Bonifay said alt-site clubs may apply with MLB to have as many as 550 fans at their games. Lehigh Valley has not yet committed to opening its gates.

» READ MORE: Phillies minor leaguers scrambling to make ends meet during coronavirus shutdown

The more competitive environment figures to better prepare players for jumping into game competition.

“It’s going to be a lot better,” said Phillies reliever Connor Brogdon, who began last season in Lehigh Valley. “Seeing different hitters from outside your organization makes it a little more competitive. [Last year], you were facing the same five or six guys from your own organization every single day. That gets a little repetitive. It’s tough to keep that competitive edge.”

In the absence of games last season, left-hander Jonathan Hennigan returned to Texas and continued working on the mechanical adjustments he had been making with pitching coach Pat Robles in spring training.

“I went home and I crushed it, man,” Hennigan said by phone last month. “I was in a stage where I was learning [to use] my lower body, and I was trying to perfect something. I got some weighted balls just to focus on repeating [his delivery], and I saw a lot of success with it, a good velo jump. I had to do what I had to do.”

The Phillies tried to replace a season without minor-league games by tailoring a plan for each player. They arranged at least weekly Zoom check-ins with members of the coaching staff to reinforce the plan and get feedback. Bonifay doesn’t like to refer to 2020 as a “lost season.” He prefers to think of it as an opportunity to develop skills in alternative ways.

But Bonifay also knows there’s no substitute for competition. So when winter-ball opportunities arose in the Dominican Republic and as far away as Australia, Bonifay encouraged it.

“Josh Bonifay called and asked if I wanted to go to Australia to play, and man, I ran with it,” Hennigan said. “I had to go play in a game. I’m not going to lie to you. It got kind of old throwing to the same hitters and throwing at our high-school field every day.”

» READ MORE: Phillies prospect list should be viewed with caution after a year without minor leagues | Bob Brookover

Hennigan estimates that he threw a total of 86 innings last year, most of them at that high-school field. Some of his minor-league teammates didn’t get as much work. The first few weeks of camp, then, will be about figuring out how fast and hard to push.

“We are going to monitor our workload, and we’re going to make sure that we ramp up extremely slowly,” Bonifay said. “We’ll monitor throws, we’ll monitor swings, we’ll monitor time on feet. It’s going to be a learning experience for not only the player to not go full bore early on but also for the staff, too, to properly build up the players.”

There may be a psychological component to all of this, too.

For as much as the Phillies wanted to turn 2020 into a productive year, the reality is that minor leaguers -- few of whom are highly paid -- are a year older and in most cases no closer to realizing their dream. To some, such as the double-A and triple-A players who weren’t brought to the alternate site, the big leagues may feel even more distant.

“I think what our staff did really well this past year was just being in communication with the players,” Bonifay said. “It didn’t matter what player, who it was, it was just to tell them, ‘Each one of you are here, each one of you are a Phillie, and everybody in the uniform, we’re going to do everything we possibly can to help you. Everybody’s going to be watching, everybody’s going to be talking, and we’re going to be teaching as much as we possibly can.’ ”

Beginning this weekend, they’ll go back to doing it in person.

That’s worth getting excited about.

» READ MORE: Phillies first-round draft pick Mick Abel’s high school coach says there’s even more to the pitcher than meets the eye