Phillies 2020 Draft: Matt Klentak talks adapting, four picks
By Matt Rappa
Importance of listening to everyone’s opinion
"“We’re trying to cast a wide net and bring in a lot of information to make well-informed decisions.”"
A part of Klentak’s kudos given to the Phillies scouting operation included regarding them doing a “terrific job of asking questions, giving guys the floor, giving everybody an opportunity to weigh in and trying to come up with the most accurate draft board that we could.”
While it is difficult for one person to have a “completing picture” on a particularly draft prospect the Phillies may be interested in, clearly, this year, that task was even more difficult than before given the pandemic.
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Klentak stressed the importance of always collecting feedback, inputs, and good opinions “from a variety of different sources.”
“You don’t want to lean too much in one direction,” he says. “You want to make sure you’re collecting from all sources and make a well-informed, balanced decision. Never has that been more important than in a year like this, where the information was incomplete. Players didn’t get to go out and play all spring and we didn’t get those looks. We had to use everything we could.”
Among the things the Phillies used to prepare, unique to the 2020 draft, was soliciting more opinions than ever before from people outside of the amateur scooting department, such as those from the Phillies’ player development group and even big-league staff, through watching a video or looking at the breakdown of the data that the team has on a prospect.
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While there were no games on the baseball diamond, Klentak says he felt “refreshed” and “energized” to get on the Zoom calls with Barber and other colleagues to discuss “players, tools, and what makes these players good.”
“There were a lot of work-related endeavors that we’ve been going through all spring, but this was probably the most baseball-focused of them,” he says. “We’re trying to cast a wide net and bring in a lot of information to make well-informed decisions.”