SHANNON DRAYER

Mariners’ emphasis on winning in the minors quickly produced results

Oct 20, 2016, 4:44 PM

Tyler O'Neill on positive team plate appearances: "It’s a different way to look at how to win a b...

Tyler O'Neill on positive team plate appearances: "It’s a different way to look at how to win a baseball game." (AP)

(AP)

Ask Mariners minor league field coordinator Mike Micucci what organizational imprint he wants manager Scott Servais to see in players called up to the big leagues, and the answer comes quickly.

“A winning player,” he said. “You can’t really lose all these games in the minor leagues, be like 50 games under, then get up here and all of a sudden it’s all about winning. You have to learn how to win.”

In years past, winning in the minor leagues was prioritized far below individual development. Winning was very much secondary to developing skills and advancing individuals. This approach perhaps is one of the reasons why we did not see many players come up and contribute in the majors during previous regimes.

Drayer: Philosophy changes made a major difference in Mariners’ farm system

Learning how to win is now seen as a major part of development for the Mariners and is stressed as much as individual skills. In order to be a winning player, a Mariners minor leaguer must be a team player. For hitters that is well defined, with an expectation set in March in Peoria, according to Clinton LumberKings infielder Dalton Kelly.

“On the first day in spring training they sat down all the hitters and (farm director) Andy McKay and Mike Micucci very, very clearly said this is what we want out of hitters. We don’t care about your average, we want you guys to be productive and help your team win and these are the eight ways that we want you to go to the plate and you try to get one of these eight things done.”

The “eight things” were the different ways a player could be deemed to have had a productive team plate appearance, or PTPA. From a hit to a walk, a hit by pitch or a hit to the other side to advance a runner, anything the batter did at the plate to help the team was counted and tracked as a PTPA. The batter was given the task of not going up to the plate to better his own numbers, but what could he do to help the team. To that end, those numbers were kept and posted weekly. The measure of PTPA was something completely new in the Mariners organization, but Tyler O’Neill, the team’s 2016 minor league player of the year, understood the benefit right away.

“It puts everything in perspective,” he said. “Whatever it takes to win, just get the job done. It allows you to do other things when you previously thought you didn’t have to. It’s a different way to look at how to win a baseball game. Everything is a positive if you are helping the team out.”

The emphasis put on PTPAs helped O’Neill become a better hitter, which he will need to be when he reaches the big leagues. Very few clean-up hitters in the minors step into clean-up hitting roles in the big leagues. They have to be able to do other things at the plate if they are going to benefit their team.

For O’Neill, rather than just focus on his power – which was all or nothing – he was forced to have better situational at-bats. The Mariners want more from their power guys and PTPA tracking is one way that point is being driven home. PTPAs also benefited those who hit for average.

“The hitters had other things to focus on,” said Kelly, who finished first in an organizational PTPA tournament that was determined in a Final Four-type bracket competition. “It allowed us to relax, we weren’t worried about our batting average, we were just worried about being productive and helping the team to win, and I think it really changed the culture of the whole minor league organization.”

PTPAs and “C the Z” scores were just two areas of teaching and evaluating in the minors. Another prime area of focus was limiting free bases, according to Micucci.

“When you hand the team a base without them earning it – a stolen base, walk, balk, error, passed ball, wild pitch. We want to control the free bases,” he said. “There was a process to how we were going to do it. The same goes for PTPAs and C the Z. A lot of times we say we are going to do this, which is good, but if you don’t come up with the how or the why, you really don’t have anything. We spent a lot of time on the how and the why.”

The off-field and mental aspects of what it takes to be a big league player were stressed as well with players learning how to prepare for games.

“The concentration level and the focus that takes place to go on when you are preparing before the game, you just can’t flip a switch,” said Micucci. “We have probably prepared better this year from what the players have done in the past. The feedback from the players, it’s been really, really hard, but it has been really, really good. I think spring training was really hard for them and we worked probably harder than they ever had in the past, took more ground balls, took more swings, spent more time on the field. At the end of the day when they started the season and started seeing some success, they were all in.”

When we first heard of the plan to turn around the minor leagues last fall, the task seemed daunting. It certainly would take more than a year to turn around a system that had been in the bottom three in winning percentage the previous two years. Where do you even start?

It would appear the answer was simple: You ask for it.

From the hitting summit last January where players were challenged to define who they were as hitters and set straight when they saw themselves as something different, to a more rigorous spring training, to working with players and holding them accountable, to development plans they helped come up with, to demanding PTPAs over individual numbers the players responded. And from top prospects to organizational journeymen, the bar was raised and the players responded. The commitment went both ways, regardless of draft position or prospect status.

“If he’s a 1, make him a 2. If he’s a 2, make him a 3. … If they are a 5, make them better 5s. Go above and beyond, don’t leave any stone unturned,” Micucci said. “Make all of the players the best they can possibly be. When you look up at the end of the day, our job in play development is to get guys to match or exceed their talent. If that is Double-A max, then they have done their job. If we get them to exceed their talent and skill set, then we are really doing the right thing. The players are the ultimate report card. How they do really tells us how we are doing as a system.”

So much was accomplished in the minors with a culture set, philosophies learned and perhaps the bow on top, the franchise-record winning percentage.

“It is a credit to everybody who touches the players every single day,” said Micucci. “It is everybody in player development pulling on the same end of the rope. Everybody sees the vision and is going in the same direction. It is a credit to those people who are doing it every single day.”

And the final grade for year one?

“Year one is a really good start,” he acknowledged. “That being said, we still have a long way to go.”

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