Clearwater, Fla. • New Philadelphia Phillies manager Gabe Kapler's progressive approach includes a strategy straight from a slow-pitch softball league.
Kapler plans to flip-flop outfielders in the middle of an inning to put his best defensive player in the position where the spray charts indicate a batter is most likely to hit the ball.
This isn't the typical infield shift and old-school thinkers will scoff at the idea, but Kapler feels so strongly about it that he has these words written on a white board in his office:
"We know that different players have different skills.