Q&A: Larry Bowa on Aidan Miller’s 2025 outlook, Trea Turner’s future at shortstop, and more
The longtime Phillies adviser believes that Miller can make it at shortstop in the big leagues. "Just the athleticism out there. I see that, I see the range, I see the arm, I see his intelligence."
Larry Bowa is the easiest person to find in Phillies camp.
Just head to the half-field adjacent to the home clubhouse at BayCare Ballpark, and there’s a good chance Bowa will be there, fungo bat in hand, at infield coach Bobby Dickerson’s side, hitting grounders to any players who want them.
Bowa, 79, is in the middle of his 60th spring training, 41 of which have come with the Phillies. As a player, he was a Gold Glove shortstop and World Series champion. He was a coach for the pennant-winning 1993 team and managed the Phillies from 2001 to 2004.
Who better, then, to ask for his impressions on camp so far? The team’s senior adviser joined Phillies Extra, The Inquirer’s weekly baseball show. Here is an excerpt from our conversation, which has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Watch the entire interview below.
Q: Since camp started, I’ve been eager to ask you about Aidan Miller. He’s the youngest player in camp. He’s 21 years old. Two years ago, he was in high school. He’s a first-round pick. He’s in big league camp for the first time, and you’ve been around him now for a few weeks. What’s been your impression of Aidan just from working with him?
A: First of all, he’s been very impressive, very intelligent for a young kid. I’m sure he’s a little bit in awe in the locker room, but he doesn’t show it. He’s here to learn, and if you talk to him, you’d say, man, this guy’s been playing baseball or being invited to big camps for the last five or six years. This is his first big league camp, and he’s handling himself unbelievable.
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He’s got great tools. You know, people ask me, do I think he can play short? I watched him last year. I watched him this spring. I definitely think he can play short, and I don’t know what the plans are down the road. I do think that this year he will be playing short. I think he’s starting out in [double-A] Reading. And if things progress like I think they’re going to progress, there’s a good chance he could be in triple A before the end of the season. But for a kid to come out of high school and be as mature as this kid, he’s been very impressive. His work ethic is off the chart. He’s got good arms. He’s got good hands. I’m very impressed with the way he swings the bat, uses all fields. Big-time pickup for us to draft this individual, and I think he’s going to have a great career, whether it be at short, whether it be at third. He’s going to be in the big leagues playing somewhere, and it’s just a matter of where they want to put him. But I think this year they’re going to definitely start him out at shortstop in Reading.
Q: Dave Dombrowski has said that he’s going to stay at short. But after the draft in 2023, you talk to some scouts from other teams who wondered whether his future will be at third base. You think he can stay at short. Why do you say that?
A: Just the athleticism out there. I see that, I see the range, I see the arm, I see his intelligence. He’s got a good baseball mind, he’s got good hands, he swings the bat exceptionally well. And again, we got Trea Turner, who’s here for a long time, so I have no idea what the plans are in the future, barring any injuries. Hopefully Trea stays healthy because Trea’s an outstanding player. I’ve had a philosophy that if a guy’s good enough he’s going to find his way into the lineup whether it be the position he wants to play or another position. When you have this kind of talent, it’s just a matter of time before he’s in the big leagues, in my opinion.
Q: When the Phillies signed Trea Turner a couple of years ago, you and I talked and I’d done a little bit of research about the aging curve of shortstops. Everyone knows the older you get, the harder it is to continue to play 100 or more games a year. I went back to 1972 and there were less than 50 shortstops who had played 100 or more games in a season at age 32. Trea’s going to be 32 this year. You were a guy who played 100-plus games every year until your age-38 season. We all know what kind of an athlete Trea is. In your mind, does he have the makeup, the athleticism to beat that aging curve? What’s going to be the most challenging thing for him to stay at shortstop as he gets into his middle 30s?
» READ MORE: The Phillies want Trea Turner to be himself in 2025. And that means creating ‘havoc’ on the bases.
A: Yeah, I think he can beat that as far as games played. He’s got a great body. He’s got tremendous speed. He’s got a good arm. Each guy’s different. You might have another guy that you’re saying, ‘Oh, this is his last year.’ I don’t see that with Trea. I see Trea playing a long time here. He takes care of himself. I think the biggest thing with playing every day now is they have workloads, not just the Phillies, everybody in baseball. And they make a note if a guy’s playing a lot of games in a row, they sit him down. I’m not all-in on that, but obviously they’re doing it for injuries and to prevent injuries. I like guys to play every day. I watched the Atlanta Braves up until last year. Their lineup goes out there every single day. Every now and then they’ll give a guy a rest. If you’ve got a good, solid lineup, which I think our lineup is that solid, I’m playing these guys. And I know the dog days get here in August, and you need a blow. It’s 100 degrees. The humidity’s high. But I think Trea’s the kind of guy who’s in great shape. I think he can play for a long time. And again, is he going to play short the whole time under his contract? I don’t know. But I don’t see him moving anytime soon. I really don’t.
Q: The batting order is a topic of conversation, as usual. And my contention is at the end of the day it doesn’t matter a whole heck of a lot. Because for as much as people talk about who should lead off and where should Bryce Harper bat, I’ve always thought that if you have your best hitters coming up as often as possible, you’re going to score around the same number of runs. When you were a manager, how much time did you spend on the batting order in general on thinking about those spots individually or more as a grouping?
» READ MORE: How important is batting order? As the Phillies experiment with their lineup, let’s look at the numbers.
A: It’s a puzzle and you want to make sure you have the right guys hitting before and after one another in different areas of the lineup. I think that’s important. I think guys like to know who’s hitting in front of them, who’s in behind them. And of course you’re going to have some games where you face a guy like [Chris] Sale for Atlanta and he’s very difficult to hit from the left side. So you might switch that lineup a little bit. But for the most part, I think these guys like to know where they’re hitting, who’s hitting behind them. Does that mean it’s etched in stone? No. I mean, if your team goes cold for a week and [you] don’t score runs, obviously the manager tries to shake things up and move a guy here or move a guy there.
But for the most part, if you ask these guys, they want to bat in the same order. They want to know who’s pitching. They want to know who’s hitting in front of them, what the guy throws to certain hitters. But analytics have taken over baseball. Not just with the Phillies, all over. And sometimes they’ll put in the lineup and they’ll say, ‘Hey, this lineup looks like it matches up better.’ I didn’t have to deal with that. I basically looked at individuals and I could tell when a guy needed a day off or maybe a guy was struggling. I said, ‘Hey, look, come in tomorrow. Just relax. Don’t even hit. Don’t take ground balls. Just rest. And then you get back in there the next day.’ But because the analytics have taken over and teams are paying analytic people a lot of money, they rely on those a lot.
Personally, I like gut feeling. I like what my eyes tell me. I think Rob Thomson can do the same thing. Rob’s the kind of guy that takes the information and they basically say, if you want to use it, fine. If you don’t, and I think that’s how Rob does it. But you get guys that, hey, they get a little sensitive when you start. If a guy goes 0-for-8, now all of a sudden you’re moving from the three-hole to the seven-hole. You know, they’re saying, ‘Well, I guess he doesn’t believe I can hit there.’ So you’ve got to be careful. I think it’s a tenuous situation. You’ve got to believe in your players. And I like the set lineup. Every now and then you might platoon or give a guy a blow and let your extra man play, get some at-bats. Because over the course of 162 games, you’re going to need your extra man. You’re going to need those guys to play. …
But it’s a different generation now. I know when I played, [Mike Schmidt] hit third, [Greg Luzinski] hit fourth. We very seldom deviated from that. Sometimes I would hit second. Sometimes I would hit eighth. That didn’t bother me. I think it bothers guys in the middle of the lineup more so than a guy that’s a singles hitter, steals bases and things like that. You can insert a singles guy anywhere in the lineup. But those big power hitters, they like to come up with men on base. And there’s no doubt in my mind that Harp and Schwarb and JT [Realmuto] and Casty [Nick Castellanos], all those guys, they like coming up to see two or three guys on. And that’s the big, big issue right now.