Phillies to Hire Josh Bonifay as Director of Player Development

By Matt Rappa, Sports Talk Philly editor

Just two days after the report that former Philadelphia Phillies Director of Player Development Joe Jordan is drawing “several inquiries” to assume a front office position, The Athletic’s Matt Gelb shed light as to who the club will hire as his replacement — Josh Bonifay.

Bonifay spent seven of the last eight years with one​ of the game’s “most successful and​ data-driven​ organizations​,” the Houston Astros, per Gelb. Positions Bonifay assumed over that time within the 2017 World Series champions’ system included: minor-league coordinator, manager and coach.

Gelb writes:

Bonifay, 40, comes from a baseball family. His father, Cam, was Pittsburgh’s general manager for almost a decade and later the director of player development in Tampa Bay. His grandfather, brother, nephew and cousin were players, scouts or executives in baseball. In Josh Bonifay, the Phillies can boast someone with a fresh perspective who does not have ties to the organization but comes with 20 years of experience in uniform. Bonifay has never held a front-office job; his minor-league playing career immediately transitioned into a coaching role.

The hire likely will not be made official until after the conclusion of the 2018 World Series, as Major League Baseball shuns announcements that draw attention away from the Fall Classic. Bonifay was one of many candidates listed and interviewed on the Phillies’ “exhaustive” list.

Bonifay was the Astros’ minor-league field coordinator in 2018, and served as the Texas Rangers’ field coordinator in the major leagues the season prior. Bonifay, per Gelb, even managed Astros star infielder Alex Bregman at Low-A ball in 2015. His hire will be another extension of the club emulating “unorthodox ideas” of other “big-market franchises reliant on data-driven decisions,” according to Gelb, who notes, that one aspect of that is “hiring coaches, analysts, scouts and player-development people from other ‘pacesetter’ organizations.”

Bonifay was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 39th round of the 1996 amateur draft out of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Bonifay never made it above the Double-A level spanning 812 games and eight seasons within the Pirates’ and Astros’ systems.

As the Phillies’ new farm director, Bonifay will implement and utilize analytics throughout the system, just like Gabe Kapler at the big-league level in 2018 during his first season as manager.