Shop Spirit Wear

The decider: He’s the Phillies’ eyes on replay challenges, among the best in baseball so far at overturning calls

Kevin Camiscioli is from hmhs class of 1989

By Meghan Montemurro, The Athletic Philadelphia, May 9, 2018

Kevin Camiscioli has less than one minute to make a decision that will play out in front of thousands of fans.

Few people outside of the Philadelphia Phillies organization are aware he’s the catalyst of potentially game-changing calls.

Camiscioli, the Phillies’ director of video coaching services, is the eyes of the team’s replay challenge system. Whenever manager Gabe Kapler stands on the top step of the dugout requesting a moment from the home plate umpire, Camiscioli is the voice on the other end of the call with bench coach Rob Thomson.

With Camiscioli behind the scenes, the Phillies are one of the best early this season at getting calls overturned through manager replay challenges. They have successfully overturned 10 of their 11 challenged calls. The Phillies’ 90.9 percent success rate is second best in Major League Baseball behind the Kansas City Royals (9 for 9). In 2017, Philadelphia won 56.7 percent (17 for 30) of their challenges.

The MLB league average this year is 52.3 percent.

“I want that No. 1 spot,” Camiscioli said, laughing.

On the Phillies’ last road trip alone, their six challenged calls were all overturned. That’s more overturned calls than 17 different teams have totaled through the first six weeks of the season. 

Two overturned calls last week helped the Phillies beat the Marlins 6-0 last Wednesday to avoid getting swept in Miami. A reversed call on an Aaron Nola pick-off attempt gave the right-hander an important first out in the second inning with the Phillies holding a two-run lead. Another call was changed their way in the eighth, ending the inning rather than bringing the tying run on-deck.

The 10 overturned calls add up, saving the Phillies’ pitchers more than three innings of work.

“What also sets him apart is conviction, the willingness to make a big decision with everything on the line,” Kapler said of Camiscioli. “Because you could see how it’d work in the opposite fashion. He sees it, makes a decision we don’t like, we get blown up three or four times in a row. You’re like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ But he’s so accountable, so decisive and so strong and believes in what he sees so much that our level of trust in Kevin is off the charts.”

Camiscioli predates the current coaching staff. This is his 22nd season in the organization, joining the Phillies in 1996 when his video work featured VHS tapes. Replay duties became part of his role after MLB expanded to manager challenges in 2014.

Kapler credits Camiscioli for contributing to the Phillies’ culture. He put Camiscioli in charge of the music during spring training. The hallways surrounding the clubhouse and field staff offices were always lively during the six-week camp.

“A lot of the fun and success we had in spring training is attributed to him,” Kapler said.

Camiscioli’s main responsibilities involve making sure players and coaches have the video footage cued and ready for when they need it. During spring training, he started to get an idea of who wants what. It was an important process with a new coaching staff in place. They enter the season with a gameplan, though it’s always evolving as the year progresses.

The players and staff appreciate Camiscioli’s work.

“To be able to walk out of here, not doing anything myself, knowing that by the time I get to the hotel or by the time I get home, whatever I need specifically is on my phone, my iPad, whatever,” Hoskins said. “It just makes our job easier to be able to have that and have one less thing to think about or worry about, about how to get that video. It’s huge.”

During Phillies games, Camiscioli is situated in a video room up the tunnel from the dugout. He charts pitches, which helps him stay ingrained in the game. As soon as he sees a close or questionable call, Camiscioli immediately starts looking at replay angles. He wants to be ready if he receives a phone call from Thomson.

Both teams are provided two laptops by the league to review plays. Their live telecast feeds are the same ones used by replay officials at the command center, which is located at Major League Baseball Advanced Media headquarters in New York.

A manager has 10 seconds after a play ends to notify the umpire if he is considering challenging the call. Kapler’s move is to hold up his hand like a stop sign. The team then has a 30-second window to decide whether to request a replay review.

After watching the available replay angles, Camiscioli tells Thomson: challenge it, safe or out.

The communication between Camiscioli and Thomson has been seamless, the Phillies say. Thomson also served as the middle man on replay reviews as the Yankees’ bench coach (2015-17) so he understands the process. 

“There’s a lot of times when I’m looking at the play and if we’re on defense, I’ll look at it with my eyes and think, ‘Ah, he’s safe, but I’m going to go to the phone anyway’ and we overturn it,” Thomson said. “His experience with the replay system helps a lot. He understands where to look. He makes the decision.”

Some replay challenges warrant a longer, though quick, conversation between Camiscioli and Thomson.

One such conversation took place April 21 with one out in the bottom of the sixth inning of a 6-2 win against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Carlos Santana’s jersey appeared to be grazed by an inside pitch. It caught so little of his jersey that Santana didn’t feel it. He was prepared to step back into the batter’s box to finish the at-bat.

Thomson checked with Camiscioli.

“That was one of those ones where I was like, this is going to go either way. I don’t have a good feeling for it, but you might as well,” Camiscioli said. “That was a toss up. If it were the first couple of innings, we wouldn’t have done it, but there was nothing to lose really at that point.”

The call was overturned, and Santana ended up becoming an important base runner. Odubel Herrera singled after the hit by pitch and Rhys Hoskins followed with a three-run homer to erase the Pirates’ 2-0 lead.

“To have somebody like him that’s that talented with the video stuff, it’s awesome,” Hoskins said. “It gives us a pretty good vote of confidence.”

Determining when to use a manager challenge involves some strategy. During the regular season, each team starts the game with one challenge. They retain the challenge if the replay official overturns the on-field call. The crew chief can call for additional non-home run reviews beginning in the eighth inning.

Until then, the game situation becomes an important factor in the decision to challenge. Learning when to use his challenge is part of the first-year learning process for Kapler.

“I believe in winning the moment,” Kapler said. “If it can swing an important moment in the game and it happens early, we should go for it. What that percentage is – does he have to be 25% right, 50% right, 75%?

“I don’t know what the threshold is,” he added, “but I do know that taking advantage of opportunities to change the outcome of the game when you have them is very important. We’ll continue to lean in that direction, particularly given how good he’s been.”

So, how does Camiscioli handle the pressure of making a possible game-altering decision in such a short time frame?

“Don’t panic, take a deep breath and go with it.”

Meghan Montemurro is a staff writer covering the Phillies for The Athletic Philadelphia. She's in her eighth season covering Major League Baseball, most recently as the Phillies beat writer for The News Journal over the previous four seasons. Meghan graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Contact her at [email protected]. Follow Meghan on Twitter @M_Montemurro.