GREENSBORO, N.C.—Patience, patience, patience.
When Mark Parent was a catcher in the major leagues for more than a decade, he knew he had to be patient when working with young pitchers fresh from the minor leagues.
Today, Parent is manager for the the Phillies' low Class A Lakewood, a team filled with high-ceiling, tooled-up athletes, many of whom are about as raw as they come.
Patience, Parent believes, is the key to developing that type of player.
"It's almost like a circus every night, but controlled," he said. "You never know what's going to happen, but you figure out what happened that night and then you go work on it the next day. That's all we can do."
Lakewood's roster is replete with premium athletes picked out of high school and chock full of Latin American talent. On any night, the BlueClaws have the power to smash line drives and opposite-field home runs, the speed to leg out infield hits, force errors, take the extra base and run down fly balls in the gaps. They're also just as likely to swing early in counts and at balls in the dirt, whiff through pitches in the strike zone, make mistakes on the basepaths or make an error on a routine play in the field.