An unconventional path led Jason Ochart to the same room at the same hitting seminar last month in Missouri as Phillies hitting coach John Mallee. Two coaches, two different backgrounds. Ochart, 28, had parlayed a volunteer role into a $5,000 salary as hitting coach at a small NAIA school in California. There, he devised a data-driven program and posted his ideas on Twitter, where an ambitious baseball mind took notice and invited him to work at a training think tank called Driveline Baseball. Whereas Mallee, 49, has spent the last 23 years as a coach in professional baseball.



But Ochart and Mallee began a conversation at the Slugfest Coaches Clinic in November, and Mallee — an admirer — challenged Ochart to think about how he’d solve some player-development problems. The Phillies wanted to revise their hitting development. The two men, both of whom had studied kinesiology, shared common ground. “That was the start of it,” Ochart said. And,...