Crashburn Alley

Phillies Mid-season Pitch Values

by Bill Baer on July 13th, 2009
Posted in MLB, Philadelphia Phillies, Sabermetrics | Print | 1 Comment »

With the All-Star break at hand, it’s as good a time as any to review how the Phillies fare with various pitches both hitting and pitching. The metric of choice is total runs above average. I imported the numbers from FanGraphs and created a bunch of charts. Ooooh, pretty lines. Click on the thumbnails to view a larger version.

Hitting

Fastball

Best

• Chase Utley: 21.2

Worst

• Jimmy Rollins: -8.4

Slider

Best

•  Ryan Howard: 8.7

Worst

•  Carlos Ruiz: -3.2

Curveball

Best

•  John Mayberry: 2.3

Worst

•  Ryan Howard: -3.7

Change-up

Best

•  Raul Ibanez: 8.1

Worst

•  Shane Victorino: -5.0

Pitching

Fastball

Best

• J.A. Happ: 7.7

Worst

• Brad Lidge: -9.4

Slider

Best

• Joe Blanton: 4.0

Worst

• Brett Myers: -3.2

Curveball

Best

• Brett Myers: 3.1

Worst

• Joe Blanton: -2.8

Change-up

Best

• Ryan Madson: 6.1

Worst

• Jamie Moyer: -10.6

Surprise: Despite MLB 2K9′s persistence, Cole Hamels does not, in fact, throw a slider. I know, earth-shattering. But on a more serious note, I was surprised at just how well Shane Victorino handles fastballs — nearly as well as Chase Utley. Unlike Utley, however, Shane does not hit change-ups well.

Cole Hamels’ change-up is exactly at average: 0.0. His fastball and curve are both in the negatives at -6.6 and -2.0, respectively. And yet he’s still been worth 1.7 wins above replacement according to FanGraphs.

I was personally surprised that Ryan Howard hits sliders well. Do right-handers throw him a lot of those? It seems like whenever I see RyHo against a lefty, he’s flailing at low-and-away sliders. He’s at a positive 8.7 RAA against sliders overall. Mind-boggling for me.

J.A. Happ and Rodrigo Lopez are the only starters with an above-average fastball. Roughly, the average Phillies fastball is about two runs below average.

Lastly, Jamie Moyer’s change-up is really bad. He only has about a 6 MPH differential between his fastball and change-up. That would rank among the worst among qualified starters, and as I found out back on June 10, the bigger the differential between FB and CH speeds, the more likely you are to deceive batters and induce swings-and-misses.

Addendum: Wanted to add in the Phillies team ranks…

• Fastball: 50.7 (4th in MLB, 1st in NL)
• Slider: 11.8 (1st in MLB)
• Curveball: -13.4 (28th in MLB, 15th in NL)
• Change-up: 3.7 (8th in MLB, 5th in NL)