Games 33-40 Recap

• Record: 7-1
• RS: 49; RA: 34
• Notes: Vance Worley hit the 15-day DL, but avoided surgery. Joe Savery was recalled.
• Ruiz hit .560/.621/.840 in these eight games, with two stolen bases.

• And speaking of Chooch

How about this Ruiz fellow, eh? A .371/.415/.621 slash on the season to date puts him among the top hitters in baseball. Right now, he’s even outslugging Ryan Braun and David Ortiz. Is he going to stay on this level all year? Almost certainly not. His .360 BABIP figures to take a couple steps down, but even when it does, he’ll be posting a line that’s more than respectable for as good a defensive catcher as he is, to boot.Ruiz is doing big time damage on pitches over the heart of the plate – as you’d want every hitter to do – but is also feasting on pitches in the upper half of the zone. A popular talking point on Chooch in those handy-dandy “scouting report” broadcast graphics is that he loves to hit the fastball. It’s easy to say that about the majority of Major Leaguers, but it really has been particularly true of Ruiz to date. Carlos has been thrown 244 fastballs in 2012, of which he has only swung on and missed four times. He’s batting .446 with a 1.222 OPS when he puts a fastball in play.

If there’s a positive, it’s that the team has hit. With double-digit hits in six of the last 12 games, I’m personally almost confused by this thing called “offense” existing at all. Following Wednesday’s game, the Phillies’ collective OBP is above .300 for just the fourth time all season. To the points.

Games 21-32 Recap

• Record: 5-7
• RS: 58; RA: 64
• Notes: Cliff Lee returned from the DL; Jim Thome hit the 15-day DL and Erik Kratz was recalled; Joe Savery was optioned with a corresponding move TBA as of this posting
• Kyle Kendrick has allowed 16 baserunners in his last two appearances (6+ IP)

• Roy Halladay bounced back

The velocity was there. The stuff was crisp and darting as always. Doc rebounded from a
tough start against Atlanta to spin seven fine innings against the Mets, despite surrendering
a lead for the second straight start. Encouraging.

• John Mayberry showed signs of life

His season line of .225/.233/.268 is still ugly, but JMJ has at least struck the ball better in the last few games (as per the eye test, anyway). It’ll take a serious hot streak to get his
numbers to approach latter-2011 status, though.

• Crap to Pap

It’s the Bridge to Lidge, only 157 times worse.

Jon Papelbon is having a nice season, Jordany Valdespin or not. Everyone else in the Phillies’ ‘pen, well, can’t really have the same said about them. Peripherally, David Herndon has done some good work, but he’s hurt; Stutes is also hurt; Schwimer and Savery have been up and optioned already; Antonio Bastardo and Chad Qualls are walking too many guys, Jose Contreras is still old and Brian Sanches is gasoline.

This says nothing of Kyle Kendrick, yet to earn about $6 million of the $7.5 million owed him over the course of the 2012-13 seasons. As tweeted earlier last week, since his debut season of 2007, only two other Major League pitchers with at least 400 innings under their belts have a lower K/9 than Kendrick: Paul Byrd (who last pitched in the Majors in ’09) and Aaron Cook. He was ineffective in his first start in place of Lee, good enough in the next two and an absolute disaster in relief Wednesday. Kendrick’s deal is, to me, the most puzzling move of the past offseason, and certainly doesn’t look to be on the way to being one of the more valuable ones.

• Cole Hamels update

Cole Hamels has a 7.33 strikeout-to-walk ratio. That leads all qualifying Major League
pitchers. He remains a free-agent-to-be.

Games 11-20 Recap

• Record: 4-6
• RS: 31; RA: 38
• Notes: Cliff Lee hit the 15-day DL on April 21; Mike Stutes was also placed on the 15-day DL on April 24
• Through 20 games, Cole Hamels has more hits and extra-base hits in eight fewer PA than Jim Thome

Leaving that portion of the discussion aside, let’s continue the volley of examinations on this topic with an entry by David Hale on Delaware Online earlier Wednesday with a closer look at Halladay over 2011 and the first month of 2012. One table Hale has put together near the end of his post is Doc’s curveball rate by month in 2011, and the rise in usage is starkly evident. From 12.5 percent in April to more than double that with 28.7 percent in September, according to Texas Leaguers’ Pitch f/x data.

Naturally, then, my first thought was about effectiveness; as Halladay’s use of the bender increased, did it stay consistently effective at keeping hitters off-balance and off the bases? To examine this, I’ll be using the data provided by TruMedia to stay consistent, but the percentages only differ very slightly from those featured in Hale’s table.

The numbers I’m paying specific attention to, besides the usage rate, are how opponents
fared against it (triple slash stats and wOBA), how many swinging strikes it incurred and
how frequently it induced ground balls, all keys to any pitcher’s success. In summary, it looks something like this:

The curve was supremely effective in smaller doses early in the season, limiting opposing
hitters to minuscule slash stats and wOBAs (including that nice, round zero in July), and
even as its usage increased, it stayed effective. Its effectiveness was diminished somewhat, but when you’re talking about wOBAs in the low .200s instead of mid-.100s, it’s a bit more difficult to complain or stress.

Though it went unnoticed in 2010, Halladay’s first year in Philadelphia, a similar trend occurred. By month in percentages, starting April, Doc’s 2010 curve usage was 14.3, 14.7, 14.3, 20.5, 21.6 and 17. That year, of course, Halladay walked away with a Cy Young Award, and 2011 saw him finish runner-up. Hey, if it ain’t broke…

Halladay will, in all likelihood, make one additional start this month, so the final row’s
numbers are destined to change, although it seems safe to assume that the ones in the
middle and right will stay plenty pleasing to the eye. And, if history is any indicator, Halladay and Carlos Ruiz will continue to fashion this deadly breaking ball more as the season progresses.

We could harp on managerial strategy and lament the missed chance at a win, but I’ll choose instead to delve a bit deeper into Lee’s work and see just what made him so successful in San Francisco Wednesday.

• Up, Up and Away (Literally)

Lee only faced seven lefties in last night’s start, but he seemed to favor an unusual approach when confronting them: throwing up and out of the zone.

Of the 20 pitches he threw to lefty batters Nate Schierholtz and Brandon Crawford – an average under three pitches per PA – Lee threw 12 out of the zone, inducing seven total swings and three whiffs. Schierholtz and Crawford went 0-for-7 against Lee, swinging at pitches out of their comfort zones. Crawford, for his career, his a bit more of a tendency to chase pitches in that area, but neither he nor Schierholtz could really be considered free swingers when it comes to that particular zone.

•  A Perfect Curve

Lee’s curveball was excellent Wednesday, and that might be putting it mildly. Only 16 of the 102 pitches were of the curved variety, but each one was perplexing to Giants hitters.

• Cole Hamels is Cole Hamels

The move all but fills out the Opening Day bullpen, and assuming health across the board – something that obviously can’t be taken for granted with this club – the bullpen will likely be constituted as such:

• Jonathan Papelbon
• Antonio Bastardo
• Chad Qualls
• Dontrelle Willis
• Michael Stutes
• Kyle Kendrick
• One of David Herndon/Justin De Fratus/Michael Schwimer/Jose Contreras

It’s something of a makeshift ‘pen, even with the big arm looming at the end. Will Bastardo return to midsummer form? Is Willis going to keep demolishing lefties as a reliever? Can Stutes keep the walks in check, and can Kendrick keep my blood pressure below 180/110?

As for Qualls, what are we to make of a downward-trending strikeout rate? The past four seasons have seen a steady drop in Qualls’s punch-outs per nine, migrating from 8.7 in ’08 to 7.8, 7.5 and 5.2(!) in the following years. Going by Fangraphs’ pitch type data, Qualls is not leaking velocity on his fastball or slider.

One thing that stands out for Qualls over the past two years is the amount of contact batters are making on pitches out of the zone, detailed here. Hitters are chasing Qualls’s stuff more over the past couple of years, but they’re making far more contact, fouling or putting balls in play that, when missed in a two-strike count, would be strikeouts.

The third column in the above picture, denoting movement by Qualls’s sliders across both horizontal and vertical planes, show pretty significant drops from 2010 to 2011. While that’s not entirely conclusive, it seems to lend itself toward the idea that, while Qualls’s velocity may not be fading yet, the crispness of his breaking stuff seems to have lost an edge last season.

Perhaps this is a correctable issue. Qualls is a veteran who knows what he needs to do to prepare for the season. If Rich Dubee and Co. see something in the spring that needs addressing, hopefully it’s corrected then, and Qualls turns into a relative steal for a ‘pen that could use him at his best.

As you all know and are probably tired of hearing by now, the 2012 season will be Cole’s last under team control in his current contract situation. His three-year, $20.5M extension ended at the conclusion of last season, and ’12 will be his final year of arbitration eligibility. The logical comparison often bandied about is Jered Weaver‘s five-year, &85M extension, signed this past August. The numbers bear out a close comparison. Hamels is almost 15 months younger, but both pitchers have about six years of Major League service, separated by 0.08 in ERA, 114 strikeouts, 16 walks and 29.2 innings. Despite concerns – Weaver with his cross-body delivery and Hamels with Minor League arm trouble – both have been durable, starting 30-plus games each of their past four seasons.

Only one is signed past the 2012 season, though, and it ain’t the one pitching for the Phillies this season. And that is quickly becoming a problem.

CSN’s Jim Salisbury recently posted a piece which details the club’s focus in signing Hamels to a one-year contract. That it’s even come to that is damning. I’ve held to the belief for a couple years running now that, if Hamels is allowed to play the 2012 season as a walk year, he will indeed walk right out of Philly to a new home at season’s end.

Consider Cole’s possible competition on the free agent market next winter. Obviously, things could change depending on how players perform, injuries and other miscellany throughout 2012, but at this moment, this is the 2013 free agent market. Matt Cain will command money. Zack Greinke should also probably expect to receive a healthy contract, but not on the same level. The next tier includes guys like James Shields and Ervin Santana, both of whom have reasonably affordable options (or, in Shields’s case, may be traded for and extended by their new team). They would be a half step below Hamels to begin with, but if they don’t reach the market, that’s more power yet to Cole.

The point is, Hamels and Cain are the heads of the class. There’s little potential of a Ryan Madson-type positional market flooding preventing Cole from cashing in. And guess who’s lurking? The Yankees, for one, who have an obvious need and plenty of dinero. The Red Sox had some rotation issues, too. And that’s not to mention any number of teams that wouldn’t love to add an ace before he turns 30.

It’s all gut feeling at this point. What I may be feeling, you may be sensing the opposite. And sure, a decent one-year deal could keep Hamels placated and away from running the gauntlet of an arbitration hearing. But he doesn’t own this city any type of loyalty or discount, especially to a fan base which, on a maddeningly large scale, wanted him run out of town after an unlucky 2009 and a front office that seems to think Ryan Howard and Jonathan Papelbon are worth major bucks, but not him. This is the game you play and the risk you take.

Hamels is entitled to every penny the market will bear, and he will get it, especially if he stays healthy and posts another non-2009. Call it fatalist or pessimist, but don’t forget to call it realist. The Phillies are big boys and can spend with the big dogs, but with more than $100M already committed to just six players in 2013, adding Hamels at potentially $17M-plus – a higher AAV than Weaver – will make the luxury tax loom even larger than it already does.

It’s an unnecessarily complex situation, given the Howard and Papelbon deals, but it’s complex nonetheless. Call it a kneejerk reaction, but as of this second, I don’t like the way this is shaping up one bit. Not one bit at all.

The latest addition to this big, happy family is none other than long-time Boston Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon, he of the intense pitcher-face, long pauses between pitches and often exuberant reactions to saves. He’s also a pretty darn good pitcher. Sure, giving four guaranteed years and $50 million – I’m still in the stage where I wince while typing that – to any reliever that isn’t prime Mariano Rivera is sure to raise as many questions as it does eyebrows.

For now, though, we’ll put that aside to check out some of the things that have made Papelbon so effective.

Papelbon rebounded from a shaky 2010 to post another solid season in ’11 with great peripherals. He’ll only pitch 60-70 innings a season, but rest assured that those innings will be good ones. Papelbon finished his fifth consecutive season of logging 10-plus strikeouts per nine, but what makes him more than just a simple power pitcher is that he actually commands his stuff; not only that, he loves to challenge hitters and still has the stuff to blow by them.

In 2011, Papelbon lived in the upper part of the zone, as shown to the right. The vast majority of the pitches from the belt to the letters were fastballs, and seeing as his average fastball was 95 mph, it’s a bit easier to see how he can overmatch hitters.

There’s interplay with Papelbon’s stuff, too. You can have a fastball that touches the mid-90s and still get knocked around (ask Danys Baez) but you need secondary stuff to make it effective. And vice versa: offspeed and breaking pitches can be ignored or sat on if the hitter knows there’s an ineffective fastball backing it up (ask 2009-11 Brad Lidge). With Papelbon, the mid-90s fastball is supported by an excellent splitter, a pitch that drastically changes the batter’s eye level and throws off timing.

Again, bear in mind how often Papelbon hits the upper part of the zone with the heater, than take a look at the map to the left.

The splitter was a pitch Papelbon was eschewing in favor of more heaters, as there was talk of the pitch possibly leaving his shoulder sore. The splitter is a notoriously taxing pitch. Really, with that fastball to lean on, it’s no surprise he was still effective, but when the splitter is a prominent part of the arsenal, Papelbon is that much more dangerous.

The slider is still something of a work in progress. One of the big reasons why Papelbon wasn’t converted into a starter – as he was for the majority of his time in the minors – was the lack of an effective third pitch. As a reliever, two plus pitches can definitely be enough, but if Papelbon can continue to demonstrate an effective slider in 2012 and beyond, he should remain very, very effective for a while. Perhaps, as it improves, he can even use it against left-handed batters (from 2010-11, Papelbon threw his slider to lefties only three percent of the time) and be a three-pitch guy to all hitters.

While 2010 was likely considered his worst year – even though, relatively speaking, it wasn’t all that bad – a big rebound in 2011 almost certainly played a big part in the Phillies front office seeing Papelbon as worthy of four guaranteed years and a lot of money. Via Inside Edge, here’s a comparison of a few next-level categories for Papelbon between 2010 and 2011.

click here for a larger, more readable version

Fastball command was improved, as was efficiency and the amount of hitters’ counts that ended up resulting in outs. What really jumps out at me, though, are the “Dominance” and ”Overall Effectiveness” sections. Papelbon was good in both areas in 2010, to be sure, but the numbers go off the charts in ’11.

What all of this amounts to is a fine relief pitcher who should accumulate plenty of quality outs. Whether he’s worth the kind of money he’ll be paid will almost certainly be in question for the life of the deal, but there’s little denying that the Phils have added a fine piece to their relief corps.

I bring this up because, whenever I would play with my good buddy Baumann from Phillies Nation, Cuddyer would always have the biggest impact on the game. He’d make diving plays at third base. Come up with a solid double to drive home Lew Ford. You know, 2005-type things.

Of course, the Michael Cuddyer of 2011-12 bears no resemblance to Fake Michael Cuddyer from ’05. Since the end of that ’05 season, Cuddyer has logged all of 107 innings at third base (all in 2010) and spent most of his time in the outfield and at first base. He doesn’t seem like a logical fit to supplant Placido Polanco, so we’ll move forward assuming that a potential signing of Cuddyer would mean time in the corner outfield spots and at first. He’s spent some time (read: very little) at second base, too, but with one of Wilson Valdez and Michael Martinez expected on the roster come Opening Day, there’s already a more viable backup option there.

Cuddyer handles lefties very well. His .311/.403/.589 slash in 176 PA against them last year is Victorino-esque, and his career OPS is more than .100 points higher against lefties than righties. That isn’t to say he’s unplayable against right-handers; he’s just especially dangerous against southpaws. And that’s an antidote to something Phils fans had heard about for a couple of seasons now: how the club and everyday lineup is too lefty-heavy. And really, the complaints aren’t exactly unfounded as it relates to LHB performance vs. LHP.

A look at Cuddyer’s In Play Slug heatmap (right) against lefties in 2011 shows some decent plate coverage. The cold spot down and in is a little surprising to see from a RHB against a lefty, but the strong showing in the heart and on the outer edge - from the top to the bottom of the zone, too – does compensate. Cuddyer also seems to fare better on pitchers in the lower portion than anything at the letters and up.

The drawback to that, naturally, is that Cuddyer can find the high pitches a bit too appetizing. Inside Edge reports Cuddyer as having a chase rate on pitches up and out of the zone near 50 percent, a weakness pitchers are sure to target with two strikes during the season. Pitches in on the hands also tend to draw Cuddyer’s attention often. It will be interesting to see how long his hands have the speed to turn on pitches in, especially if his next contract carries him through his age 35 season.

Cuddyer is also a candidate for the infrequently-used right-handed Ted Williams shift. When he puts the ball in play to the outfield, he’s pretty equal-opportunity. Most of his home runs tend to be pulled, but he’s not dependent on left field for hits past the infield.

Ground balls, on the other hand, are a bit of a different story. The Inside Edge spray chart (left) shows that, on balls in play since the start of 2010, Cuddyer pulls the ball a great deal. Now, this might not make a difference, again considering how little the right-handed shift is used. Either way, Ryan Zimmerman, David Wright (maybe?) and Chipper Jones should be on their toes if/when Cuddyer comes to the plate.

What we have in Michael Cuddyeris a nice player; a guy who plays some different positions (none particularly well defensively) who appears appetizing to the Phillies for a variety of reasons, none of which should be confused for being the best player available. He would be a nice addition at the right price – as any player would – but to me, Cuddyer makes the most sense on a two-year deal. A three-year deal to Raul Ibanez ended on a rather sour note, Placido Polanco looks to be slowing as he enters his third year and Joe Blanton has a nerve issue in his pitching arm as his third year approaches. Three-year deals for Cole Hamels, Carlos Ruiz and Shane Victorino, plus the recently expired Ryan Madson, look to provide counterbalance. But those latter four were all at least three years younger than Cuddyer is currently when they signed. Apples and oranges, etc.

Would Cuddyer be a good fit for this Phillies club? I tend to think so on the surface. He’s no star player, but he does represent an upgrade from Raul Ibanez on both sides of the ball. The thing I’m struggling with is Domonic Brown’s eventual place in all of this. Signing Cuddyer to a multi-year contract – paired with Hunter Pence’s two remaining years of team control – leaves no place for Brown this season. Now, Ruben Amaro has stated that he wants Brown to basically spend the whole year in Triple-A, so that may be a moot point for ’12. Moving forward, though, what’s the plan? Does Cuddyer become your third baseman after Polanco’s deal expires, with Brown finally slotting in a corner outfield spot? Another wrinkle to the saga of the once-top prospect being curiously handled. It will be interesting to see how Cuddyer’s potential addition affects Brown’s future in Philadelphia; a future that seems muddier every week.