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Topics:

• Carlos Ruiz’s white-hot start to 2012
• Last week’s roster shake-up
• Hunter Pence in the doghouse
• Break
• Ruben Amaro’s opinion on relievers and strikeouts
• Cole Hamels trade rumors
• Trivia
• Twitter Question: Which member of the Phillies has the best hair? (@soundofphilly)
• Twitter Question: Who is your all-time favorite Phillie? (@kfk5025)
• Outro

As always, any and all feedback is welcome, on iTunes, in the comments section, or on Twitter. We’d love to know what you like and don’t like so that we can improve future podcasts. Some of the audio in this one is a little shaky, but it gets better in the second segment, and we should have the protocols down for a solid audio product for next episode. Make sure you’re following us on Twitter if you want to send in a Twitter question for the next episode:

• Bill: @CrashburnAlley
• Paul: @Phrontiersman
• Michael: @AtomicRuckus
• Ryan: @Phylan
• Bradley: @BradleyAnkrom

Thanks to Local Wizards for allowing us to use his music for this week’s episode. Please check out his Bandcamp page and give a listen to “Muckrakers,” the album from which the music on today’s episode came, and several other releases.

All of this prompted manager Charlie Manuel to call the vaunted closed-door meeting, but a simple glance at the roster is enough to raise doubts that this is anything but a simple personnel problem — a problem which is unlikely to be helped by the call ups of relievers Raul Valdes and Jake Diekman, and utility man Hector Luna. The former two are likely innings fodder for a struggling bullpen, and the latter hasn’t had more than 100 plate appearances in the majors since Pinochet last drew breath.

The Phillies are at least on the favorable side of the pitching match-ups in their next attempt to get the season on track. Tonight, right-hander Vance Worley (3.45 SIERA in 2012) goes against Clayton Richard (4.22). Worley’s April 19th start in San Diego was one of the best of his young career; he threw 7 innings of scoreless ball and struck out 11 Padres. Tomorrow, Roy Halladay (3.52), fresh off a very good comeback start, meets former Red Edinson Volquez (4.14), acquired by the Padres in the Mat Latos deal. And on Sunday, Cole Hamels (2.55), currently sporting 44 strikeouts to just 6 walks, takes on Jeff Suppan (4.48) in a 1:35 PM start. Jeff Suppan! Ha! Life.

Lineups

Padres

• Will Venable, RF (.285 wOBA)
• Cameron Maybin, CF (.312)
• Chase Headley, 3B (.360)
• Yonder Alonso, 1B (.335)
• Jesus Guzman, LF (.300)
• Nick Hundley, C (.241)
• Orlando Hudson, 2B (.253)
• Jason Bartlett, SS (.209)
• Clayton Richard, SP

Phillies

• Jimmy Rollins, SS (.256)
• Placido Polanco, 3B (.280)
• Shane Victorino, CF (.321)
• Hunter Pence, RF (.343)
• Ty Wigginton, 1B (.331)
• Carlos Ruiz, C (.385)
• John Mayberry, Jr., LF (.219)
• Freddy Galvis, 2B (.251)
• Vance Worley, SP

The 6% threshold is calibrated so that a shutdown’s value corresponds roughly with that of a save, while disposing of the statistic’s needless complicating factors and removing the emphasis on closers. Middle relievers, long relievers, set up men, and specialists have just as much an opportunity to receive a shutdown. Meltdowns have the same egalitarian quality, and demarcate blow-ups that the Blown Save statistic takes far less frequent notice of. So rather than a simple look at peripherals or ERA (always a dicey metric, both this early in the season and for relievers in general), Grosnick’s leaderboard notes the contributions of relievers who have most positively contributed to their team’s chances of winning the game with their appearances.

Let’s take a look at the embattled, migraine-inducing Phillies bullpen through this lens:

So that’s 18 shutdowns and 19 meltdowns total thus far from the bullpen. The large proportion of Phillies games decided in the 9th or later probably washes away some of the statistic’s aforementioned egalitarianism. Still, it’s not pretty. There is some evidence that unluckiness is a factor — the bullpen’s 5.59 ERA doesn’t quite sync with its 4.67 xFIP or 4.31 SIERA, and their strand rate is only 63.6%. But they’re certainly striking out too few (16.6% of batters faced) and walking too many (10.8%), and their 37.9% ground ball rate is a recipe for disaster.

I think it’s fair to say that the team as a whole is not that much better than what we’ve seen so far, though the improbable prevalence of walk off losses has probably made it look worse than it really is. Don’t be surprised though, if the bullpen looks like less of a culprit down the road. The offense has been scoring 4.9 runs per game in the last 5 series, a pace that is impossible to sustain with the talent currently on the roster. The bullpen is not exactly an all-star cast, but it’s a sure bet to improve on its current ERA (and here again I must mention that the way it has been utilized is partly to blame).

When a player builds such a titanic, unwavering track record of reliability, particularly when coupled with a work ethic as intense and well-documented as Halladay’s, the threshold for legitimate concern is pushed well out of sight and mind. We already know, thanks to work like that of Derek Carty, that some of the most important measures of pitcher effectiveness take a very long time to stabilize, much longer than those of hitters. For a pitcher like Doc, the suspension of disbelief when a few indicators go sour in a small sample is even more difficult.

A week ago, we were maybe scouting this new terrain from a distance. In the wake of Halladay’s worst start as a Phillie — 8 earned runs in 5 and 1/3rd innings — it’s worth taking a serious inventory of what we do and don’t know. The early trends that are most troublesome are Halladay’s downturns in velocity and strikeout rate. From 2010-2011, which in terms of ERA+ (166) was the best consecutive two season stretch of his career, Halladay’s sinker averaged 92.3 mph and his cutter clocked in at 90.9. So far in 2012, the sinker has averaged 90.4 mph, and the cutter 88.9 mph.

Both Bill and Paul have written about why this isn’t necessarily anything to worry about. Pitch F/X data can be very misleading if used irresponsibly, and bears the same sample size concerns as any other data. As Mike Fast has pointed out, calibration differences in measurement tools introduce some amount of error into velocity and movement data, and the cooler temperatures of April can depress velocity in any pitcher — it tends to ramp up as the season progresses.

These facts alone should provide a solid foundation for skepticism, particularly with a horse like Halladay. But Halladay’s cutter velocity showed very little variation from month to month in 2010, and only gained about 0.4 mph from April to May and June in 2011, tapering off again as August and September wore on. Similarly, his sinker was right at 92.5 mph in each month in 2010, save a momentary 0.5 mph gain in July, and in 2011 it gained only 1 mph from April to Jun, falling back again in August and thereafter. These velocities did not fluctuate nearly as much as Halladay would need to ramp back up to his usual velocity in 2012, and they were never as low in any single month as they have been this April.

Still, it’s not out of the question that temperature has had some minor effect. Halladay had some unfriendly weather in his first five starts, with an average game time temperature of 55 degrees and no single start exceeding 70 degrees. And in the brutal 87 degree heat on Wednesday in Atlanta, Halladay’s cutter and sinker registered their highest velocities yet. For the sinker, it was a gain of about 1 mph over his 49-55 degree starts, and a gain of about 0.4 mph over his 67 degree start in San Diego. For the cutter, it was a gain of 1 mph over his other starts. Admittedly, though, we’re pretty deep into minuscule sample size tinkering here.

It would be plausible that park equipment-related pitch f/x error could be penalizing Halladay’s velocity, but he’s faced more than twice as many batters on the road (118) as he has at home (55), so while he’s thrown more pitches at Citizen’s Bank Park than any other individual stadium, way too high a proportion of them have been away from home for a mis-calibrated gun at the Bank to be dragging him down. And at any rate, as the below velocity chart illustrates, his home velocities are not out of step with his away velocities.

It would be easier to dismiss these fluctuations in velocity were they not accompanied by a significant dip in strikeout rate. From 2010-2011, Doc struck out 22.8% of the batters he faced. That rate falls a bit short of rotation mates Cole Hamels (23.6%) and Cliff Lee (24%), but it is nonetheless quite good — it’s in the 79th percentile of all pitchers from 2010-2011. Thus far in 2012, that rate has dipped to 16.8%, a drop of a little more than 2 hitters per 9 innings. That kind of decrease can have a big impact on any pitcher’s outcomes. For Halladay, it’s meant that the ball has been put in play by 76% of the batters he’s faced, as opposed to 70% from 2010-2011. In a year like 2011, where he faced 933 batters, that would be 56 more who can appeal to good fortune and the imperfection of fielders instead of the cold determinism of the punch out.

The aforementioned Derek Carty found that strikeouts stabilize for a pitcher when (Batters Faced – Intentional Walks – Hits By Pitch) = 126. For Halladay, that equation comes out to 171. As Carty points out, this does not mean that Halladay’s new strikeout rate is “suddenly [...] a perfect representation of his talent.” We have scads of history from which to evaluate Roy’s true talent level. But combined with the velocity dip, the strikeout rate is concerning.

Oddly, though, there was a period of time, six years in fact, when Roy Halladay more closely resembled this current iteration of Halladay than the one we’re used to. Coming to the National League has improved his already-elite outcomes, but I think it’s fair to say that 2008-2011 Roy Halladay is a good summation of what we’ve grown to love about him during his Phillies tenure. In that time, Halladay threw 969.1 innings (an average of 242 per season), posted a 160 ERA+ (!), with a 22% strikeout rate and 3.6% walk rate — both excellent. But this was a sea change from Halladay’s previous profile, the beginning of a new era in his career in which his modus operandi transformed in subtle yet important ways. In the previous six years, from 2002-2007, Halladay had posted 1225.1 innings of 141 ERA+ ball, with a 17% strikeout rate. Then, as in 2012, he was missing significantly fewer bats, and allowing around three quarters of his batters to put the ball in play.

Does 2002-2007 serve as a model for Halladay remaining Halladay with his current strikeout rate and velocity dip? Probably not. ERA estimators thought highly of Doc’s inputs during that period — he had an xFIP of 3.36 and a SIERA of 3.44 (his ERA sat well ahead of both at 3.27). They are decidedly more reserved on his current season, at 3.59 and 3.69 respectively. 2002-2007 Halladay did walk batters at a higher rate, 4.7%, then his 2008-2010 self, but still not quite as high as this season’s 5.8%. This is something that Halladay can fix, even if his velocity and strikeout numbers are not. What really jumps out, though, is his incredible ground ball rate in the 2002-2007 period. At 57.7%, he was consistently one of the best starters in the league at inducing ground balls. When he evolved into the mega-elite Halladay of 2008-2011, this figure dropped to 51.5%. There was a corresponding rise in his BABIP from .286 to .294, but that was just fine; he was allowing many less balls in play with his new strikeout rate.

It’s difficult to pin down why, between these two periods, Halladay dipped his groundball rate and bolstered his strikeout rate to become an even more effective pitcher. It’s tempting to point to an adjustment to his repertoire. If Fangraphs pitch information is to be believed, he dramatically increased the use of his cutter between these two periods, from 9.7% from 2002-2007 to 38.4% from 2008-2011. But, as always, we have to be careful about drawing conclusions from pitch f/x classifications. It’s also possible that my selection of these two periods is an arbitrary chop-up of the sample of data that we have, and that taking accumulated stats from these two chunks is doing a disservice to the analysis. I think, though, that if you look a table of his statistics by season, on Baseball Reference or Fangraphs, the transformation is hard to dismiss.

At any rate, Halladay’s ground ball rate currently sits at 50.4%, so he hasn’t been able to call back to his 2002-2007 self by ramping up the grounders while his strikeout rate dips. The current Halladay does not approach the effectiveness of either of the two periods I’ve detailed, unless he can suddenly get the baseballs hitting the floor a lot more often. We’re back to where we started, hoping that we’re making much ado about a bumpy early season ride from one of the steadiest helmsman in the game. Given the history here, I’m totally comfortable taking a calm, skeptical outlook. I would be lying, though, if I said I wouldn’t be watching the radar gun closely tonight.

Depressingly, and predictably, the reaction from Phillies fans and media has been equal parts bitter and condescending. By and large, the Twittersphere has been issuing a collective snort at the whole thing since it first arose. Noted perverted half-wit and habitual plagiarist Kyle Scott of the e-rag Crossing Broad has tweeted and posted endless whining on the topic, and has devoted whole posts to “The Takeover,” a 200 person bus trip (for a mere $120!) that will instantly become the most obnoxious thing happening on the planet for every second of its sweaty, Bud-Light-Lime-soaked existence.

We inquired to Phillies about using their lot to park and board for our #takeover to D.C. Not at all interested. Said would be towed. (1o2)

— Kyle Scott (@CrossingBroad) May 2, 2012

What a shock.

Ed Rendell, trying to cling to relevance, also got in on the act. Various Philadelphia media members, including baseball writers and radio personalities (mostly on the Angelo Cataldi tier of the Insufferability Spectrum) have otherwise mocked or chided the Nats’ efforts. Superficially, the tone is haughty amusement, but there is a discernible undercurrent of surprise and indignation — how dare they. Universally, these responses lack any measure of self-awareness and pay no mind to present or historical context.

I’ve lived full-time in the Washington, D.C. area since 2005, and have attended a great many Nationals games. Both in the RFK days and since the new stadium was built, I’ve made a point of going to every Nationals/Phillies game that my schedule could feasibly accomodate, and many other Nationals home contests when the weather was fair and I hankered for live baseball. I had the pleasure of watching Ryan Zimmerman come into his own, Elijah Dukes doing . . . Elijah Dukes stuff, and Adam Dunn hitting the longest of long flies. I vividly remember, on a humid September night at RFK stadium in 2007, watching the Phillies beat the Nationals 7-6 on the strength of a Jimmy Rollins double, and then huddling around a friend’s blackberry as the crowd dispersed, tracking the Marlins’ 4 run comeback against the Mets in the 9th and 10th innings in Miami. The Phillies pulled within 1.5 games of the Mets that night, in a pennant race that inaugurated a new era of Phillies baseball.

After the new stadium was built, the atmosphere at Phillies/Nats games grew more adversarial, as Phillies fans realized that, in the numbers in which they traveled, and the numbers they already had in the DC area, they could create a home away from home — “CBP South,” as it came to be called by many. I can’t say that I didn’t get swept up in it, at least a little bit. It’s gratifying to see your team’s fans showing substantial support away from home, especially after many years of the Phillies being irrelevant to the NL East and to the league as a whole. But I had grown to like the Nationals as a team, along with their new, easily-accessible and cheap-to-attend stadium, and I found that, as the “CBP South” culture took hold, the atmosphere got uglier. It all came to an embarrassing head at the Nationals’ home opener in 2010, a Phillies game, where Phils fans again packed the stadium, bolstered by a few bus trips not unlike the one mentioned above. The Nationals’ Opening Day ceremony had all of the usual rituals. Except, as the Nationals’ roster was announced, and the players ran from the dugout to the first base line, Phillies fans chanted “SUCKS” after each name, and drowned out the music and announcements with booing in between.

They behaved similarly for the rest of the game. It was the most humiliated I ever remember feeling as a Phillies fan. Sitting next to me was a man in a weathered Nationals cap who had to be in his mid-70s, who regarded the whole thing with disbelief. I don’t know if he was a converted Orioles fan, a Senators fan from way back, or even an Expos fan, and it didn’t seem as if he wanted to talk about it to me, covered in Phillies gear from head to toe. I tried to make a show of how disgusted I was by the whole thing, but I don’t think I could’ve possibly done enough given what was happening. No future Phillies game at the park was quite as bad as that, but they weren’t that much better either.

This is the root of the “Our Park” movement by Nationals fans, and it’s disappointing that Phillies fans do not, or at least pretend not to, understand why it needs to happen. Fans of a team that have had as rough a go as the Nationals have since their inception need to pull as much enjoyment out of the little things as possible — individual player skills, fanfare, early-season hopes, and the simple joy of a ballpark atmosphere. To have the superior team’s fans flood the ballpark and make a big show of it — just because they can — momentarily ruins that experience. Nationals fans are no less fans of the game of baseball than Phillies fans (probably moreso, if we’re talking about the kind of people that make asses of themselves at Nationals Park), and they know — really, they know — that the Phillies have been the better team these last 7 years, that Citizens Bank is stuffed to the gills all of the time, and that Phillies fans are capable of operating a motor vehicle for two and a half hours on I-95 South. They know these things without a great red horde undertaking every effort to mock them in their own ballpark.

The natural rebuttal to this has been, roughly, “if they don’t like it, they should fill their own stadium.” And it’s true, the Nationals have struggled with attendance, finishing either 13th or 14th in the NL in each season since Nationals Park was built. But it’s easy for a Phillies fan to forget, nowadays, just how difficult it is to fill the stadium for a bad or even mediocre team. The Phillies had a similar run of attendance woes from 1997 to 2003, finishing 14th in attendance 4 times, 13th once, 12th once, and 10th once. True, these figures improved significantly when the Phillies got their new ballpark in 2004, but the team was getting better too; the Phillies averaged 77 wins per season from 1997-2003, and 86 wins per season from 2004-2006. I will happily watch a 100 loss Phillies team every day of the week, but it’s tough to blame fans for not filling the park to see some of the recent Nationals teams.

They did, of course, pack 40,315 people into the park for the June 8, 2010 debut of Stephen Strasburg, a preview of the future of their organization. I had the pleasure of attending, and the atmosphere rivaled any playoff game at Citizens’ Bank Park (particularly the most recent one I attended, game 5 of the 2011 NLDS, in which the crowd was conspicuously subdued). The crowd’s steady roar built with each strike, compounded by each time the radar gun showed triple digits, and the place exploded for each of Strasburg’s 14 strikeouts. Yes, Bryce Harper’s debut was not well-attended, but there is much less of a sense among Nationals fans and baseball fans as a whole that this was his true debut — he was placed on the roster with Ryan Zimmerman heading to the DL, and the consensus is that he’s not quite ready for the big leagues. If this 2012 Nationals team finishes on as high a level of competitiveness as they’re exhibiting now, I don’t think they’ll have any problem bringing people out in 2013.

I’m sure that this weekend, despite the Nationals’ efforts, is still going to be characterized by a dominant Phillies fan presence, and that ignoble bus trip will leave some kind of embarrassing mark on the whole thing. Nationals fandom and media may grow angrier, and that might escalate matters. But any Phillies fan who takes the smallest moment for some introspection should not be surprised or bothered by the Our Park movement. Because it is their park, and because Phillies fans remember what it’s like to see a nine guys who are probably going to lose take the field every day. The “Takeover” and all similar fan and media responses will only validate the rest of the country’s low opinion of the Philadelphia fandom. And, in case you haven’t checked the trendlines recently, the time to show grace in victory may be running out.

Last night, Cliff Lee threw the 24th ten-or-more-inning shutout for the Phillies since 1918, and looked nothing short of brilliant in the process, as Paul detailed earlier today. Still, the Phillies were left standing on the field, watching the other team celebrate, because they could not produce a single run in 37 trips to the plate. That sort of heartbreaking outcome has been typical for the Phillies when playing at AT&T, so, while they find themselves in another offense-suppressing venue, it’s a welcome change of scenery.

Tonight, the Padres (3-10) send Joe Wieland to the mound with the staggering task of keeping the Philly bats silent in PETCO park. He is matched up against Vance Worley (3.66 xFIP in 2011), who had some trouble with the long ball in his last start against the Mets, surrendering one a piece to Lucas Duda and David Wright. In his 3rd start, Worley will look to resume his modus operandi: called third strikes and limiting the long flies. He’ll have the benefit of facing a Padres offense that has been substantially below average so far (though not as woeful as Philadelphia’s), in a park where the flyballs tend to stay out of the bleachers. With a win tonight, the Phillies can pull within a game of .500.

Lineups

Phillies

• Juan Pierre, LF (.293 wOBA in 2011)
• Placido Polanco, 3B (.304)
• Jimmy Rollins, SS (.329)
• Hunter Pence, RF (.378)
• Shane Victorino, CF (.372)
• John Mayberry, Jr., LF (.369)
• Carlos Ruiz, C (.332)
• Freddy Galvis, 2B (N/A)
• Vance Worley, SP

Padres

• Will Venable, LF (.318)
• Cameron Maybin, CF (.325)
• Chase Headley, 3B (.344)
• Jeremy Hermida, RF (.291) (lmao)
• Yonder Alonso, 1B (.409)
• John Baker, C (.211)
• Jason Bartlett, SS (.279)
• Orlando Hudson, 2B (.308)
• Joe Wieland, SP



]]> http://crashburnalley.com/2012/04/19/philliespadres-game-thread-41912/feed/ 0 http://crashburnalley.com/2012/04/16/phillies-giants-game-thread-4162012/ http://crashburnalley.com/2012/04/16/phillies-giants-game-thread-4162012/#comments Tue, 17 Apr 2012 01:00:02 +0000 Ryan Sommers http://crashburnalley.com/?p=7121  

East coast fans, get ready for a week of late bedtimes. The Phillies (4-5) begin their first real road trip of the season, with stops in San Francisco, San Diego, and then Arizona. The offense, currently averaging 3.11 runs per game, will have its work cut out for it in the cavernous expanses of AT&T Park and PETCO Park. To open the series versus the Giants (4-5), the Phillies will send Roy Halladay (2.71 xFIP in 2011) to the bump to match up against Tim Lincecum (3.36). Halladay enters his third start having allowed only 1 run over 15 innings pitched. Though Lincecum has struck out 10 batters in just 7 and 2/3rds innings, he was stung by the long ball in Arizona, and was smacked around to the tune of 5 line drives in Colorado, chased early from both games.

Lineups

Phillies

• Juan Pierre, LF (.293 wOBA in 2011)
• Placido Polanco, 3B (.304)
• Jimmy Rollins, SS (.329)
• Hunter Pence, RF (.378)
• Shane Victorino, CF (.372)
• Laynce Nix, 1B (.321)
• Carlos Ruiz, C (.332)
• Freddy Galvis, 2B (N/A)
• Roy Halladay, SP

Giants

• Angel Pagan, CF (.313)
• Melky Cabrera, RF (.349)
• Pablo Sandoval, 3B (.379)
• Buster Posey, C (.338)
• Aubrey Huff, LF (.294)
• Brandon Belt, 1B (.314)
• Brandon Crawford, SS (.259)
• Emmanuel Burriss, 2B (.225)
• Big Time Timmy Jims, SP



]]> http://crashburnalley.com/2012/04/16/phillies-giants-game-thread-4162012/feed/ 0 http://crashburnalley.com/2012/04/15/game-9-postscript/ http://crashburnalley.com/2012/04/15/game-9-postscript/#comments Sun, 15 Apr 2012 22:16:01 +0000 Ryan Sommers http://crashburnalley.com/?p=7110 Note: I made some edits to this post after realizing that I had misstated what XBH% represented. See the comments below.

It won’t matter in the standings, but this afternoon’s 8-2 win over the Mets was anchored by offensive production from some of the least probable sources. Entering today, the Phillies had managed a .322 slugging percentage, fifth worst in the MLB, and a .086 ISO, second worst only to the Pirates. Their 13 extra base hits were also second worst in the league. In the 7th and 8th innings, however, Laynce Nix, Pete Orr, and Ty Wigginton each hit a double, contributing a collective .304 win probability added and driving in 4 of the Phillies’ 8 runs. They were the only extra base hits for the Phillies this afternoon.



This graph shows their XBH% (extra base hits per plate appearance) for their career and for the previous three seasons. The only one with substantially above average pop is Nix, but he doesn’t typically hit for a high enough average (career .244) to take advantage of it. If the Phillies are to patch the power outage that has characterized their offense in the early going, it will need to be with players that have historically hit the ball hard, like Shane Victorino, Hunter Pence, and Jimmy Rollins, who entered today with slugging percentages of .400, .452, and .364 respectively. It’s a small sample, but at the moment the Phillies have the 6th lowest line drive rate and 5th highest groundball rate in the MLB. They’ll need to start generating hard hit balls to the outfield with the strongest non-injured components of their lineup, rather than rely on unlikely explosions from roster filler, to more consistently support the pitching staff.



]]> http://crashburnalley.com/2012/04/15/game-9-postscript/feed/ 2 http://crashburnalley.com/2012/03/27/terrifying-thought-experiment-1/ http://crashburnalley.com/2012/03/27/terrifying-thought-experiment-1/#comments Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:54:03 +0000 Ryan Sommers http://crashburnalley.com/?p=6721

Earlier today, Ryan Lawrence posted his best guess at the Phillies’ opening day roster. Everything about the offense, including the starting lineup, looks pretty grim:

C Carlos Ruiz
1B Ty Wigginton
2B Freddy Galvis
SS Jimmy Rollins
3B Placido Polanco
LF John Mayberry, Jr.
CF Shane Victorino
RF Hunter Pence

BN Jim Thome
BN Laynce Nix
BN Brian Schneider
BN Pete Orr
BN Juan Pierre

SP Roy Halladay
SP Cliff Lee
SP Cole Hamels
SP Vance Worley
SP Joe Blanton

RP Jonathan Papelbon
RP Chad Qualls
RP Antonio Bastardo
RP Mike Stutes
RP Kyle Kendrick
RP Jose Contreras
RP David Herndon

(I took out Lou Montanez and subbed in David Herndon, as Lawrence was planning for 6 relievers instead of 7 only because a fifth starter won’t be needed until April.)

Last season, the pitching staff allowed 529 runs, which is very good. Historically good, in fact. If you put every team since 1947 in the same 4.5 runs per game environment, the 2011 Phillies staff ranks 18th out of 1550 post-integration pitching staffs in runs allowed. And that’s without a park adjustment; 14 of the teams ahead of the Phillies had pitcher-friendly park factors on their side. The brightest beacon of hope for 2012 is that the pitching staff will still be extremely good, but it probably won’t be as good as it was last season. The simplest reason is that it is very difficult, even in the more pitcher-friendly environment of late, to allow as few as 529 runs. Beyond that, there are a few candidates for regression, like Cole Hamels and Vance Worley.

If you take the ZiPS projections for the pitching staff that Lawrence came up with and adjust it to fill, say, 1450 innings (this is about what most teams needed last year), you get a runs allowed total of 606. On the one hand, ZiPS is probably a bit bearish with regards to some of the best pitchers on the staff, but, on the other, we’re assuming no injuries or bad fortune will take their toll. So 606 is a reasonable enough estimate. Assume, furthermore, that the National League run environment will be the same as it was last year: 4.13 runs per game. With these two numbers, we can use the Pythagenpat formula to get a picture of what is needed from the Phillies offense in 2012 (click for large):



The upshot is, in a tougher NL East, the Phillies need to score around 730 runs to be in the 95 win ballpark and be reasonably certain of winning the division. Keep in mind: last season they scored 713 runs, and, thanks to an inordinate amount of success with runners in scoring position, that total was probably higher than their team OPS of .717 portended. Without delving deeply into hitter projections, the opening day offense predicted by Ryan Lawrence above is not nearly as good as the sum contributions that the Phillies got last season. Per Fangraphs, Ryan Howard produced 92 weighted runs created last season, and has not yet even resumed baseball activities since the setback with his surgery wound; his ETA right now is indeterminate, as is his 2012 effectiveness. Chase Utley, missing to begin 2011, produced 61 weighted runs created. He returned on May 23rd last season, and I think most people would count that as an optimistic projection for 2012 given the tone of the updates we’re being given on him.

This is to say nothing of the potential for regression facing John Mayberry, Jr., the likely ineffectiveness of Ty Wigginton, and the fact that Juan Pierre, who by wRC+ was the 10th worst qualified hitter in baseball last season, is penciled in as a bench contributor. The offense above is likely to score significantly less runs than in 2011, which could put the Phillies in the 92 win range or worse. Particularly now that two wildcard spots are available, this will probably still be enough to make the playoffs. But with the substantial improvements made by the Marlins and the Nationals, and with the Braves still being a contender, the division is by no means the guarantee that it was in the last two seasons. The Phillies, who know the sting of a short series so very well, may be facing a single game win-or-go-home proposition if they don’t look outside the organization for reinforcement.



]]> http://crashburnalley.com/2012/03/27/terrifying-thought-experiment-1/feed/ 20 http://crashburnalley.com/2012/03/02/bob-brookover-and-the-imaginary-devout/ http://crashburnalley.com/2012/03/02/bob-brookover-and-the-imaginary-devout/#comments Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:31:12 +0000 Ryan Sommers http://crashburnalley.com/?p=6468 Making the rounds on Twitter this morning was an article by Bob Brookover titled “Inside the Phillies: Who needs sabermetrics?” It was the annual advanced statistics hit piece from Philly.com, which occasionally likes to claw at the vital new frontier of advanced analytics from the threshold of its own industry’s grave. As Mr. Baer likes to point out, I should not bother to engage with it, nor with the tired debate that surrounds it, since, quite simply, the nerds have already won. Even putting aside the renewed hype surrounding Moneyball, advanced statistics has penetrated almost every front office in baseball (but not the Phillies, if this piece is to be taken at face value), and its influence continues to blossom.

This offseason, the Cubs rushed to acquire one of the more prominent frontmen for analytical front offices, Theo Epstein, and paired him with Jed Hoyer, a man with a background in baseball but who had also worked with Epstein on the Red Sox in the mid 2000s. The Astros, after interviewing Keith Law, who blends equal part scouting and statistical analysis into his evaluations, ended up poaching Jeff Luhnow from the Cardinals. The 45-year-old, taking over for the ignominious Ed Wade, has an educational background that blends business and engineering, including an MBA from Northwestern University. Luhnow then hired former Baseball Prospectus pitch f/x guru Mike Fast, as clear a sign as any of the tack that organization will be taking.

This is not to mention the Rays, who have had a young, analysis-oriented front office running the show for several years (as detailed by Jonah Keri in the book The Extra 2%), or the Mets, who, financial catastrophe notwithstanding, did hire a trio of postmodern executives in Sandy Alderson, J.P. Ricciardi, and Paul DePodesta. Gigantic, multi-million dollar baseball franchises want nothing more than to persist and remain as profitable as possible, and this impetus inevitably leads them to hire executives that are innovative, open-minded, and knowledgeable — people that will embrace all the information available to them, and use it in the most effective way possible. Naturally, these people are drawn to the wealth of data provided by advanced statistics.

The “war,” insomuch as it ever existed, is over. Brookover and company are sportswriting’s own Hiroo Onodas, hurling impotent volleys into the darkness, failing to realize their “enemy” long ago left the engagement. This is, in part, why articles like Brookover’s are so charmingly futile and anachronistic. It’s difficult not to read it with the same minor amusement as when one watches a child kick a table he’d just stubbed his toe on, only to injure himself further.

But there is also the glaringly obvious reality that Brookover invested zero energy into supporting research for his piece. Unlike Brookover, I don’t get paid to write about things, and I likely never will. But if I were to set out to write an article about, say, free range chicken farming, I might be so bold as to go and interview a farmer, or seek out the most well-regarded literature on the subject, or, hell, at least run a few google searches. Brookover clearly did nothing of the sort. His “sabermetrics” bogeyman is constructed of decade-old marginal metrics and other statistics and concepts that are only seen in parodies of traditionalist invective. He brings up VORP several times. This, appropriately, makes me nostalgic for the days of Fire Joe Morgan, but it has not been a widely-cited metric in many years. PERA is also mentioned, which makes me think that maybe, at one point, he deigned to open a copy of Baseball Between the Numbers, but he failed to talk about ERA estimators that are actually frequently used, their purposes, and (since it would fit his narrative) their own individual shortcomings. He discusses the “equation” (seriously) of OPS, which undertakes the enormously complicated task of adding two numbers together, as if it were some mystical numerology. Brookover allows Charlie Manuel to say this –

“When you’re sitting there and a guy brings up sabermetrics, they don’t know nothing about that guy, and that may be the biggest thing,” Manuel said. “Sometimes a guy will look at you and say, ‘Why did you play that guy, he’s 1 for 16 against that guy with seven punch-outs?’ But when I’ve watched that guy, he might be 1 for 16, but nine of those at-bats the guy hit about three or four balls hard.

– either not realizing or not caring to point out that any sabermetrics guru worth his salt would laugh at using a 16 at bat sample to evaluate how a batter matches up against a pitcher. Manuel, to his credit, says he appreciates the amount of data contained in OPS and OBP. Actually, he came out of it looking the best, far better than Brookover at least. Amaro seemed to believe that the gap between his minor league OPS/OBP and major league performance was something notable, as if any advanced analysis would try to use raw minor league data to project a player’s major league performance. If the key to war is knowing your enemy, it’s no surprise that Brookover has been overrun. What gratification is there in setting up an easy effigy to burn if you can’t even make it resemble your target?

Maybe his greatest failure, though, is missing the folly of war in the first place (although, as in every piece of this kind before it, Brookover doesn’t miss an opportunity to make a tired reference to a certain Edwin Starr ditty). In the third paragraph Brookover writes that “[t]he most devout sabermetricians will try to tell you that there is no better way in the world to evaluate players than through their convoluted equations.” This, to be blunt, is utter garbage. I’m sure in some recessed, dark corner of the internet, you can find some miserable wretch who comes close to fulfilling Brookover’s sad stereotype. But it is overwhelmingly the case that sabermetrics advocates acknowledge the need to combine advanced statistics with accurate, reliable scouting in order to get anywhere at all. Keith Law harps on this regularly. The aforementioned Jeff Luhnow said the following when he was hired:

There’s a misperception about what the winning formula is. You can’t be the elite scouting and player development organization without the best scouts and coaches in the industry. Those are baseball people who have been in this their entire life and use their good judgment and experience to make decisions.

The complementary part is adding a whole new area, which is really utilizing whatever technology and whatever capabilities are available, whether it’s understanding medical assessments, understanding performance histories, different ways to evaluate character. There’s a lot of science that can be added to the equation.

But it’s really all about gathering up as much valuable information as you can, organizing in a way that makes sense and making the best possible decisions.

The true “devout sabermetricians” know that scouting and advanced statistics desperately need each other to be usable, and that one must intimately understand the purpose and limitations of the metric he or she is citing. This is why things like sample size are so often brought up, and why the internal battle over UZR among the statistically-minded rages on. Clear-minded, responsible consideration of statistics is the first priority for the “devout,” and, funnily enough, it’s something that completely escapes writers like Brookover. All of the sudden, when their narrative needs boosting, they’ll discard all of their inhibitions about the abuse of statistics and throw around RBI, fielding percentage, or 15-at-bat pitcher versus hitter matchups as it suits them.

That’s the most absurd facet of pieces like these, which appear in media across the country. There is a pathetic pretense that they’re cautious of numbers, that the “devout” rush to recklessly apply a number to any and everything. But it’s entirely too transparent that it’s not numbers they’re concerned about, it’s your numbers. They aren’t my numbers. They’re some other numbers. Those other numbers indicate that, all too often, the final analysis is far more nuanced and complicated than they (unfairly) think their readers are willing to put up with. The numbers they have — RBI, small sample quirks, antiquated counting stats — make for some snazzy headlines and rabble-rousing discussion pieces that, superficial as they are, help spoon a little syrup into the desiccated gullet of print media. The rest of us, interested only in finding out as much about the game we love as possible, embrace the heaps of useful data offered by both traditional scouting and advanced analysis. We don’t always know what we’re doing, or which (if any) conclusion can be drawn, and that’s why an informal peer-review is always taking place, on the internet and elsewhere. It’s not a church stuffed to the rafters with devout, it’s a vibrant, self-auditing community of people who regard baseball with the same pure veneration that some traditionalists would like to claim a monopoly on.

My dad was unquestionably the first and primary inspiration for my interest in baseball. He delayed wedding my mother because it was the fall of 1980 and the Phillies were World Series-bound; he took me to countless Phillies games as a child; he coached and sometimes umpired during my unfruitful but enjoyable little league career. He’s been watching the Phillies since the 1950s, and he certainly doesn’t share the same enthusiasm for advanced statistics as I do, and I wouldn’t expect him to, nor care whether he does or not. Because, like normal human beings, we can have discussions that transcend one particular approach to appreciating baseball. Still, because he is a smart, open-minded man, he doesn’t limit himself to the traditionalist comfort zone. He mentions the things he reads about Bill James, or interesting observations that arise out of a more advanced analysis of some historical player or season. Occasionally I’ll bring up a statistic like ERA+ or WAR, with a brief explanation, and he’ll (to a stunning degree of accuracy) list historical players who he guesses would rank the highest. Just as there is a vital interchange between traditional approaches and newly-conceived analysis in the operation of baseball franchises, and in the work of blogs like this one, casual baseball discourse is also best served when these ideas are freely exchanged.

I don’t know Bob Brookover beyond his writing. I’m sure he’s a good guy who loves baseball just like the rest of us, and that he and I (or you) could have some interesting, mutually enjoyable discussions about baseball and the Phillies. When it comes to pieces like this one, beyond the woeful execution, I question the motive and the necessity. In a month, baseball will begin again, and we’ll all be too happy and engaged to fixate on articles like this. But in the relative quiet of spring training, I’d sooner work to prevent the car wreck than spend all of this effort rubbernecking.



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