Per Jim Salisbury, the Phillies have signed a two year extension with fringe starter/reliever and burgeoning fashion model Kyle Kendrick, covering 2012 and 2013, for $7.5 million. Absent this extension, Kendrick was headed for his first arbitration hearing in his second year of eligibility, having settled with the team in 2011 for $2.45 million. Matt Swartz, via his salary arbitration projection model, had estimated the value of Kendrick’s case to be $3.2 million, so the right-hander beat expectations slightly and tacked on another year of job security.

Traditionally, Ruben Amaro and the Phillies have been loathe to let arbitration cases go all the way to hearing, so in that sense this doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise — the Phillies have reached a pre-hearing settlement with all of their arbitration cases this season, and did the same with all of their cases in the previous off-season. On the other hand, for a team historically wary of the arbitration process, their fixation on a player whom the system is seemingly tailor-made to overpay is perplexing to say the least.

Kendrick has all the right attributes for extracting money from arbitration without being especially talented. He can start games in the rotation or in a spot role, and, via the generosity of Charlie Manuel, has plenty of relief opportunities, so he tends to rack up a lot of innings. In 2011, making only 15 starts, he still managed to log 114 and 2/3rds innings pitched. Joe Blanton, the putative fifth starter for 2012, has significant health and durability questions surrounding him, so Kendrick is likely to play that dual role once again. He’s also managed to accumulate wins even when his actual pitching left plenty to be desired — in 2008, with an ERA north of 5, he notched 11 victories, and added 11 more in 2010, with an ERA that was 14% below league average. These counting stats he’s managed to accrue give Kyle and his representation a service record to boast about in arbitration and compare favorably to other pitchers, even if the quality of that service hasn’t been very good — and it hasn’t.

Kendrick is the type of pitcher that requires a ton of variables to work in his favor to be successful. He has one of the more pitiful strikeout rates currently found in the MLB. In fact, of pitchers with at least 300 innings pitched in the last 4 seasons, he has the absolute lowest at 4.26, sharing the bottom of the barrel with such luminaries as Nick Blackburn, Aaron Cook, Aaron Laffey, and Jeff Suppan. Nominally, because his primary pitch is a sinker, Kendrick is a “ground ball pitcher.” And it’s true that, lacking the ability to miss bats, inducing grounders is his only real route to success. Kendrick’s career ground ball rate, however, is right around league average, at 45.6%, and the only single season in which he was substantially above average was in 2009, when he only faced 112 big league hitters.

For a pitcher that can’t strike hitters out, doesn’t have any particular ground ball ability, and who makes a living in a hitter’s park, the only savior is luck. Kendrick has had plenty of it, both good and bad. It was probably a foregone conclusion that the Phillies would tender him a contract after a 2011 season that was certainly the best of his career, but one has to wonder if anybody checked on how he put that season together. His strikeout rate last season was as woeful as ever, at 12.3% compared to the league average 18.6%. His ground ball rate was still decidedly mediocre — 45.3% compared to the league average 44.4%. Kendrick’s BABIP, however, bottomed out at .261. Both his ground balls and fly balls fell in for hits at significantly less than the league rate, amounting to batted ball fortune to an extent that Kendrick had not previously seen in his career. A lot of that luck came with runners in scoring position, a scenario in which his BABIP was just .256, helping to suppress his ERA. These figures, plus an inflated strand rate of 76.1%, helped him build a season that superficially looked great (and that the Phillies were happy to have), but did not bode any better for his future production than the previous four.

Pitchers who can be helpful when they get all of the right breaks are plentiful, and are a dicey proposition on anything more than a one year, low-risk deal. Pitchers like Joel Piñeiro and Dontrelle Willis are about equally as likely as Kendrick to have success next season. But in each opportunity that the Phillies have had to non-tender Kendrick and move on to the next slot machine arm, they have elected not to do so, instead entangling themselves further with a pitcher whose cost will continue to increase regardless of contribution, thanks to the arbitration process. Indeed, the Phillies already had Kendrick signed to an expensive but single-season deal for 2012, inked back in January, but decided to give him a boost in average annual value and contract duration.

As a “Super Two,” Kyle Kendrick is allotted four years of arbitration instead of only three, and his final will come in 2014, after this extension expires. It’s impossible to project Kendrick with absolute certainty, but whether or not he manages another luck-fueled successful season in the next two, his case in 2014 will likely be even more expensive (since arbitration disallows the team from offering less than a set amount relative to the player’s previous salary), and his profile will probably be the same mix of unimpressive ground ball rates and dismal strikeout abilities. How the Phillies deal with him in the offseason following this extension’s expiration will be especially telling. For a team so supposedly concerned with the looming luxury tax threshold, which will remain in place with the new collective bargaining agreement, the Phillies seem to have no reservations about handing out money to their most fungible, replaceable components.

In the past few days, the Phillies’ position with regards to Cuban prospect Jorge Soler has gone from silence to “interested” to, as Jeff Passan put it, “in hardest,” along with the New York Yankees. Soler’s case is somewhat unique, as he will be one of the last international signings to occur before the new collective bargaining agreement’s restrictions on international spending go into effect this summer. The (frankly, rather absurd) new rules will impose harsh, progressive taxes on international contracts that exceed a set limit, so a lot of teams faced with one last opportunity to make their money truly work for them in the global baseball market may seek his services.

The Cubs were apparently close enough to signing him on Monday night that some outlets reported the deal as done, but with last year’s highest and second-highest payrolls now in the bidding, many teams may be priced out. The supposed Cubs deal that has since been refuted was for around $30 million dollars; he may end up making substantially more than that, even more than the 4 year, $36 million deal handed out to fellow Cuban Yoenis Cespedes, but without the latter’s ability to become a free agent when the deal expires.

Soler cuts an even lower profile than Cespedes, who came with many questions and only a 20 minute long self-aggrandizing YouTube video to answer them. In Jorge’s case, we have no video, and, by way of illustration, the above picture that looks like a found photo from the 1960s is the only one I could find [ed. note: appropriately, this wasn't even a picture of Soler, so I removed it]. Still, he’s been generating some amount of discussion in scouting circles for the last two years, and now that MLB teams are meeting with him, a reasonable snapshot can be assembled. The basics: he is a 6′ 5″ right-handed hitter that weighs in at around 200 pounds. Most of the available reports on his abilities are in decent alignment, and Soler’s raw power is the first thing that gets mentioned. One report noted that he could be a 30 home run hitter at the big league level, while Ken Rosenthal reported that some scouts compared his power to that of Marlins slugger Mike Stanton. While he was in the minors, Stanton’s power had a sort of folk legend status, and the young right-fielder has slugged .525 in his first 1,000 or so major league plate appearances, so it’s hard to overstate what high praise that is.

Of course, power isn’t very useful if a hitter’s contact and patience skills aren’t playable. It seems generally agreed-upon that Soler is still raw in those areas, and will need a lot of seasoning in the minor leagues to bring them up to speed. Since he’s only 19 years old, this makes him not much different from most high-ceiling hitting prospects that come from both the United States and elsewhere abroad, and similar to the sort of hitters that the Phillies have drafted over the years — Larry Greene being the most recent to come to mind. More than one source makes reference to Soler’s five-tool potential, though certain of these receive more press than others. Besides his power, his arm is apparently a standout asset, which, combined with evaluations of his fielding, causes many to suspect that he’ll move from center field to right field when he finds a landing spot in the United States. He possesses formidable speed, having been clocked by one scout at 4.26 seconds from home plate to first base, which is above average for a right-hander. Scouts seem to doubt that this will be enough to make him a significant base-stealing threat in the MLB, however.

Slotting Soler along with more well-understood prospects requires some guesswork. Kevin Goldstein was asked (many times) where Soler would rank among his top 100 prospects list, released this week, were he to include foreign talent. He placed Soler at 39, ahead of Padres catching prospect Yasmani Grandal and 13 spots ahead of the highest Phillie on his list, Trevor May. I asked Keith Law the same question in a recent chat, but he did not answer it. He did say that, were the Cubs to sign him, he would place Soler “ahead of [Brett] Jackson” at 89 but not ahead of Anthony Rizzo at 36, which leaves plenty to the imagination. Notably, though, Law also said that he would rather “roll the dice on Soler” than Cespedes, given the former’s age and what he’s heard from his sources. Regardless, there is plenty of the uncertainty that comes with any international prospect. Law has said several times that the level of competition in Cuban baseball is lower than that of single-A, but with a wider divide between the best and worst players, and Soler is certainly at or near the top of competition in that environment. As a 19 year old, rookie or single-A baseball is the most suitable home for him anyway at this point, but Soler will have to cope with not only a whole new field of competitive talent, but also the psychological burdens of a teenager moving to an entirely new country and making the necessary adaptations.

For the Phillies, Soler is a risk worth taking, both because of their financial situation and because Soler represents an immediate step towards relieving one of their more pressing problems — the farm system. With Domonic Brown having graduated from prospect status (albeit, in this metaphor, still living with his negligent parents) and the toll taken by last season’s trade for Hunter Pence, Keith Law understandably ranked Philadelphia’s organization in the bottom five in the MLB. As mentioned, Kevin Goldstein, for one, would rank Soler ahead of the Phillies’ highest-rated prospect, Trevor May. He also, incidentally, places Soler ten spots ahead of Jarred Cosart, the highest-rated of the Pence bounty. The Phillies will be patient with talents like May, Larry Greene, Jesse Biddle, and Sebastian Valle, but with some rule 4 draft changes looming that will restrict their ability to throw money around with U.S. amateurs, Soler represents a quick, easy boost to the farm system that could pay serious dividends in four or five years. Like the rest of the talent in the Phillies’ system, Soler is raw, but if the Mike Stanton comparisons are even remotely plausible, Citizens Bank Park would be a very cozy home for him.

This Phillies offseason has been understandably fairly quiet, outside of the early acquisition of Jonathan Papelbon. There was no real need for big ticket signings, given the roster’s composition. But, in addition to being a sound baseball move, signing Jorge Soler would carry a certain excitement with it, owing particularly to the Phillies’ historical reluctance to dabble in big money international signings. Several years down the road, when the roster will be thick with age and expense, the potential for a comparatively cheap young talent with team control is well worth a significant up-front investment, and the assumption of the risk that goes with it. Jim Salisbury reports that the Phillies are a “serious player” for Soler, having “remained in close contact with Soler and his agents since [he] defected.” Once the formalities associated with him attaining official free agent status are overcome, it may be only a short period of time before we know where he will land.

This winter, Hunter Pence heads to his second salary arbitration hearing, in his third year of eligibility. 2011 was, indisputably, the most successful season of his young career. He produced a .314/.370/.502 line, including a particularly impressive .324/.394/.560 run in 236 plate appearances following his trade to the Phillies. He set career highs in OBP, OPS+, rWAR, and fWAR. Not surprisingly, Pence could net a fair purse for 2012. Matt Swartz, via his salary arbitration model, projects the value of his case to be around $11 million. Under Amaro, the Phillies are typically loathe to leave a player’s salary up to an arbitration panel, so they may try to reach a deal with him in advance of the deadline for exchanging salary submissions later today. Either way, the proceedings hinge on the Phillies knowing just how valuable a player Hunter Pence really is, and the gulf between his 2011 season and those that came before it introduces substantial doubt to that determination.

Prior to 2011, Pence had a career 115 OPS+ on his resume, and was just shy of being a 2 win player (rWAR) in the average season. His offensive numbers were respectable, but not those of a top-flight MLB corner outfielder. From 2007-2010, 17 other leftfielders and rightfielders accrued at least 1500 plate appearances and posted a better OPS+ than Pence, and they are some of the names more closely associated with the offense-first character of the position — Manny Ramirez, Ryan Braun, Jayson Werth, Matt Holliday, Andre Ethier, etc. Pence’s bat was above average at a position which is usually home to excellent or even elite ones.

Still, he developed a reputation that somewhat overstated his abilities. This was due in part to playing for a Houston Astros team that was perennially short on talent; Craig Biggio retired after playing alongside Pence for one season in 2007, and after that, Hunter, Lance Berkman, and a declining Carlos Lee were the lone bright spots on a team that never climbed higher than third in the NL Central. Phillies fans in particular were made to watch Pence post a .330/.382/.681 line against their team’s pitching from 2007-2010. His schizophrenic, penguin-out-of-water, proprioceptively-impaired style of play garnered additional attention and (understandably) clouded attempts at level-headed evaluations of his talent (during a rough stretch for Pence in 2010, Eric Seidman quipped, “I’d say he isn’t seeing the ball well, but he never closes his eyes so I don’t see how that would be possible”).

2011 was a different story entirely. His .378 wOBA last season put him on the same offensive tier as Mike Stanton, Robinson Cano, and Dustin Pedroia. As the five win player that Pence was in 2011 (rWAR), he would be more than worth the money he is poised to make, either by arbitration or extension. The temptation with any sudden surge or depression in hitter production is to search for signs that it could be a passing fluke. In Pence’s case, his BABIP jumps off the (web)page. In both 2011 and his rookie season, which was his second most successful season by OPS+, his BABIP reached levels which are hard to imagine any hitter sustaining — .361 and .377 respectively. Only three hitters in history have logged a BABIP above .360 for their career (minimum 2000 plate appearances): Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, and Shoeless Joe Jackson — none of whom, I think we can agree, are suitable comparisons for Pence. In the last decade, the BABIP leader with that minimum is Shin-Soo Choo, who tops out at .353.

Pence’s BABIP wasn’t the only difference, though. His line drive rate spiked in 2011, reaching 17.9%, the highest since his rookie year mark (19.4%). This, along with the corresponding decline in ground ball and fly ball rates, works favorably towards his BABIP. If he is consistently hitting the ball harder, he’ll obviously have more success on balls in play going forward. But “consistently” is the key there. According to research by Derek Carty, a hitter’s line drive rate stabilizes when the sum of his infield flies, outfield flies, ground balls, and line drives reaches 795 (using MLB Advanced Media, which was not the source of my earlier figures but which shows the same spike for Pence). For Pence, that sum was just 487. And even if we had evidence that Pence had reliably boosted his line drive ability, his 2011 rate still doesn’t support the .361 BABIP. Per Fangraphs’ xBABIP estimator, his batted ball profile in 2011 portends just a .319 BABIP, which also happens to be his career expected BABIP using that same formula. That’s a 42 point difference, which means about 20 less hits, reducing his 2011 batting average to .281 and his on base percentage to .340, and that’s discounting the peripheral effects that reduced contact success might have on his walk and extra base hit rates.

The bulk of Pence’s batted ball fortune in 2011 appears to have come on ground balls. His BABIP on grounders was .329 in 2011; the league average was .237. Looking at the distribution of his ground ball hits, it’s easy to pick out a few that were luck-of-the-draw:

Then again, Pence has always outpaced the league in ground ball success, maybe owing to his speed. Even removing 2011, his career BABIP on grounders is .296.

There is plenty more at stake in the evaluation than just one arbitration hearing. Three of the prospects surrendered by the Phillies to acquire Pence immediately became top 10 prospects in the Astros system — Jonathan Singleton and Jarred Cosart at 1 and 2 respectively, and Domingo Santana at 6, by Baseball America’s reckoning. Granted, the Astros farm system was essentially a wasteland prior to the trade, but Cosart and Singleton would rank well in any system, and it says a lot about the trade that the player-to-be-named turned out to Santana, a formidable well of potential in his own right. The Phillies may not have had a clear spot for Singleton in the big leagues, as he now does with Houston moving to the AL and adding a DH slot to their lineup. They also may not have had much need for Cosart, with Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee locked up for several more years, and Cole Hamels presumably on his way to an extension. It may also be true that, as fresh entrants into the heavyweight class of payroll spenders, the Phillies can afford to exchange prospects in favor of established, more expensive big league talent. But if the true Hunter Pence is closer in ability to his 2007-2010 self, and not his 2011 self, then the Phillies acquired an above-average corner outfielder for a premium package of talent that they were well positioned to sit on until the ideal target came along.

Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, likely drawing on the BABIP concerns already mentioned, forecast a .281/.334/.450 batting line for Pence, amounting to a 108 OPS+. That’s not a bad season by any means, but it’s not far off from, say, Carlos Ruiz‘s 2011, or Ben Francisco‘s 2010. It’s certainly not the sort of elite bat you can use to maximize the value from a corner outfield position. If that’s the sort of player Pence is going to be, they’ll need offensive surplus from positions where it’s harder to find. They used to have that built-in, season after season, in the form of Chase Utley, but his health leaves that to question now. They may have it from Shane Victorino if he builds on his immensely successful 2011, or from Carlos Ruiz, or from Jimmy Rollins if he can spark a rare late-career surge. Suffice it to say, there are no standout candidates. More importantly, if Pence’s value will reflect something in the neighborhood of that ZiPS projection going forward, the Phillies will have to hope that the package they surrendered manifests more of its risk than its potential, and they’ll have to exercise restraint with negotiating the salary of a new fan favorite and bona fide good guy.

There were not many suitors for Piñeiro’s services following a rough 2011 outing. He posted 5.13 ERA over 145 and 2/3rds innings, and a problem that has plagued him for the last six seasons — his inability to punch hitters out — reached a new career low, in the form of a 9.8% strikeout rate. Ostensibly, he hails from the Kyle Kendrick school of sinker ball pitching: acceptable but not impressive groundball rates, better than average walk rates, both put to waste with abysmal strikeout abilities. His secondary pitch is a slider, and he mixes in a curveball and changeup, but none are offerings suited for a spot in a major league starter’s arsenal. Piñeiro found success with the Mariners from 2001-2004, when he sustained a much better strikeout rate (17.6%) coupled with an advantageous BABIP (.276).

The Piñeiro from 2001-2004 would be a perfectly serviceable 2nd, 3rd, or 4th starter, but his bat-missing skills and batted ball fortune faded, and he found himself bouncing around the Red Sox and Cardinals’ minor league systems. There was some hope in 2009 that Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan had put his magic to work and salvaged Piñeiro. He posted a 3.49 ERA in 214 innings, mostly thanks to a sizable jump in groundball rate — 60.5% compared to his 49.2% career average. That proved unsustainable, and he landed with the Angels, ranging from mediocre to bad in 2010 and 2011.

Joe Blanton already figures to fill out the 5th spot in a rotation that is otherwise famously comprised of Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, and Vance Worley. Kyle Kendrick, freshly inked to a $3.585 million deal to avoid arbitration two days ago, will be a costly swing man with dim hopes to repeat his fortunate 2011. For the Phillies, then, Piñeiro likely represents AAA filler and a deep starting pitching option. Like the Jason Grilli or Andrew Carpenter of days gone by, he will shore up the Iron Pig rotation until the Phillies find themselves in need of a spot starter or injury replacement. He may not even be high on the depth chart, with a bevy of other one-hit wonders ready to go if the Phillies find themselves in desperate circumstances. Piñeiro is marginally better against right-handed hitting, but nothing about his profile bodes well for a relief role, so it’s unlikely he could land with the big league squad for that purpose.

In the broader construction project that is the 2012 Phillies, Piñeiro is a minor, fungible cog that the machine would hardly miss. But it’s worth a no-risk minor league deal to bring him to spring training and give him a chance to prove some usefulness. His game plan should mirror Kendrick’s — walk as few hitters as possible, and rely heavily on the sinker, praying either that it works or that he gets lucky. In the best case scenario, he will approach Kendrick’s serviceability without inspiring the same odd compulsion to throw substantial money in his direction. In the worst case, he may add more than a few dents to the Lehigh Valley bleachers.

Per Jim Salisbury and Jerry Crasnick, the Phillies have signed left-handed pitcher Dontrelle Willis to a one year contract for “about $1 million and performance bonuses.”

After a few up and down seasons with the Marlins, Willis was traded to the Tigers as part of the Miguel Cabrera deal, and suffered a near complete collapse, stumbling around the Detroit and San Francisco minor league affiliates. Finally settling in with the Reds last season, Willis had another rough year, albeit one that may have looked worse than it really was. He brought his walk rate down to a somewhat acceptable 11.1%, and was able to induce groundballs at about a 55% clip, posting a SIERA of 4.29.

More importantly for the Phillies, who will have a newly-tendered Kyle Kendrick competing with Joe Blanton for the fifth spot in the starting rotation, Willis shows some indications of being an effective left-handed specialist. He has a 2.88 career xFIP versus left-handed hitters, and last year, in an admittedly small 60 hitter sample, struck them out at a 33.3% rate. The image below shows Willis’ pitch placement to left-handed hitting since 2009, and his groundball rate for the same scope. When Willis manages to stay away from the inside of the plate against lefties he keeps the ball on the ground successfully. Over the 191 plate appearances represented in this image, lefties managed just a .276 wOBA against Willis.

Of course, this is all predicated on Willis actually being used in this way. It’s tough to forget J.C. Romero, ostensibly the left-handed specialist, being brought to the mound to face 256 right-handed batters between 2008 and 2010, with results at once infuriating and comedic. Charlie Manuel’s bullpen management, insofar as any coherent strategy can be deciphered, appears to be a mix of innings-based decisions and traditional closer values, so if the D-train is left in for, say, an entire 6th or 7th inning, the likelihood that he’ll face right-handed hitting washes away any value he has to offer to the Phillies’ pen.

As it is, though, at around $1 million, Willis is a bargain flier for the Phillies, with the chance to effectively supplement a bullpen comprised of Jonathan Papelbon, Jose Contreras, and a group of young arms.

_{Notes: wXB/H is “Weighted Extra Bases per Hit,” a contact skill-neutral measure of power that I Frankenstein’d together here. Strikeout rate is inverted, so that lower strikeout rates are higher above league average.}

As you would expect, Mayberry bests Ibanez in every category except for walk rate versus opposite-handed pitchers. His overall output, plate discipline, and power are all superior to those of Ibanez. The best thing that can be said for Raul Ibanez is that he has streaks of passable to good performance. When you stop creating generous endpoints for him, he is just a corner outfielder with poor defense who is hitting 10% below league average at the moment by wRC+. On many other teams he would be a bench bat — and blessed to hold on even to that role. Front offices less prone to considerations of loyalty and character, on teams whose fates were less assured, would have looked elsewhere for production weeks ago.

Still, we’re a few days away from the official submission of playoff rosters, and I can say with reasonable certainty that Charlie Manuel will start Raul Ibanez in left field for every playoff game. Granted, it’s more complicated than the above graph makes it seem. Ibanez has nearly twice as many plate appearances as Mayberry, and it will be a while before we can be certain that Mayberry’s improvements are the real deal. It’s also questionable how much their skill differential will really matter in the playoff rat race, where a good four or five plate appearances can turn an entire series.

But suppose the Phillies are knocked out shy of their ultimate goal. While we’re sitting around building narratives after the fact, as FuquaManuel detailed, will we at least consider this, a decision predicated entirely on non-baseball factors that objectively lowers the team’s offensive potential? Or will we brush it aside, credit Charlie Manuel again for being the “player’s manager,” and turn our attention to some other scapegoat?

Lee’s dominance this season, at least to me, has seemed under-advertised by media and fans. It’s understandable, to an extent. Everyone breathlessly waits to see what Roy Halladay can do next, and for good reason. Cole Hamels is presently filling in the zeroes on his next contract with each gem of a start, and, anticipating that he’ll stick around, we want to feel out just how devastating his new repertoire can be, as if 2010 wasn’t evidence enough. Vance Worley is the new rookie surprise story, on a staff that was hardly wanting for reasons to watch. Added to all that, Lee began the season with some starts that were a strange mix of high strikeout and earned run totals, just when the expectations for the new mega-rotation were fresh and uncompromising.

All of these factors have contributed to a strange notion that I’ve seen in more than a few places: Cliff Lee is “streaky,” or “inconsistent.” I’m not making this up:

Dare to say it; Lee has been somewhat inconsistent this season, with two historic months of dominance surrounded by some fairly modest months of performance.

He is at times the best pitcher in the world, and during others he’s just another pitcher. If you look at his monthly splits this season, Lee has put in two months of ridiculous, epic and historic work.

I want to stress here that this is not meant as a dig at Philadelphia Sports Daily or Jim McCormick. He’s a very good beat writer — one of the best, and one of my favorites, actually. This was just the easiest example to cite. Bill Petti, a writer at Beyond the Boxscore whose work I also enjoy, wrote about it too. They’re simply elaborating on something that a lot of other people on blogs, twitter, radio, newspapers, and in broadcasts have said at some point or other this season. In most cases they’ve said it because of this:

It’s easy to see why someone would look at this data and conclude that Cliff has had, at the very least, a strange year. The June through August stretch is particularly schizophrenic, at least when measured by ERA. Of course, ERA never tells the whole story. His BABIP fluctuated wildly over that period, from .191 to .359 to .237. His strikeout rate was actually at its lowest during his incredible June, and was lower in his 0.45 ERA August than it was in his 4.18 ERA April. A simple results-based evaluation is insufficient; it’s much more complicated than the number of earned runs he has allowed from one month to the next. If we fade ERA out a bit, and add FIP and xFIP to the above graph, this becomes all the more obvious:

That smoothes things out quite a bit, doesn’t it? For one thing, the big split between his FIP and xFIP in July indicates that home runs allowed per fly ball was the source of his outcome woes that month, and indeed that metric was severely inflated, at 18.8%. If his ERA had fallen in line with his FIP or xFIP, no one would seriously accuse him of streakiness. The first graph now looks like a superficial take, at best. We can’t say for sure that there weren’t some perfectly good reasons for his BABIP and HR/FB fluctuations month-to-month (in particular his pop-up rate spiked heartily in his low-BABIP August), but, really, isn’t that the point? When you chunk data out into such small samples, you’ll end up with the murkiest of portraits no matter what brushes you use.

This is especially true when the criteria for that chunking is as entirely arbitrary as calendar months. The Gregorian calendar was rolled out by the head of the Catholic Church almost 500 years ago, primarily because the previous calendar had a nasty habit of shifting the Spring equinox further out of alignment with Easter each year. Baseball evolved gradually in 19th century America from a variety of ancestral stick-and-ball games. The two have nothing to do with one another. There is no reason that Cliff Lee’s pitching ability should have anything to do with the ambitions of Pope Gregory XIII, or the orbital mechanics of the Moon. As Twitterati member @Everybody_Hits noted a while back, you can redefine the calendar months and Cliff Lee’s “consistency” problem disappears. What if each month began on the 25th instead of the 1st?

Now, instead of the wild month-to-month sine wave, Cliff has had a great 4 month stretch from April 25th to August 24th, bookended by a decent March/April and two fantastic August/September starts. It’s impossible to call this an up-and-down season. Even in moving the endpoints, though, we are still submitting to the tyranny of the Moon, sticking with 30-day periods to define our months. Again, there is no reason why we should do this. It has just as much to do with baseball as migratory bird patterns and seasonal wheat harvests. So, hey, let’s break out Lee’s performance according to the rotation of Lambda Andromedae, a G-type giant binary star located approximately 84 light years from Earth. It happens to have a rotational period of 54 days.

Now, if I were to claim that Cliff Lee draws his pitching abilities from the machinations of a distant star, strengthening his powers with each full rotation, I’d have just as strong a set of empirical legs to stand on as those that would look at his monthly splits and call him streaky. In analyzing baseball, we’re constantly limited by the fuzziness introduced by small sample size even when working with a full season of data (especially for pitchers). Splitting it up further only amplifies the problem. Anyone who chooses endpoints, be it a fan, writer, or broadcaster, does so with a certain agenda in mind, whether they know it or not. Even from those endpoints that seem perfectly natural on their face — monthly splits being an excellent example — there can emerge great thickets of coincidence that masquerade as narratives. If we fail to apply the utmost scrutiny to these, we may allow single season gems like Cliff Lee’s 2011 to be muddied with baseless criticisms, and that would be a true shame.

In the ceaseless quest to identify players with the most raw pop, isolated power, or ISO, is a frequently cited metric, as you’ve probably seen. It’s simply a player’s slugging percentage minus his batting average. The idea is that, by removing single base hits, and measuring just a player’s extra bases per at bat, we can approach a pure measure of a power. I’ve referred to it quite a bit in the past. Like OPS, it’s simple, easy to explain, and easy to calculate in a pinch.

Recently I came across this article by Lewie Pollis from Beyond the Boxscore, wherein he resurrects a metric that had been floating around stat-minded circles in the past — power factor. Power factor is isolated power with one basic change: the denominator is a player’s hits instead of at bats. It can be expressed as isolated power divided by batting average, but what it boils down to is extra bases earned per hit. When you phrase it that way, I think the advantage is obvious, but Pollis provided a helpful mental exercise to illustrate how it more effectively approaches a player’s power:

Let’s take two hypothetical players: Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne. Stark hits .350 with a .550 SLG. Wayne hits .200 with a .400 SLG. Both weigh in at a .200 ISO, suggesting their raw power is roughly equal.

But that’s not right. If Wayne somehow managed to bring his average up 150 points, would all the extra hits be singles? Stark is clearly a better hitter, and they both produced the same amount of extra bases. But if the two players had similar contact skills, Wayne would undoubtedly be a bigger slugger.

Simply put, a player’s isolated power is still influenced by his batted ball fortune and contact skill, which are not things we want to factor in to our evaluation of power. Measuring extra bases per hit, instead of per at bat, negates these influences. Take the 2011 performances of Ryan Howard and Shane Victorino as an example. Their ISOs are .236 and .234 respectively, suggesting that their power hitting is roughly equivalent this year. But Howard gets .952 extra bases per hit (his power factor), while Victorino only manages .767. Clearly, if their batted ball luck and contact skills were equal, and Howard were getting as many hits as Victorino, his power as measured by ISO would be superior. That’s what power factor attempts to get at.

Put that aside for a second, and let’s look at another attempt to tweak isolated power for the better. At Fangraphs, Steve Slowinski recently developed a metric he calls Weighted Extra Bases. Instead of using the extra base count of each extra base hit (1 for doubles, 2 for triples, 3 for home runs), Weighted Extra Bases uses their linear weights values (the same ones that go into the calculation of wOBA) in an attempt to represent each hit type’s true value in a power metric. As Slowinski writes, the formula goes:

wXB/AB = [ (1.268 * 2B) + (1.610 * 3B) + (2.086 * HR) ] / AB
ISO = [ (1 * 2B) + (2 * 3B) + (3 * HR) ] / AB

When you actually weigh extra base hits in proportion to their value, it turns out that ISO is undervaluing doubles, while overvaluing both triples and home runs. This is why a player like Matt Holliday (33 doubles, 19 home runs) can have the 9th highest wXB/AB in the majors, yet only the 20th highest ISO and 17th highest SLG.

As you can see, doubles have more value than we usually consider, and more than ISO credits them for. The second extra base gained on a triple, on the other hand, is not quite as valuable as ISO calculates it to be. Home runs are similarly overvalued. Using Slowinski’s twist, we can measure a player’s power with a more accurate accounting of the contribution to run scoring that it provides.

So we have two separate variations on isolated power, each resolving a separate issue: Pollis’ use of Power Factor eliminates the influence of contact skills and batted ball luck in measuring a player’s power, and Slowinski’s Weighted Extra Bases paints a clearer picture of the value that each extra base hit type provides, and therefore a clearer picture of the player’s power contribution. Now why not combine them, harvesting the advantages of each? Specifically, let’s take Weighted Extra Bases as our numerator, and hits (rather than at bats) as our denominator. This would allow us to see the true power value that a hitter provides with each hit he collects. Now, Holliday’s doubles are not undervalued, and Victorino’s contact ability and BABIP are not unduly represented. Two birds with one Randy Johnson fastball. The new formula is:

Weighted Extra Bases per Hit = [ (1.268 * 2B) + (1.610 * 3B) + (2.086 * HR) ] / Hits

Before continuing, let me just point out that this is entirely derivative of Pollis and Slowinski; I’ve contributed nothing new, besides smashing together their separate, clever ideas.

That being said, let’s look at some of the things this metric tells us. For starters, here are the top 15 wXB/H seasons in the history of baseball, minimum 300 At Bats:

The names aren’t surprising, but this looks quite a bit different from the best 15 ISO seasons using the same criteria. McGwire appears with the same frequency, but players held up by high contact skills, such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, are bumped down a bit. And players who did a lot with the ball when they did hit it, like Jose Bautista and Carlos Pena, are given their proper due. Players who appear on the Power Factor leaderboard for the same criteria but are boosted by overvalued hit types, like Adam Dunn, Harmon Killebrew, and Sammy Sosa, are also bumped down in the wXB/H metric.

Now for the career leaders. Who, according to wXB/H, provided the most value with their power every time they logged a hit? Unsurprisingly, it turns out to be McGwire, and by a wide margin at that (minimum: 3000 At Bats):

I know what you’re thinking now: Gorman Thomas? Steve Balboni? The former spent 13 years in the majors, from 1973-1986, hitting decently above average (114 OPS+), which was not bad for a guy who was a full time centerfielder for most of his career. But he’s not exactly the stuff of legends, and he certainly doesn’t come to mind if you were asked to rattle off some of the great power hitters in history. His slugging percentage only cracked .500 twice. This is mostly because he didn’t have very good contact skills — his career batting average was just .225. But when he did get a hit, it turned out to be an extra-base hit 47% of the time. The league average for that figure is 29%, and only a handful of other players have sustained a better rate than him for the amount of time he did. The same can be said for Steve Balboni. He was a league average hitter (101 OPS+) for 11 seasons, batting only .229 for his career, but 45% of his hits went for extra bases. Our all-time leader McGwire, by the way, turned 52% of his hits into extra base knocks.

How about the Phillies? Here are the top 20 wXB/H seasons in franchise history:

Nothing groundbreaking. Mike Schmidt appears seven times. His top ranking season, 1979, was only his 6th best by OPS+, but he posted a .564 slugging percentage while hitting just .253. He homered in 6.7% of his plate appearances (league average that year was 2.1%), and his hits went for extra bases 54% of the time. Almost all of Ryan Howard’s career is represented. It’s interesting, though, that Howard’s best offensive season, 2006, ranks the lowest of his other seasons on this list. Both his SLG and ISO that year were, by far, the highest of his career thus far. But again, we’re seeing the effect of eliminating contact factors; Howard’s batting average and BABIP were much higher in 2006 than in subsequent years, and when he connected with the ball from 2007-2009, it went for extra bases more frequently.

Finally, the top 20 Phillie careers, minimum 2000 at-bats:

There are perhaps some surprising names (hello Cy Williams), and you could quibble about the order, but the top dogs are as you might expect. For all the intra-fanbase battles about Howard’s value, his power is undeniable, and will be his legacy as a Phillie. There is a wide gap separating him, Schmidt, and Burrell from the rest. By wXB/H, at least, they represent the top tier of raw pop in Phillies history.

It’s an interesting metric to play around with, and I think it gets at some aspects of a player’s hitting that might not necessarily be represented by slugging percentage or isolated power. I certainly would not go bandying it about in overall player evaluations, but raw power is one of those fundamental things that draw us to baseball, and that make it fun to watch, and it’s not as easy to quantify as it might seem on its face. As a postscript, here are the values for the 2011 qualified Phillies:

Still, there are plenty of things you can do in the playoffs to nudge the percentages in your favor, and that is what makes last night’s loss, on more careful inspection, particularly hard to stomach. Because if the personnel management we witnessed makes an encore appearance in the playoffs, the Phillies will be handicapping themselves needlessly and inexplicably.

Charlie Manuel’s decision to leave Halladay in to start the 9th inning, with the Phillies leading the Diamondbacks 2-1, is not one that I care to question. Per win expectancy, the Phillies were 84% likely to win the game, and it goes without saying that Roy Halladay is a master of his craft at 20 pitches or 100. Not having anyone warming up to start the inning, though, suggests a lack of foresight. Even after he surrendered back-to-back singles to Justin Upton and Miguel Montero, I find it hard to argue with leaving Halladay in. With runners at 1st and 2nd and nobody out, the most desirable outcomes for the team on the field are strikeouts and ground balls, and this year Halladay has achieved those with a collective 60% of the batters he has faced. His opponent in this instance, Lyle Overbay, had done one of those two things in 52% of his plate appearances. But hey, sometimes the batless fleck of roster garbage stumbles upon success. That’s baseball. Charlie Manuel can’t defend against that.

The truly inexcusable decision came next. With the lead surrendered, and Halladay sitting on 110 pitches, Manuel made no move; he elected to let Roy pitch the rest of the inning. They weren’t easy pitches to make, either. With a runner on third and one out, he was lucky enough to retire Sean Burroughs on two pitches, but, after an intentional walk to Gerardo Parra, labored through six pitches to get Paul Goldschmidt on a strikeout. That may not seem like a lot, but they were completely unnecessary. There is just no justification, with the entire bullpen on two days of rest, to make him finish that inning. Manuel had no idea how many more batters the Diamondbacks would send to the plate, and it begs the question of how long he would have let Halladay persist, had the Phillies been less fortunate. Bill has written about similar instances quite a few times before, to very mixed responses. The debate rolls endlessly on (and, for the record, I side perpetually with risk aversion), but there must be a certain threshold at which all of us agree that common sense points to one obvious move. What hidden benefit could the Phillies gain by leaving Halladay in after Overbay’s double? What possible justification exists for it?

What occurred in the bottom of that inning was arguably worse. The Phillies were down one run with Carlos Ruiz, Michael Martinez, and then the pitcher’s spot due to bat. At this point, they had John Mayberry Jr., Ben Francisco, Ross Gload, Wilson Valdez, and Brian Schneider available on the bench. Per wOBA, the only player of this bunch with an above average bat is Mayberry. In fact, Mayberry is 17% above average, and an extra-base machine — over half of his hits, both this year and in his career, get him to second base or further. So at least to me, mere blogger that I am, the best strategy seems obvious: hope that Carlos Ruiz gets on base, as he had at a respectable .357 clip entering the game in question. Pinch hit the power threat Mayberry for the glove-only Michael Martinez, who had compiled a laughable .255 wOBA up to this point. Hope that Mayberry produces yet another extra-base knock, and then send Ben Francisco to the plate, who, maligned as he has been this season, has still managed a .304 wOBA, and would be the best of the remaining options. You could also have elected to pinch run Wilson Valdez for Carlos Ruiz prior to the Mayberry at-bat, and, should extra-innings have ensued, placed him at third and brought in Schneider behind the dish. You can quibble over the details, but I think that would have been a perfectly reasonable protocol to give the Phillies the best chance at success.

What actually happened would have been an admirable ballpark troll had Charlie Manuel not been completely sincere. Rick Astley popping up on the HD video screen wouldn’t have been out of place. Ruiz did indeed get on base, drawing a walk from J.J. Putz on five pitches. Manuel chose to leave Martinez in the game and advance Ruiz to second via the sacrifice bunt. Any run expectancy matrix will demonstrate that this actually reduced the number of runs that the Phillies could have expected to score. The natural rebuttal is that, since the Phillies only needed one run to tie and another to walk off with the win, the extra value of advancing Ruiz to second outstripped the cost of the out surrendered. But win expectancy for a home team down by a run, which takes into account this added bit of context, is also reduced by the bunt, from .331 with a runner on first and no outs to .282 with a runner on second and one out. And all of this assumes that the parties involved are league average. The Phillies could have brought in Mayberry, who gets on base almost 33% of the time against righties like Putz, but instead opted for a strategy that gets the runner on base nearly 0% of the time.

As a grand finale, Manuel pinch ran Mayberry for Ruiz once Martinez had bunted him over, ensuring that Mayberry could not step to the plate at all during the Phillies’ last gasp. He sent Ross Gload, who has been battling a hip injury and wallowing in ineffectiveness all season, to the plate for Halladay. Gload had a .257 wOBA against righties entering the game, and, even after the misallocation of Mayberry, was still a worse choice than Ben Francisco. So it isn’t surprising that he struck out swinging, and, after Rollins did the same, the game was over.

Manuel’s justification for leaving Halladay in to finish the ninth was, as reported by Todd Zolecki, “it’s kind of his game, isn’t it? That’s my ace.” Similarly, he would probably respond to criticisms about his handling of the ninth inning bats with a reminder that he’s been in the game of baseball for a long time, and he knows more than a little bit about it. He’s earned that. I wouldn’t presume to take that away from him. I wouldn’t tell Chase Utley to alter his plate approach, or Roy Halladay to modify his pitch sequencing. But unlike the mechanics that go into pitching and hitting, managing a baseball team involves a discrete beginning state, a tangible manipulation, and a discrete end state. Observing the change that occurs through these three steps, we can make objective observations about the effect a manager has produced. And that is where folksy rejoinders fail in the face of readily available data. There are surely elements to Manuel’s managerial ability that we will never be able to quantify, but the ones that we can clash so fiercely with simple baseball axioms that they’re impossible to let slide.

Last night’s loss, on its face, is ridiculously easy to get over. It’s not even a bump in the road. In all but the most paranoid of projections, it costs the Phillies nothing. The poor strategy that made it so distinctly frustrating, should it be allowed to play out in the postseason, could inflict serious damage to their World Series hopes. And there’s nothing to indicate that this is the last we’ll see of it.

You would expect a southpaw with good velocity and a high strikeout rate to be particularly nightmarish for left-handed hitters. Broadcast crews, though, are fond of pointing out that lefties opposing Bastardo hit for a higher average than righties. The more comprehensive wOBA metric agrees — left-handed batters are 64 points better, .240 to .176 (it’s worth taking a moment to stop and appreciate just how good both of those figures are). This is particularly unexpected when considering Bastardo’s approach. The changeup would be a good weapon against righties, but, in Bastardo’s case, it’s the weakest pitch in his arsenal. So he boosts his reliance on his greatest asset, the fastball, when facing righties, opting for it about 66% of the time, as opposed to 60% against lefties. He doesn’t dial down his selection of the slider as much as you might think, but his location of it differs substantially:

With the slider breaking in on right-handed batters, Bastardo is likely trying to avoid plunking them. The result is that a good deal more of them are left in what could be called the middle of the plate, or at least in areas where they appear a lot more hittable. There’s some indication that they are — lefties have yet to manage a line drive off of Bastardo’s slider, while righties have done it 11% of the time. Yet righties still whiff prodigiously against it (41.8%) and ground out quite a bit on it (33.3%) which, considering the juicier locations, must in part speak to its substantial “bite.” In terms of outcomes, it hasn’t mattered. Righties haven’t managed any substantial power off of Bastardo, posting just a .064 ISO and managing only four extra-base hits in 108 plate appearances. This could be an area where lady luck is especially forgiving, though. None of the line drives or flyballs hit on Bastardo’s slider have fallen for hits thus far. His overall BABIP against right-handed hitters is just .141. As that creeps back up, all three pitch types to righties will find different areas of the park, and likely the outfield seats as well. Since his BABIP against lefties stands at .200, it’s reasonable to expect his odd platoon split to reverse itself.

Here’s one thing that will always help your BABIP: Bastardo has been an inveterate inducer of the infield fly this season. Currently, almost 20% of his flyballs stay in the infield, good for 7th among qualified MLB relievers. Pop-ups are outs all but some negligible percentage of the time (the Luis Castillo caveat), so, in combination with his strikeout rate, the infield flies allow Bastardo to have more success with such a low groundball rate than he otherwise might. There’s plenty of varying opinions on how much of a repeatable skill the induction of infield flies actually is. Last year, David Appelman of Fangraphs offered some evidence that higher infield fly rates are just a natural byproduct for pitchers with higher overall flyball rates, a category which Bastardo certainly fits.

This year, Derek Carty at Baseball Prospectus searched for thresholds at which we could consider various statistics to be “stable,” and included a pitcher’s infield fly rate in his endeavors. He found that it stabilizes once the pitcher has amassed a combination of groundballs, flyballs, and line drives totaling 288. Bastardo stands at 97. So while the infield fly rate is encouraging, it’s far from a sure thing just yet. Don’t underrate its importance. If Bastardo can maintain it at around 15% or above, he can keep his HR/FB% down and mitigate the damage of his high overall flyball rate.

No matter how you slice it, Bastardo is due for some backsliding in metrics that no pitcher can really control. In cases such as his, though, we can step away from the batted ball data and pitch f/x and reach into our old reliable peripherals toolbox. Bastardo has an elite strikeout rate and a slightly below average walk rate. In most cases, that will give you a solid foundation for effectiveness as a reliever. In his case, any ERA retrodictor you might care to ask — FIP, xFIP, SIERA — likes what he has to offer, to varying degrees. His highest, the 3.31 xFIP, doesn’t account for some of the above mentioned factors that could keep his home run rate down. But even if he settles down around that figure, that’s more than enough to make him a valuable high leverage asset for the Phillies, and, should Ryan Madson depart for top dollar this offseason, the cornerstone of a new bullpen.

_{Big ups to Texas Leaguers Pitch F/X and Joe Lefkowitz’s Pitch F/X Tool for some crucial data.}