Myself, Paul Boye, and Ryan Sommers have covered his season in exhaustive detail, so I won’t bother you with another treatise on the subject. However, I would like to point out some stats that indicate to me that Halladay’s season shouldn’t cause worry.

• Strikeout rate as a percentage of batters faced
• 2012: 19.7%
• Career: 18.7%
• Note: His strikeout rate had been higher in the last four seasons, two with the Blue Jays and two with the Phillies. In 2003, when Halladay won his first Cy Young award, his strikeout rate was 19.1%, however.
• Walk rate as a percentage of batters faced
• 2012: 4.6%
• Career: 5.0%
• Note: Converse to his strikeout rate, Halladay is walking more batters than he had in the previous four seasons, but he still has a K-BB ratio in excess of four-to-one. Only 17 qualified starting pitchers have an equal or better ratio (including three of his teammates).
• Batting average on balls in play.
• 2012: .290
• Career: .292
• Note: His BABIP is interesting. This year, his BABIP on ground balls and line drives are .296 and .677, respectively, compared to .202 and .749 over his career. It’s a very small sample, so there’s a ton of variance here. Still, it’s interesting and something to monitor going forward. At the very least, we know he isn’t getting hit hard.
• Home run rate as a percentage of fly balls induced
• 2012: 7.6%
• Career: 9.7%
• Note: His overall fly ball rate is also in line with his career average (30%, 26%).
• ERA/xFIP/SIERA
• 2012: 3.58/3.30/3.37
• Career: 3.24/3.16/3.26
• Note: Rather self-explanatory. xFIP is an ERA retrodictor that uses a pitcher’s fly ball rate, while SIERA accounts for the interaction between a pitcher’s batted ball profile and his strikeout and walk rates.

Basically, if you’re unhappy with Halladay’s performance thus far, then you’re unhappy with his career to date. No, he isn’t as dominant as he was during the last two years, but they are at the far right of the bell curve. His 2012 performance is right in the middle of his Hall of Fame bell curve, and that’s plenty good enough atop the starting rotation.

Roy Halladay has given up 5 runs or more in a start 77 times in his career. It'll happen again.

— Sky Kalkman (@Sky_Kalkman) May 23, 2012

As the saying goes, a leopard cannot change its spots. The Phillies, based on who made the 25-man roster out of spring training, were never going to have an offensive that exemplified great plate discipline. Nevertheless, it has been frustrating at times to watch them hit with easy-to-get runs on the bases, only to pop-up weakly or go down swinging on three strikes. In particular, one of the most frequent complaints I have seen has been the Phillies’ propensity to swing at the first pitch.

Saturday’s game against the Boston Red Sox is a good recent example. In the bottom of the eighth, Jimmy Rollins had brought the score to 7-5 with an RBI infield single against Alfredo Aceves. Rollins then stole second base and Aceves walked John Mayberry on four pitches. Shane Victorino stepped to the plate with the bases loaded and a chance to be a hero, if he could find a spot for a single to the outfield. Aceves was laboring and showed a lack of control, so it might have been a good idea to take the first pitch. Most hitters would have done that, but Victorino swung at the first pitch and popped it up in the infield to end the inning.

Here is one example of many afterwards on Twitter:

That's the epitome of dumb baseball by Victorino. Bases are loaded after a walk and you swing at first pitch.#Phillies

— Michael Radano (@MichaelRadano) May 20, 2012

(I don’t mean to single out Mr. Radano, by the way. There are plenty more examples here.)

The Phillies see the sixth-fewest first-pitch strikes in all of baseball (58 percent). Victorino sees the fewest on the team (54.6 percent) and the 44th fewest among 175 qualified players. However, over his career (393 PA), Victorino has a .905 OPS on the first pitch, which is much greater than his .779 career average. Obviously, he’s been doing something right.

The average player sees a fastball on the first pitch 57 percent of the time. This year, Victorino has seen them at a 65 percent clip, the 49th-highest rate out of 178 players*. Victorino likes fastballs: since 2009, he has a .374 wOBA against first-pitch fastballs. The following heat maps show where they’ve tended to cluster:

*Data comes from a different source, which explains the disparity in qualified players.

Additionally, Aceves had thrown fastballs 61 percent of the time, which is at about the league average among relief pitchers. Batters posted a sub-.300 wOBA against his first-pitch fastballs. Here’s where they’ve typically been:

The bases were also loaded and Aceves just walked Mayberry on four pitches. The odds of Aceves throwing a fastball over the plate were quite good, about as good as they’d ever be, save if Victorino had managed to get to 3-0. As baseball is a mixed strategy game, hitters are always trying to predict (imperfectly) what the pitcher will throw. As players fall into patterns and the rest of the league gains of knowledge of those patterns, adjustments will be made. For instance, if Victorino ends up swinging at a significantly larger portion of first pitches this year, he will get even less to hit on the first pitch later in the season and into next year. Likewise, if Aceves starts throwing more sliders on the first pitch, then hitters like Victorino will be less likely to assume a fastball is coming.

This was the end result:

The key word is “result”. When analyzing the validity of a strategy, the result is completely meaningless. In Blackjack, I can hit with 20. It’s a very stupid idea, because the only cards that don’t ruin me are aces. If I hit and happen to spike an ace anyway, it doesn’t mean hitting on 20 was therefore smart.

Victorino swung at the first pitch (which might have been a few inches further inside than he anticipated), popped up, and ended the rally. It was certainly frustrating to watch, but Victorino’s strategy cannot be faulted. Victorino himself did not fault the strategy:

Damn right. I would swing at that every single time. He just beat me. I went up there looking for a cutter. I faced him in spring training and went up there looking first-pitch cutter*. I got the pitch I wanted and he just beat me. I tip my hat. He got me. It is what it is. I’m not going to sit here and question what I did.

*For clarification: my data source lumps cutters in with all fastballs.

This is just one example; there are plenty more throughout the first 42 games. Not all of them are justified, but some are. One cannot make a blanket statement such as “swinging at the first pitch is always bad.” The concept, rather, is fluid — you have to weigh each situation individually according to its unique set of variables.

The Phillies as a team have the third-lowest OPS in the National League when swinging at the first pitch. Victorino is not part of the problem, however.

The biggest offender is Rollins, who has swung at 21 first pitches to the tune of a .211 OPS. Galvis and Polanco have also not had the greatest fortune swinging at the first pitch. Just because Rollins has performed so poorly, though, doesn’t mean that he should altogether stop swinging at the first pitch. Part of the fun in being a fan is being emotionally invested in each and every pitch, but when the dust settles, let’s not fault the players’ strategies without giving them due diligence.

2012 has been an otherwise disappointing offensive season for the Phillies, but Ruiz has been the rock of the lineup, prompting manager Charlie Manuel to move him from the #7 spot, where he had been in 19 of his first 20 starts, to #5 where he’s been in each of his last three starts.

Despite leading the team with nine homers and 27 RBI, Hunter Pence has been lackluster thus far. His .342 wOBA is still above-average, but when he isn’t hitting home runs, he isn’t doing much of anything at all. He has just seven doubles and one triple, and his .253 batting average and .301 on-base percentage echo that. As the team’s best hitter typically bats cleanup, fans have been clamoring for Pence to hit third and Ruiz to hit in the cleanup spot to salvage more run-scoring opportunities.

Generally speaking, though, the effect of an “ideal” batting order is vastly overstated when it comes to scoring more runs. To illustrate this, I used the Baseball Musings Lineup Analysis page and ZiPS rest-of-season projections. Here were the results:

Most Optimal Lineup

4.22 runs per game: Ruiz-Victorino-Polanco-Pence-Rollins-Galvis-Wigginton-Pitcher-Pierre

Suggested Lineup (Ruiz cleanup)

4.03 runs per game: Rollins-Pierre-Pence-Ruiz-Victorino-Wigginton-Polanco-Galvis-Pitcher

Least Optimal Lineup

3.75 runs per game: Galvis-Pitcher-Victorino-Pierre-Wigginton-Polanco-Rollins-Ruiz-Pence

Additionally, the difference between a lineup where everything else is the same except the 3-4-5 is Pence-Ruiz-Victorino (4.03) instead of Victorino-Pence-Ruiz (4.06) is about 0.03 runs, or fewer than four runs over the remaining 123 games. Ten runs roughly equates to one win, so we’re talking about less than one-half of one win over the next 123 games based on ZiPS’ projections, found on FanGraphs.

Fans and talking heads tend to make lineup construction out to be a much, much bigger deal than it actually is. The key to a good lineup is simply getting your best players up to the plate as much as possible, and taking advantage of platoon match-ups when possible. The Phillies haven’t done a whole lot of the former, as Jimmy Rollins and his .269 wOBA have led off in 19 of 39 games, Placido Polanco (.298) has hit second in 22 games, and Rollins has also been slotted in the #3 spot 19 times. If we’re splitting hairs, Ruiz should actually bat first in the lineup, since he’s been the best hitter.

In the long run, it doesn’t make a lot of difference as the true key to lineup construction is personnel. Have a look at the 2007 Phillies’ roster which averaged 5.5 runs per game (the league average was 4.7). Charlie Manuel could have thrown names in a hat and picked out a lineup that would score 5.5 runs per game. With this roster, you’re looking at a league-average offense until Chase Utley and Ryan Howard return, and that’s not going to change whether Ruiz is hitting first, fourth, or sixth.

Through 37 games thus far in 2012, catcher Carlos Ruiz has been the Phillies’ best and most consistent position player. Given his personal progression and the roadblocks the rest of the team has faced recently, it isn’t all that surprising, even though the Phillies signed him as an amateur free agent way back in December 1998 for the princely sum of $8,000.

If you set the minimum at 60 PA, Ruiz leads the team by far with a .408 wOBA. He already has six home runs, matching his total from all of 2011, and puts him on pace to surpass his career-high of nine (set in 2009) some time in the next month. Although he hasn’t walking as much as he has in the past, he’s averaging more than 10 PA per strikeout, which means he is putting the ball in play with regularity.

One out of every five of Ruiz’s fly balls have gone for home runs, nearly three times his career average. Generally, when a hitter’s HR/FB% is so far above his career norms, it means he is likely due to regress going forward. However, it does appear that Ruiz simply has better plate coverage this year as well. Compare the two heat maps from 2011 and ’12:

And also compare his swings between the two years:

The most noticeable difference is that Ruiz’s leg kick is much smaller this year.

As a result, Ruiz was in a better position to swing once his foot came back down to the ground.

I’m not a biomechanics expert by any means, but to me, I see a significant change — one that might explain his current success. Does this mean we should expect him to continue driving one out of every five fly balls over the fence? No, but we can realistically expect him to exceed his career average of seven percent. More importantly, we can expect him to continue being the linchpin of the Phillies’ offense even when — if — Chase Utley and Ryan Howard return.

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).

However, while that play was quite memorable, the Phillies could have put themselves in a better position to win in the previous inning — and relied on the butterfly effect for Valdespin’s home run to have never happened — with some better judgment. In the bottom of the eighth, with the score tied at two apiece, the Phillies put their first two base runners on with singles by Ty Wigginton and Carlos Ruiz. Based on the 2011 season, 1.4 runs scored on average with runners on first and second with no outs. Charlie Manuel chose to have Placido Polanco bunt the runners over, which changes the run expectancy to 1.3 runs with runners on second and third with one out. That late in the game, with the score tied at home with your best reliever ostensibly fresh and not rusty after a week of riding the pine, such a play is defensible.

The problem was, though, that Freddy Galvis lurked on deck. Galvis, with a .105 ISO in his 91 PA to date, would need to power a ball to the outfield against Mets reliever Bobby Parnell, a hard-throwing right-hander with a great ability to miss bats and induce ground balls.

Here’s a look at where left-handed hitters have put the ball in play against Parnell so far this season, followed by a look at where Parnell tends to throw his pitches.

Only two lefties hit the ball well against Parnell: Chipper Jones in Atlanta and Adam LaRoche in New York (the location explains why they weren’t home runs). The only other fly ball was hit by Jimmy Rollins in the previous inning of last night’s game (it is the leftmost light-blue box in the outfield). Considering Parnell’s power and Galvis’ complete lack of it, a sacrifice fly would have been a miracle.

Here’s a look at where Galvis put the ball in play when he made contact with pitches on the outer-third of the strike zone against right-handed pitching.

The three deepest balls in left field were hit on fastballs. From left to right: against Jeff Karstens (90 MPH), against Ernesto Frieri (94 MPH), and against Anibal Sanchez (91 MPH, double). Mostly, Galvis hit ground balls between first and second base. Parnell hit 93-95 with his fastball leading up to his face-off with Galvis, then reached 97-98 against Galvis. Needless to say, the odds of Galvis catching up with a 97 MPH fastball and hitting it deep enough to the outfield to score a run were not in his favor.

The Phillies could have pinch-hit for Galvis for Laynce Nix, but they knew the Mets would have quickly replaced Parnell with lefty Tim Byrdak. In fact, that is exactly what happened after the at-bat involving Galvis. Right-handed options off the Phillies’ bench included Erik Kratz and… that’s it. So, here were the scenarios:

• Hit with Polanco, keep 0.1 runs on average. Polanco had already doubled and had seven hits in his previous 21 PA entering the night. Even at his worst, he generally does a good job of putting the ball in play.
• Bunt with Polanco, hit with Galvis. Lose 0.1 runs on average, and hope Galvis can hit a BABIP-inspired ground ball. Galvis entered the night with the eighth-lowest wOBA in the Majors.
• Pinch-hit for Galvis with Nix, who then faces Byrdak (3.59 career xFIP vs. LHB). Nix carried a career .232 wOBA vs. LHP with a 32% fly ball rate.
• Pinch-hit for Bastardo with Nix, then replace Nix with Kratz when the Mets call on Byrdak. The 32-year-old Kratz had a career .162 wOBA in 44 Major League plate appearances entering the night.

None of the post-bunt match-ups were any more favorable than Polanco vs. Parnell. Despite his woeful start to the season, Polanco has been able to muscle the ball to the outfield with regularity.

As it happened, Polanco successfully bunted the runners over to second and third. Galvis then followed it up with a ground ball that went all of 60 feet.

Afterwards, Nix pinch-hit for Antonio Bastardo. The Mets brought in Byrdak, so Manuel replaced Nix with Kratz, who struck out swinging. The Phillies scored zero runs in a situation that called for at least one, even after willingly giving up one of six remaining regulation outs.

There is no guarantee that Polanco succeeds against Parnell. In fact, the nature of baseball itself would make Polanco between two and three times as likely to fail as succeed. However, as we have been focusing a lot on optimal strategy thus far in the 2012 season, it seems as if letting Polanco swing away would have been the right call than letting the weak-hitting Galvis take his hacks.

Sub-optimal strategy was rarely a problem for the Phillies in previous years because they had enough talent to make up for it. For instance, Manuel’s unwillingness to remove an ineffective Brad Lidge from the closer’s role in 2009 certainly cost the Phillies a handful of games, but they won 93 games and took the NL East by a six-game margin. 2012 is a different story. Accounting for the first month of the season, Dan Szymborski’s updated ZiPS projections has the Phillies at 84-78, seven games behind in third place in the NL East. The Phillies simply don’t have the margin to cope with bad in-game decision-making. By bullpen mismanagement alone, Manuel has cost the Phillies up to five games and his repeated reliance on the sacrifice bunt even more. With moderately better strategy, the Phillies could reasonably have four more wins and four fewer losses, putting them at 18-12 instead of 14-16. Playing catch-up in a new-and-improved NL East would be monumentally easier, but that simply won’t be the case going forward if the Phillies don’t play smarter.

I arranged each plate appearance for each Phillies reliever from the beginning of the season through last night and created bar graphs indicating the leverage index. (Last night’s data not included as this post was compiled prior to the game. Unfortunately.)

As you can see, Jonathan Papelbon has had yet to face a batter with a leverage index greater than 4.00. The only other relievers in that same group are Jose Contreras, Joe Savery, and Mike Stutes. In fact, Papelbon’s highest-leverage plate appearance (3.78 on April 12) is the 20th-highest among Phillies relievers. The 20 ahead of him have all come on the road, however, and due to Manuel’s insistence that closers cannot be used in tie games on the road, he has been left to rot in the bullpen while inferior relievers stood on the mound only for the Phillies to lose the game.

Note: A lower-case b indicates the stat before the PA was started and a lower-case a indicates the stat after the PA was completed. LI stands for Leverage Index and HWE stands for the home team’s Win Expectancy.

The following chart shows the percentage of a reliever’s own total PA have come in each leverage bucket. Two out of every three (66%) of Jonathan Papelbon’s PA have come with the leverage index under 1.00. As the leverage goes up, Papelbon’s appearance percentage goes from 66% to 20% to 7% to 7%.

This chart shows each reliever’s share within each leverage bucket. Jonathan Papelbon has had 30% of the Phillies’ bullpen’s PA in the 0-0.99 and 1-1.99 buckets.

Papelbon has shown to be the Phillies’ best reliever so far, averaging more than a strikeout per inning and more than three strikeouts for every walk. Why one wouldn’t consistently use him in the most important of situations is mind-boggling.

Special thanks to David Appelman of FanGraphs for providing me the data to play with, and to Matt (@Slap_Bet) for Excel help.

Regarding last night’s debacle involving Papelbon, my only comment is a link to this Wikipedia entry.

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.

Click here to download the .mp3 file directly.

Topics:

• (0:00-0:22) Michael’s microphone makes him sound like a robot sent from the future
• (0:22-1:50) Intro music/Introductions
• (1:50-15:24) Charlie Manuel’s bullpen management
• (15:24-22:11) Joe Blanton’s last two starts
• (22:39-41:40) Dan Szymborski interview
• (42:08-1:01:53) NL East discussion
• (1:01:53-1:05:39) Trivia
• (1:05:39-1:23:45) Twitter Q&A

If you have been enjoying the podcasts, please leave us some positive feedback on iTunes.

Do not adjust your browser, this is not a duplicate game recap. Charlie Manuel mismanaged his bullpen and led the Phillies to lose what was otherwise a very winnable game. The Braves won in the eleventh inning on a Chipper Jones walk-off two-run home run to deep center field off of recent call-up Brian Sanchez, in his third inning of work. $50 million man Jonathan Papelbon sat in the bullpen, once again unused.

The game, as you can tell from the FanGraphs win probability chart on the right, was topsy-turvy. The Phillies chased Tommy Hanson out of the game in the fourth inning after taking a 6-0 lead, but Roy Halladay broke down in the fifth. Brian McCann had the key hit with a game-tying grand slam, resetting the game at six apiece. That should have ended Halladay’s night as he was ineffective and laboring heavily, sweating profusely. However, Manuel allowed Halladay to take the mound for a sixth inning. After a single and a double, Jayson Heyward drove both runners in with a line drive single to right field, putting the Braves ahead 8-6. Halladay left the game and Joe Savery entered, and the lefty finished the inning with no further damage.

The Phillies stormed right back in the top of the seventh against lefty Eric O’Flaherty. A Ty Wigginton walk and a John Mayberry single brought Carlos Ruiz to the plate with runners on first and second and no outs. After taking a first-pitch sinker for a ball, Ruiz turned around a slider and crushed a fly ball well beyond the left field fence for a three-run home run, putting the Phillies ahead 9-8. Antonio Bastardo got through the bottom of the seventh with no damage, thanks to two rather interesting plays on fly balls to left field by John Mayberry — neither of them graceful, but exciting nonetheless.

Ruiz put the team on his back once again in the top of the eighth. The Phillies managed to load the bases with two outs on two seeing-eye singles and a walk, bringing up their beloved catcher. Ruiz offered at a first-pitch Kris Medlen fastball and sent it down the right field line, clearing the bases and staking the Phillies to a 12-8 lead. Manuel called upon veteran Jose Contreras to start the eighth. The skeptical among us simply hoped Contreras could manage a clean inning to avoid any leverage-related misuse of relievers. Unfortunately, that was not the case tonight.

Dan Uggla led off with a single to right, bringing up switch-hitter Chipper Jones. Jones hit a ground ball up the middle, but within range of Jimmy Rollins for at least one out. Rollins, in a shocking turn of events, bobbled the ball and no outs were recorded, putting runners on first and second with no outs. Despite baseball orthodoxy, which states that you cannot use your closer on the road, this is when Jonathan Papelbon should have started warming up. The next batter, Matt Diaz, struck out and it looked like Contreras might have been able to see his way out of the inning. Unfortunately, the light-hitting Tyler Pastornicky smoked a line drive to center field, driving in Uggla and moving Jones to second base. If not after Jones’ at-bat, Papelbon should have been warming up after Pastornicky’s single. Contreras walked Jason Heyward to load the bases and was finally taken out of the game. And replaced by Michael Schwimer.

With the bases loaded with one out and a three-run lead, you want a pitcher that misses bats — a strikeout guy. Sure, you can bring in a ground ball pitcher and hope for a double play, but ground balls become hits 23 percent of the time on average. Besides, with David Herndon on the disabled list and Chad Qualls theoretically unavailable, the Phillies didn’t have any such pitchers. Papelbon has posted a double-digit K/9 in each of the past five seasons and was averaging a strikeout per inning so far in 2012. Additionally, Papelbon has excellent control, averaging 2.4 walks per nine innings. Schwimer, on the other hand, has 16.2 Major League innings to his name with a 4.08 xFIP. While he has shown an ability to miss bats, he hasn’t been fooling hitters as he entered the game with a 5.40 ERA and a 4.3 BB/9. Schwimer was absolutely the wrong choice, but he was the only choice, per baseball orthodoxy.

Unsurprisingly, Schwimer walked Michael Bourn on four pitches, forcing in a run and bringing the Braves to within two runs at 12-10. Next, Martin Prado singled on a sharp line drive to right field to drive in two, tying the game at 12-all. Freddie Freeman put the cherry on top with a sacrifice fly to left field, ending the inning with his team having overcome a four-run deficit. Schwimer induced one swing-and-miss out of 15 pitches.

With their backs against the wall against All-Star closer Craig Kimbrel, the Phillies small-balled their way to a tie. Juan Pierre walked to lead off the inning, then stole second base. After Jimmy Rollins struck out on a very questionable called strike three, Pierre moved to third when Placido Polanco hit a slow grounder to shortstop for the second out. On his team’s last legs, Shane Victorino hit a sharp ground ball up the middle, gloved by the slick-fielding Jack Wilson. Victorino’s speed was too much, however, as he barely beat the throw. The Phillies were back at 13-13.

A tie game on the road in extra innings. We’ve been here before. Twice, actually: April 7 in Pittsburgh and April 18 in San Francisco. The Phillies lost both games and in both games Papelbon went unused. They also lost on April 8 in nine innings, but Papelbon should have been called upon in that game as well. There’s a connection here. Tie game on the road, adhere to baseball orthodoxy, lose the game as your inferior reliever surrenders predictable runs while your best reliever rots on his seat in the bullpen.

Brian Sanches was Charlie’s man for the tenth inning. Who is that, you ask? He was in the slop section of the Phillies’ bullpen back in 2006-07 and spent his last three seasons with the Florida Marlins. He hadn’t thrown an inning in the Majors until tonight, having spent all of his time with Triple-A Lehigh Valley. That’s not to say Sanches is bad; he is patently quite capable as a reliever. However, if you are in a tight game against a division rival on May 3, I will go with my $50 million reliever pitching in his third consecutive game than Triple-A filler who had yet to face a Major League hitter. What’s the point of paying a reliever $50 million if you are not going to use him in the most important spots, right?

Sanches beat the odds, though, holding the Braves scoreless not just in the bottom of the ninth, but the tenth as well. Shows what we know! The Phillies, meanwhile, could not scrape any more offense together, going into the bottom of the eleventh still knotted at 13-13. Sanches took the mound for his third inning of work. The Phillies still had Papelbon and Kyle Kendrick available, so Manuel must have thought this game was destined to reach the 19th inning, perhaps still gun-shy from last year’s debacle.

Dan Uggla swung at Sanches’ first pitch of the eleventh, an 89-MPH four-seam fastball, sending a ground ball past Polanco at third base and into left field for a single. 40-year-old Chipper Jones came to the plate, looking to go home before the clock struck midnight. He, too, swung at Sanches’ first pitch, this time an 88-MPH two-seam fastball. Jones took an obvious home run cut and missed wildly. Jones worked the count back to 2-2 before striking fear into the hearts of Phillies fans, striking a foul ball just to the right of the right-field foul pole. It was mere foreshadowing. Jones worked the count full, then sent an 88-MPH two-seam fastball deep into the center field seats for a walk-off two-run home run, pinning the Braves to a 15-13 victory.

The Phillies lose a game when scoring 12 or more runs for the first time since Aug. 3, 1969.

— Matt Gelb (@magelb) May 3, 2012

The Phillies came into the game averaging fewer than 3.5 runs per game, yet lost a game (started by Roy Halladay no less) in which their offense managed 13 runs. It, like the three aforementioned April games, were salvageable with better bullpen management. Unfortunately, the Phillies do not have such a tactician at the helm and have paid for it with four preventable losses in 25 games.

"Sign Papelbon for $50 million" they said. "Can't use him on back-to-back-to-back days or for multiple innings" they said.

— Bill Baer (@CrashburnAlley) May 3, 2012

Game graph courtesy FanGraphs.