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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So long to good guy Wilson Valdez, traded to Cincy for LHP Jeremy Horst, Phillies announce.

While not much with the bat, Valdez provided good value to the Phillies as insurance. The Phillies saw each part of the infield succumb to injury over the past two seasons: third baseman Placido Polanco missed 60 games, Jimmy Rollins missed 92 games, and Chase Utley missed 97 games. As a result, Valdez made 24 starts at third base, 70 at shortstop, and 68 at second base. He wasn’t much with the bat (.285 wOBA), but played average defense and ran the bases well — he was the second-best runner on the team behind Shane Victorino, according to EQBRR from Baseball Prospectus.

At Phillies Nation, Pat Gallen lists some possible candidates to fill the vacant spot left by Valdez:

This certainly opens things up for the Phillies when it comes to the roster. They can go out and sign another utility guy or scour the minor league level for someone of that ilk. Some middle infielder names still available are Aaron Miles, Bill Hall, Jeff Keppinger, Ryan Theriot, Edgar Renteria, Miguel Tejada, and Felipe Lopez, among others.

It will be interesting to see how the Phillies approach this, whether by relying on Michael Martinez or going outside of the organization for one of the few remaining free agents.

Meanwhile, Horst is a 26-year-old lefty reliever coming off of his rookie season. In 15 and one-third innings with the Reds last year, he struck out nine and walked six. However, over his five-year Minor League career, he has a career K/9 and BB/9 at 8.5 and 2.9, respectively — not too shabby.

Horst’s fastball sits in the high-80′s. Behind that, he uses a slider and change-up that both register in the low-80′s. He comes in as the Phillies’ third lefty reliever and will compete for a spot in the back of the Phillies’ bullpen.

Matt Gelb of the Philadelphia Inquirer has some interesting quotes from Ruben Amaro, who explains his thought process in dealing Valdez. The utility infielder will turn 34 in May, and for as much as fans loved him, he is the definition of a replacement-level player. Getting anything of value in return for Valdez has to be considered a win and they did so with a potential diamond in the rough in Horst.

However, as Fielder just signed his mega-deal and used to be considered in the same stratosphere as Howard (the two have since gone in opposite directions), comparisons were made and questions were asked. Is the Fielder deal worse than Ryan Howard‘s five-year, $125 million contract? Ruben Amaro actually feels quite content, believe it or not. Per Rich Hofmann of the Philadelphia Daily News:

“I’m kind of happy,” [Amaro] said. “Really happy. Because if I would have had to put an 8- or 9-year deal on Howard’s deal right now, that would be a little disconcerting. Right now, we have Howard for the next 5 years. I kind of like that idea rather than having to do an 8- or 9- or 10-year deal.

“You can say what you want about Ryan Howard and how he stacks up against those guys, but there’s not too many people who, over the last several years, have had this kind of production – and he’s right there in the mix with those guys.”

Obviously, a deal that is nearly twice as long and twice as rich comes with exponentially more risk, but there are three big factors at play here:

• Fielder is currently 27 years old; Howard is currently 32 years old, both entering the first year of their respective deals
• Fielder has outproduced Howard by  more than 30 points in wOBA over the last three seasons (.403 to .372) and more than doubled his fWAR (15.3 to 7.6)
• Fielder is expected to outproduce Howard in each and every season going forward

Because of Fielder’s young age, he can still be expected to improve slightly. The ten-year forecast from Baseball Prospectus saw Fielder posting a 5.0 WARP last year (he actually produced 5.3) and improving to 5.1 in 2012 and 5.3 in 2013 before dropping down to 5.2 in the next two seasons. Howard was expected to hit the slopes years ago; Prospectus projected 4.0 WARP last year (Howard posted 1.6 in reality) and expects gradually less with each coming season.

As details of Fielder’s contract have not been published yet, we will have to assume an average annual value of $24 million per season. Over the length of Howard’s contract, Fielder will make only $4 million more in the first two years. From 2014-16, Howard will earn $1 million more than Fielder. Should the Phillies pick up Howard’s $23 million option in 2017, Howard will make $1 million less than Fielder.

The following are two tables depicting the players’ projected WARP along with their salary, and how much their respective teams will pay for 1 WARP every season. Generally speaking, 1 WARP costs about $5 million in free agency.

Here is a pretty chart that illustrates the difference:

Depending on the distribution of the $214 million in Fielder’s contract, his blue line can move up or down at either end (here is a hastily-thought-of example). Because the Phillies backloaded Howard’s contract and he is projected to decline precipitously into his late-30′s, the Phillies are paying significantly more per WARP than the Tigers will pay on average. An additional caveat is that Howard’s projections are likely optimistic as his 2011 was well below expectations and Prospectus has not updated their projections as of yet (as far as I know, anyway).

Yesterday, I saw some responses to the Fielder contract from Phillies fans that viewed the exorbitant price as a justification for the Howard contract. They were saying that the Howard contract looks less silly in comparison, but that isn’t the case. Spike Eskin put it best on Twitter yesterday:

If you buy an overpriced car, and someone else also buys an overpriced car, you still have an overpriced car.

The Fielder contract not only fails to justify the Howard contract, it makes it look even more silly. The Tigers bought a Mercedes-Benz for the sticker price; the Phillies bought a used Camry for a Mercedes-Benz sticker price.

. . .

Bill Baer

For as much as I didn’t like the contract given to Jonathan Papelbon, I think the most obvious blunder was not taking Ryan Howard‘s absence seriously enough. The most recent updates on Howard’s health are encouraging. However, the Phillies certainly couldn’t have counted on Howard being ready by Opening Day (and that is still a very optimistic expectation) when they signed Jim Thome on November 4. Since 2006, Thome has taken all but 17 of his plate appearances in the American League and has played all of 28 innings in the field. Given his age and health, the Phillies will consider themselves fortunate to get one start out of him per week.

In the meantime, the Phillies plan to use Ty Wigginton at first base. Dan Syzmborski’s ZiPS projections see Wigginton putting up a slugging-heavy .711 OPS, exactly 90 points below the National League average for first basemen during the 2011 season. To say that six Wigginton starts and one Thome start per week would fail to live up to Howard’s production would be a massive understatement.

If the Phillies were willing to spend a bit more money at the time (remember, this was before Papelbon and Jimmy Rollins signed their deals), they could have better-filled the gap at first base. Carlos Pena recently signed with the Tampa Bay Rays on a one-year, $7.25 million contract. With the Chicago Cubs last year, Pena posted a .354 wOBA, which includes a .357 on-base percentage, a mark that would have been second-best on the Phillies last year behind Carlos Ruiz (.371). Two more factors make Pena significantly more attractive as well: he is, by all accounts, a terrific defender at first base, and he has been able to stay on the field consistently in each of the past five seasons.

There is one drawback with Pena: like Howard, he can’t hit left-handed pitching. Over the course of his career, Pena has hit for a wOBA 55 points higher against RHP than LHP (.376 to .322). A platoon wouldn’t be mandatory, but it would be beneficial. Using John Mayberry (.403 wOBA vs. LHP last year in 120 PA) in a platoon with Pena would yield the best offensive output with Howard on the sidelines — significantly more than Wigginton/Thome.

Let’s say the Phillies did sign Pena, but Howard happens to return rather early in the season. Paying $7.25 million (perhaps slightly more given that Pena had more leverage three months ago) for a lefty bench bat is excessive, no? It is indeed, but Pena is the type of player that would be in demand at the July 31 trade deadline. Whatever the Phillies happen to need at the time, whether it is a utility infielder, a reliever, or a speedy outfielder, Pena can be used as trade bait to bring such a player into the fold. Or the Phillies can have a team eat some or all of his remaining salary and get back a solid prospect or two.

There are hardly any scenarios where Pena would provide negative value to the Phillies, and decidedly fewer such scenarios compared to the current configuration of Wigginton and Thome. The added $6 million for Pena over Thome would be worth the extra security and the significantly better production (both offensively and defensively). As the Phillies would be even closer to the luxury tax threshold with such a signing, it would preclude superfluous signings such as Laynce Nix, Thome, and Wigginton. As it happens, that would actually be a good thing.

Michael Baumann

There was a lot not to like about this offseason. Spending big money on a reliever, even one as good as Jonathan Papelbon, drove me up the wall, and if there’s a good reason to give Laynce Nix all of Domonic Brown‘s at-bats in 2012, a full year after he should have been a major league regular, no one’s told me. But frankly, I’m sick to death of writing about those topics. So let’s talk about a lesser evil: Ruben Amaro‘s habit of going with the known quantity.

This is somewhat about Nix, somewhat about Papelbon, retroactively about Raul Ibanez, and largely about Kyle Kendrick. I’ve got nothing against Kendrick–he deserves a ton of credit for being a loyal foot soldier and an acceptable fifth starter/long reliever. I’ve made the argument that the Red Sox may have missed out on a World Series run for want of a Kendrick. When he was a rookie, I said immediately that if he didn’t raise his strikeout rate significantly, he’d be out of the league by 2009. Instead, thanks to some tenacity and some batted ball luck, he continues to skate by as a slightly-better-than-replacement-level pitcher. There’s value in that, just not $3.585 million worth of value. In the end, overpaying Kendrick won’t kill the Phillies–it’s just another instance of the Phillies being unwilling to take risks.

Under Pat Gillick, they took flyers on young players like Kendrick and Ryan Madson, and low-risk/low-cost guys like Jamie Moyer and Jayson Werth, with remarkable success. But under Amaro, the reverse has been true: the Phillies always seem to go with the proven commodity, even when that commodity isn’t very good. Paying for proven veterans is wise when those veterans are Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and even to a lesser extent, Papelbon. But Kendrick and Nix are another story. We know that Kendrick and Nix aren’t very good, and there’s next to no chance that they will one day become good. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that if Brown got those at-bats over Nix, that he would be, at the very least, not very good? If Phillippe Aumont or Justin De Fratus got those innings out of the bullpen instead of Kendrick, wouldn’t one of them be, at the very least, not very good? The difference is, Brown, Aumont, and De Fratus stand to get better with time, while Kendrick and Nix get worse. And even if they’re worse than not very good, and the Phillies need to cut bait and bring in a different option, guys like Kendrick and Nix grow on trees. They, by definition as replacement players, aren’t anything special.

Certainly nothing worth giving up multiple years or multiple millions of dollars just for the sake of having the known quantity. That’s for damn sure.

Paul Boye

You could take back the Papelbon contract. You could revise the Laynce Nix deal to a more appropriate Minor League pact. You could go back and make Cole Hamels the offseason’s top priority. You could do any one of those things and likely have a good catalyst for improving the Phillies’ winter. We’ve been over these things. A lot. In an attempt to look elsewhere, I see another, more subtle thing I would redo.

This is it.

Nothing has actually happened in Clearwater yet, but to publicly proclaim Domonic Brown as destined for Lehigh Valley for, basically, an entire season so soon after the Phils’ exit from the playoffs set a tenuous tone for the entire winter. Maybe it really all started when Ryan Howard’s leg exploded, but to me, hearing that the club’s former top prospect will once more be banished to the Minor Leagues told me right away that the 2011-12 winter would be one of my discontent. Brown is 24 and has just 280 Major League plate appearances – less than half of one season – against 2,013 Minor League trips to the dish.

If the club thought Brown needed to learn more at AAA, why was he relegated to DH and the bench down the stretch as the IronPigs went to the playoffs? When the Pigs were eliminated and Brown was recalled on Sept. 16, why did he only see one at-bat and one pinch-running appearance in the 14 games he could have seen action in?

This continuing saga is more baffling me to than almost anything else surrounding this team. After experiencing Pat Burrell and Raul Ibanez for the last decade and a half, you would think bad corner outfield defense would be a palatable thing, too. At this point, I almost want Dom to get traded. His talent is being wasted behind the likes of Laynce Nix, and that just isn’t fair.

Ryan Sommers

If you’re tired of hearing about Jonathan Papelbon, you might want to stop here. The other three took admirable strides to avoid bringing it up again, but he is the first, second, third, and fourth thing that popped into my head when I read Bill’s question.

Entering the offseason, chatter linking Michael Cuddyer to the Phillies was already abundant, and when they inked his friend Jim Thome to a one year deal on November 4th, it only heightened. To me, this was going to be the annual jump-out-of-your-chair-and-set-the-market Ruben Amaro special. Cuddyer would get a contract similar to that given to Raul Ibanez in 2009, and we would re-live that saga once again. But a week later, after some confusing flirtations with Ryan Madson — the details of which are still disputed by both sides — it was the reliever market that Ruben Amaro had put a shiny new ceiling on. Ostensibly, it’s 4 years, $50 million with a 5th year vesting option. But the 2016 option vests with 55 games finished in 2015 (or 100 games finished from 2014-2015), and that happens to be Papelbon’s seasonal average in the six seasons in which he’s been a full time reliever. It’s not as if Charlie Manuel is stingy with the finishing opportunities when it comes to his closer, even when he’s struggling; it’s tough to see that option not vesting. As reported by ESPN, it’s the largest total package ever given to a relief pitcher, and in terms of annual salary is tied for second all time with another reliever contract the Phillies would like to forget — Brad Lidge.

Yes, he is an elite reliever. Since 2006, he has a 200 ERA+ (a ratio representing his park and league adjusted ERA; 100 is average) in 395 and 1/3rd innings. But the Phillies are betting on him continuing this success and sustaining it for 5 years. Only one full-time reliever has maintained a 200 ERA+ in more than that amount of innings — Mariano Rivera. Can Papelbon exhibit the kind of consistency previously known only to the best reliever of all time? Does his fastball, the one elite pitch that he relies on, have anywhere near the staying power of Mo’s cutter? I strongly doubt it. But the Phillies are paying him as if they believe this. The annual average value of his contract is second only to Mo in the history of reliever contracts. He’ll make about $13 million per year, Mo makes just $2 million more than that. Even if Papelbon does keep up his level of production for the next 5 years, think of it this way: if each are true to their respective averages for the last three seasons, Papelbon will face about 276 batters next season and be worth about 2.1 WAR, and Roy Halladay will face 963 batters and be worth 6.8 WAR. The former makes $11 million (ignoring the $58 he had tacked on to the deal just to be insufferable), and the latter makes $20 million. That’s $39,855 per batter and $5.2 million per win for Papelbon, and $20,768 per batter and $2.9 million per win for Halladay. The Phillies paid a premium and will get less bang out of each buck they lay out.

Inexplicably, the Phillies purchased Papelbon’s services before the reliever market had been mapped out with any certainty, at the time when his cost was highest. It’s difficult to tell how it would’ve shaken out had he been left on the market longer with the other big name relievers, but inevitably there would have been a Ryan Madson — some substantial talent whose options had dwindled and who had to sign for less than expected. Below the top tier, there are guys like George Sherrill, Takashi Saito, Kerry Wood, and Jonathan Broxton, all of whom have an even or better chance at decent output in 2012, and signed for reasonable one year deals. Even now, there are relievers like Todd Coffey, Mike Gonzalez, and Scott Linebrink still on the market, to be had for very cheap, who could be league average or better next season. Any of the above-named would have been a great supplement to the young internal arms headed back to the Phillies pen next season, and that’s not even mentioning the big pool of reclamation projects who would happily except minor league deals. With the starting rotation what it is, that’s all they would have needed.

Using this lineup analysis page, I punched in the on-base percentage and slugging percentage projections for the Phillies, courtesy Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS. Below are the noteworthy batting orders and their expected runs per game output. The eight players used were Jimmy Rollins, Shane Victorino, Chase Utley, Hunter Pence, Carlos Ruiz, Placido Polanco, Ty Wigginton, John Mayberry, and “pitcher” (Phillies’ aggregate 2011 OBP/SLG for pitchers).

Most Optimal Lineups: 4.46 runs per game (723 runs in 162 games)

• Ruiz-Victorino-Rollins-Pence-Utley-Mayberry-Wigginton-Pitcher-Polanco
• Ruiz-Utley-Rollins-Pence-Victorino-Mayberry-Wigginton-Pitcher-Polanco

Most Likely Lineup: 4.21 runs per game (682 runs in 162 games)

• Victorino-Polanco-Utley-Pence-Wigginton-Rollins-Mayberry-Ruiz-Pitcher

Least Optimal Lineups: 3.95 runs per game (640 runs in 162 games)

• Pitcher-Rollins-Pence-Polanco-Mayberry-Ruiz-Victorino-Utley-Wigginton
• Pitcher-Rollins-Wigginton-Polanco-Mayberry-Ruiz-Victorino-Utley-Pence

(Even if you’re highly skeptical of ZiPS or the lineup analysis tool used, the results will more or less scale.)

The difference between the most optimal and the most likely lineups is 0.25 runs per game, or about 40 runs over a 162-game season. Of course, that is made less relevant by the Phillies’ reliance on pitching and defense in lieu of offense: it would be more important to scratch and claw for the extra one-fourth of a run every game if they didn’t have an ace taking the mound three out of every five turns (each of whom averaged fewer than 2.8 earned runs allowed per nine innings in 2011).

Just for fun, I substituted the recovering Ryan Howard in for Wigginton. The most optimal lineup went up to 4.60 runs per game and the most likely lineup increased to 4.37 runs per game. The downgrade from Howard to Wigginton will cost the Phillies 11 runs over the course of a full season, or slightly more than one win. It’s not so much where you put your players in the batting order; it’s who you have in there in the first place.

Furthermore, the truly important lineup decisions will be made in the middle and late innings of games, when Charlie Manuel will be forced to pinch-hit, pinch-run, and make double-switches. For instance, deciding between Mayberry facing a tired right-handed starter and Jim Thome facing a fresh lefty reliever in the seventh inning of a 3-2 game will have more of an impact on winning or losing a game than whether Carlos Ruiz hits seventh or eighth in four at-bats over the course of that entire game. Batting order isn’t irrelevant, but the real focus should be on solid in-game decision-making.

Going by FanGraphs WAR, Polanco was the fifth-most valuable third baseman in the National League at 2.8 fWAR, a fact that will likely surprise a lot of Phillies fans. Third base has become a position of scarcity. 2011 was the first season since 2003 in which the average OPS for National League third basemen was below the overall league average.

“OPS+” simply divides 3B OPS by NL OPS and multiplies the quotient by 100.

It’s not as if third basemen with a better bat than Polanco’s were both plentiful and available at an affordable price. The Phillies were rumored to be interested in former Chicago Cub Aramis Ramirez, but that was before they re-signed Jimmy Rollins. Aside from Ramirez (who signed a three-year, $36 million contract), there were seven other third base-capable players that signed guaranteed Major League deals: Willie Bloomquist, Greg Dobbs, Jerry Hairston, John McDonald, Nick Punto, Edwin Encarnacion, and Adam Kennedy. Obviously, none of the seven compare favorably to Polanco.

Upgrading third base was never a realistic option for the Phillies, at least not without taking a hit somewhere else (in the Ramirez example, the Phillies would have been worse at shortstop). They will have to live with Polanco in the last year of his three-year, $18 million contract, and that’s just fine. Even if you apply a high dose of skepticism towards UZR (and his 2011 NL Gold Glove award), Polanco is considered to be one of the best defenders at the hot corner. The following table lists defensive data (FanGraphs) for third basemen with at least 750 defensive innings in 2011. A shade of red indicates Polanco led; a shade of green indicates he ranked second.

Glossary – DRS: Defensive Runs Saved; RZR: Revised Zone Rating; OOZ: Out of Zone plays; DPR: Douple Play Runs; RngR: Range Runs; ErrR: Error Runs; UZR: Ultimate Zone Rating; UZR/150: UZR per 150 defensive games.

As long as Polanco can hit close to the league average for third basemen and continues to play great defense, he will be more than worth the $6.25 million the Phillies will pay him in 2012. The only frightening variable is Polanco’s health — the 36-year-old missed 31 games last year with a back injury and a sports hernia. If Polanco does succumb to injury, Ty Wigginton can easily fill in at the hot corner.

The Phillies’ off-season has been open to quite a lot of criticism, but looking back, you have to give them credit for addressing the third base situation properly: by doing next-to-nothing.

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.

The absence of Lopes, as well as the recurrence of the injury bug, contributed to the Phillies significantly cutting into their base running aggression last year. As a team, they attempted only 120 steals (though with a success rate at 80 percent), the tenth-highest total in the National League. Only two Phillies — Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino — attempted to steal 15 or more times, a drop off from four such players in each season from 2008-10.

The Phillies transformed from an offensive powerhouse to a team that values pitching and defense, partially due to necessity. As many have pointed out, the Phillies are an old team with players past their offensive peak that cannot manufacture runs with their bodies anymore. During the off-season, the Phillies remained homogenous when acquiring Jim Thome, Laynce Nix, and Ty Wigginton, none of whom are fleet of foot. Looking at the current roster, it is hard to see the Phillies making any significant progress in the running game, even with a healthy middle infield with Rollins and Chase Utley and a full season of Hunter Pence.

However, the Phillies are still pursuing a fifth outfielder. Victorino and Pence will start every day in center and right field, respectively, while left field should be composed of a platoon including Nix and John Mayberry. Domonic Brown is expected to start the season with Triple-A Lehigh Valley, leaving one spot open. Tyson Gillies is on the Phillies’ 40-man roster, but don’t expect much out of him as he took just 13 trips to the plate throughout the 2011 season with Single-A Clearwater.

Rumors circulated in late December around bat-first players like Jonny Gomes, Ryan Ludwick, and Cody Ross. I think that is the wrong approach — the Phillies already have a slew of bench bats. What they lack is speed from the bench. During games when Mayberry does not start, he would be the Phillies’ best base-stealing threat late in the game. When he is already in the lineup, the next-best option would be… Dontrelle Willis. Even worse, two other pitchers would be next in line: Cole Hamels and Cliff Lee. All three pitchers would be superior pinch-running options to the likes of Wilson Valdez, Brian Schneider, Wigginton, Nix, and Thome.

What the Phillies should do instead is fill that fifth outfielder spot with a speedy outfielder like Juan Pierre or Willie Harris. Pierre, currently 34 years old, stole 68 bases in 86 attempts during the 2010 season with the Chicago White Sox. He didn’t have a great showing last year, stealing 27 bases in 44 attempts, but his agility certainly hasn’t declined. If he has a slight improvement in offense, he would be a league-average hitter and give the Phillies a great weapon on the bench. He would be in line for a significant pay cut, having finished up the last year of a five-year, $44 million contract. Comparable free agents that have already signed include Jerry Hairston (Dodgers, two years at $6 million), Willie Bloomquist (Diamondbacks, two years at $3.8 million), and Endy Chavez (Orioles, one year at $1.5 million). For Pierre, the Phillies would be looking at something between one and two years at $2-3 million per year.

Harris is perhaps an even better fit. He earned $800,000 with the New York Mets last year and is arguably just as good, if not better, than Pierre. He has great plate discipline, walking in at least 12 percent of his plate appearances over the last three years. His stolen base attempts don’t reflect it — less than ten attempts in each of the past two seasons — but he possesses above-average speed and would not be a liability in the field (at least according to scouting reports; UZR tells a different story). Harris could be brought in on a one year deal between $750,000 and $1 million.

One other name to consider is Corey Patterson. The St. Louis Cardinals acquired him in a trade at the deadline last year, but declined his 2012 option. He’s been a mercenary over the past three seasons, spending time with five different teams. At times showing the potential the Chicago Cubs saw when they drafted him third overall in the 1998 draft, Patterson has failed to live up to expectations. However, even at 32 years old, he still has speed, having stolen 34 bases in 47 attempts in the last two seasons. He doesn’t provide much in the way of contact or on-base skills, but he has more power than Pierre and Harris, so he could be used late in the game when a double or home run would be helpful as well. Patterson earned $900,000 last year and is not in any position to ask for more, so he would fit within the Phillies’ budget as they are ever mindful of the luxury tax threshold.

As presently constructed, the Phillies are a team that should finish at least in the mid-90′s in terms of wins. Players like Pierre, Harris, and Patterson would not push them into a better playoff position. We have seen over the last three seasons, however, that one small thing can mean the difference between the Phillies watching the next round of the playoffs at home, or writing that chapter themselves.

As the news broke, my Twitter feed was dominated by reactions to the Kendrick signing, ranging from resignation, to fear, to what I assume is a potshot at Darren Rovell, to mocking incredulity, to more mocking incredulity, to unbridled snark, to a dose of placid rationality with an unflattering comparison. For a while, my window to the internet was almost entirely dominated by Kyle Kendrick, with a little bit of France Football‘s Philippe Auclair musing about the political legitimacy of credit rating systems.

The point is, no one seems to really like that the Phillies re-signed Kyle Kendrick.

So what of Kendrick and his contract? Well, Bill wrote earlier this afternoon in big friendly letters, “Don’t Panic,” and I’m inclined to agree with him. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that Kendrick, an extremely durable swingman who never walks anyone and goes from the rotation to the bullpen to Lehigh Valley without ever uttering a word of complaint, is more valuable a piece than we might realize. Perhaps no team relies more on (or expects more from, at any rate) its starting rotation than the Phillies do, so having a Kendrick to plug in for 15 starts might come in handy if one or the other of Joe Blanton‘s elbow or Vance Worley‘s two-seamer prove to be less reliable than expected. If nothing else, we know that Kendrick can come in and pitch slightly-better-than-replacement-level ball for six innings or so on very little notice.

I probably wouldn’t be making this argument if not for the 2011 Red Sox, who, I would argue, missed out on the playoffs last year for want of a pitcher like Kendrick. While the Red Sox went into the season with a projected rotation of Jon Lester, Josh Beckett, Clay Buchholz, John Lackey, and Daisuke Matsuzaka. That group included the reigning AL ERA champion (Buchholz), one of the four or five best young left-handed starters under 30 (Lester), two guys who, while wildly overpaid, were expected to at least be mediocre (Lester and Dice-K), and Josh Beckett. Not a bad group, on the whole.

Well, in the blink of an eye, Buchholz and Matsuzaka were out for the season, Beckett missed a couple starts (though he went on to post the best season of his career, by ERA+ and bWAR), and Lackey suffered what I’ve come to call the Alex Fernandez Injury. In Game 2 of the 1997 NLCS against Atlanta, Marlins pitcher Alex Fernandez blew out his arm but stayed out on the mound at least an inning after it became clear that someone had set off a grenade inside his elbow. After being horrified and fascinated by this incident, I’ve thought of Fernandez every time I’ve watched a pitcher do his elbow, then try to get by 81-mph arrows in the vain hope of the velocity, movement, or location coming back.

While the Marlins yanked Ferndandez after 2 2/3 innings, the Red Sox trotted Lackey back out there for another two months or so with the inside of his elbow resembling nothing so much as the mangled inner workings of the Cylon Raider that Starbuck fixed up in that episode of Battlestar Galactica. So the Red Sox traded for Eric Bedard, who was hurt and ineffective. Then they found themselves in the stretch run with only two effective, healthy pitchers: Beckett and Lester. The other three spots in the rotation went to the injured Lackey, the aged Tim Wakefield, and the ineffective Andrew Miller and Kyle Weiland. In 1949, the Red Sox reeled off an 11-game winning streak over the last two weeks of the season by going to a two-man rotation–over the last 20 games of the season, the Red Sox only won two games that where neither Mel Parnell nor Ellis Kinder recorded a win or a save. When Beckett and Lester were unable to duplicate that success, the Red Sox were screwed.

The presence of Kendrick, who almost certainly won’t be able to duplicate his 3.22 ERA of last season, makes such a disaster profoundly unlikely for the Phillies in the coming year. Now, is $3.6 million too much to pay for a pitcher with a career 4.65 xFIP? Probably, but not disastrously so. He’s almost certain to come down from his excellent 2011, unless his BABIP stays at .261. But with the cost of a marginal win hovering somewhere north of $5 million for this season, Kendrick doesn’t have to be particularly good to justify his contract–about 2/3 of a win will do nicely, and even if he comes up a bit short, overspending by $1 million or so on Kendrick isn’t a disaster for a team whose utter contempt for prudent stewardship of its monetary resources is made clear by the contracts extended to Ryan Howard, Raul Ibanez, Brad Lidge, and Jonathan Papelbon, while Adrian Beltre, Cole Hamels, and Ryan Madson merited little more attention than a panhandler at the PATCO stop at 8th and Market.

And there’s the old adage about there being no such thing as a bad one-year contract.

All in all, there’s a lot to like about this deal: short duration, relatively low cost and expectations, and it fills a need. All in all, Kyle Kendrick is like a slightly overpriced spare tire–kind of irritating if you don’t need him, but absolutely essential if you do. If you want to feel good about the Phillies, you can stop reading now.

HOWEVER.

Today, MLB Trade Rumors noted that the price has come down for the top starting pitchers remaining in the free agent market, including Roy Oswalt, who, it is said, would accept a one-year, $8 million contract. Hiroki Kuroda could be had for $10-11 million. I’ve always liked Kuroda, but his age and his price probably eliminate the Phillies from contention. Of course, if the Phillies hadn’t signed Joe Blanton, Jonathan Papelbon, and Kendrick to deals no one was crazy about when they were signed, they’d have room on their payroll for Kuroda, Madson, and probably one other pitcher. But hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

But let’s compare  how the three have done, in terms of fWAR, since Kuroda joined the National League in 2008.

As you can see, Oswalt and Kuroda, each in a relative down year, were each somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 times more valuable than Kendrick was. Of course, Kuroda threw a little less than twice as many innings than Kendrick, so let’s say that Kuroda was six times more valuable than Kendrick, per inning pitched, and set aside the intrinsic value that innings pitched have. Oswalt threw about 20 percent more innings than Kendrick, so let’s call him ten times more valuable in 2011.

This is what drives me absolutely busalooey about the way the Phillies do business. They tendered Kyle Kendrick for arbitration, knowing that he’d be in for a multi-million-dollar payday, when better options were out there. Kendrick had a good 2011, buoyed by unsustainably low batted ball numbers. For reference, Happ posted a .261 BABIP, a 4.43 xFIP, and a 2.93 ERA in 2009. In 2011, Happ’s BABIP returned to a relatively normal .297, and his xFIP rose slightly, to 4.59, but his ERA was 5.35. Amazing what a little bit of luck can do to you.

But the Phillies, because of ontological blindness, naivete, or sheer force of their intractably reactionary institutional philosophy, have once again spent $3.6 million on a pitcher with a career low 4.04 xFIP, when $8 million would have nabbed them a pitcher with a career high 3.97 xFIP, or $10 million would have landed them a pitcher with a career high 3.89 xFIP. Imagine shopping for beer like this. Signing Kendrick to this contract with Oswalt and Kuroda where they are in the market is like going to Canal’s, passing the 24-pack of Sam Adams for $12, then passing the Great Lakes variety 24-pack for $15, then deciding you’d rather spend six bucks on two pounders of Beast Light. Those are not the actions of an informed shopper. I know this and I just spent 20 minutes on Google and three minutes tooling around in Excel. The Phillies are an organization worth half a billion dollars or more, with hundreds of full-time employees. How can they not be aware of this?

In a vacuum, re-signing Kendrick is a nice, if slightly pricey insurance policy. Given that the Phillies appear willing to sign Cole Hamels to a one-year deal rather than locking him up long-term (what possible purpose this could serve is a mystery to me), keeping Kendrick on at this price is hardly the most actively harmful personnel decision the Phillies have made this week. And I’ll grant you, that by price, age, and role, Oswalt and Kuroda aren’t completely fair comparisons to Kendrick. But the Phillies have so gravely miscalculated the value of starting pitchers this offseason that if NASA were so off-base, they’d have sent Apollo 11 straight into the center of the Earth.

So did the Phillies do well to re-sign Kendrick? It depends on how you look at it.

Kendrick earned $2.45 million last season when the two parties similarly avoided arbitration. The right-hander made 15 starts and 19 relief appearances, providing value as a swingman throughout the season. He finished the season with a 3.22 ERA, a career-low, including 3.14 as a starter and 3.41 as a reliever. He figures to work in the same role in 2012 with the Phillies’ rotation set in stone, barring some unforeseen news involving Joe Blanton.

That Kendrick was given $3.585 million shouldn’t surprise anyone as a result of his not being non-tendered. At the time, I argued that the Phillies should cut their ties with him. Since they didn’t, Kendrick’s salary is neither shocking nor cause for outrage. MLB Trade Rumors estimated Kendrick would earn $3.2 million if he were to go to arbitration, so the Phillies only overpaid by about $400,000, or roughly the Major League minimum salary. Meanwhile, the Phillies maintain a reliable back-up plan in the event of an injury or a change of scenery for Blanton, and they add one of their vaunted veterans to the bullpen.

In terms of raw skill, Kendrick leaves a lot to be desired. Between 2007-08 and ’10-11 (he spent most of ’09 in Triple-A), his lowest xFIP is 4.42. He doesn’t miss bats very often and he possesses no unique batted ball skills. In the event the Phillies limit his exposure to left-handed hitters, Kendrick’s numbers could be better (4.03 xFIP vs. RHB; 5.36 vs. LHB), but you simply don’t see ROOGYs in baseball, especially not on a Charlie Manuel-managed team. The Good Phight’s Taco Pal argues that Kendrick may have made a significant improvement last season, but we’ll need more data before we can make any strong conclusions. The most we can say at this point is that he is a below-average pitcher.

Overall, Kendrick’s salary won’t make much of a difference on the 2012 roster. While the Phillies will be nudging up against the luxury tax, Kendrick’s earnings will not make it any more difficult for the Phillies to get Cole Hamels signed to a multi-year extension. To use a cliche, it is what it is. The Phillies keep a reliable arm around at a slightly above-average rate relative to Kendrick’s skill level and the market. That’s just fine.

Michael Baumann will have more on this topic soon.