A CITIZEN'S BLOG

What a difference a year makes … going into the 2004 season the Phillies pitching staff was considered to be the team’s strength: ace Kevin Millwood was back after hurling a no-hitter in 2003, Brett Myers, Vincente Padilla and Randy Wolf looked poised to have break-out seasons and management added Twins pitcher Eric Milton and Astros closer Billy Wagner to bolster the rotation and bullpen respectively. All-in-all, the Phillies were expected to have one of the most formidable rotations in the NL & one of the best pitching staffs in the MLB.

Needless to say, that never materialized. The Phillies pitching staff played poorly all season long and was a big reason why the team imploded.

So where does the blame lay? Primarily, on the failure of Padilla, Wolf and Myers to develop into competent starters, but the biggest story of the Phillies 2004 season was Eric Milton’s failure to live up to his promise and his $9 million dollar salary.

Here's how the Phillies did as a team in 2004:

By-the-Numbers: (Team)
WHIP: 1.36 (8th in NL)
ERA: 4.47 (13th in NL)
DIPS ERA: 4.58 (12th in NL)
HR/9: 1.3 (15th in NL)
K/9: 6.58 (9th in NL)
K/BB ratio: 2.13 (7th in NL)
BAA: .264 (9th in NL)
HR allowed: 214 (2nd in NL)

Definitions:
WHIP: (Walks + Hits / Innings Pitched = WHIP)
ERA: Earned Run Average (Earned Runs * 9 / Innings Pitched = ERA)
DIPS ERA: Defense Independent Pitching ERA (see below for more)
BAA: Batting Average Allowed
HR/9: Home runs per nine innings.
K/9: Strikeouts per 9 innings
K/BB: Strikeouts per walks

We’ll divide the pitching staff between the starting rotation and the bullpen:

I. The Rotation: the Phillies utilized a total of 11 starting pitchers in 2004, but they relied chiefly on Millwood, Milton, Myers, Padilla, and Wolf, and then added Paul Abbott and Cory Lidle. How did they do?: (ranked by ERA)

Win-Loss / ERA
Lidle: 5-2 / 3.90
Wolf: 5-8 / 4.28
Padilla: 7-7 / 4.53
Milton: 14-6 / 4.75
Millwood: 9-6 / 4.85
Myers: 11-11 / 5.52
Abbott: 1-6 / 6.24
Starters: 52-46 / 4.84
(Rest of team: 34-30 / 3.87)

Naturally, the Phillies win-loss records only tell part of the story: e.g., Milton’s sterling 14-6 record was actually very weak, and Millwood pitched better than anyone realized. (More on both later.) Significantly, the rotation logged a collective ERA almost a run higher than the bullpen. Look at their WHIPs:

WHIP
Lidle: 1.14
Wolf: 1.32
Padilla: 1.34
Milton: 1.35
Millwood: 1.46
Myers: 1.47
Abbott: 1.80
Starters: 1.395
Rest of team: 1.307

More of the same: the variance between the starters and the rest of the team wasn’t as significant here, but the trend emerging was that the Phillies starters got into a hole early and often in 2004. But the one Phillies starter who doesn’t deserve scorn is Kevin Millwood...

As I said, Millwood pitched much, much better than his record, his ERA and his WHIP indicated. Consider the rotation's FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching:

Starters: (FIP)
Lidle: 3.70
Millwood: 3.83
Wolf: 4.58
Padilla: 4.65
Myers: 5.21
Milton: 5.39
Abbott: 7.89
Team: 4.55

FIP, developed by Hardball Times, measures how a pitcher would perform with an “average” defense behind him. FIP is a variation on DIPS ERA, developed by Voros McCracken, to separate a pitcher’s performance from that of his defense. McCracken developed DIPS after coming to the realization that ERA was often influenced not by the pitcher’s abilities, but by the quality (or lack thereof) of the fielders behind him or simply by dumb luck. (For more on the subject read pages 235-241 in Michael Lewis’ Moneyball.)

With a better defense backing him up, Millwood’s ERA would decline nearly a full run to a very respectable 3.83, roughly comparable to his own 4.01 ERA in 2003.

The trio of Padilla, Myers and Wolf all deviate slightly in their ERA / FIP ERA (Myers actually does better by a third of a run: 0.31), but Milton’s numbers- an increase of 0.64 -are the eye-opening ones: could Milton have won 14 games last year while giving up nearly five and a half runs a game? Not likely. Milton had a lot of help getting to 14 wins in 2004: the Phillies supplied a whopping 6.54 runs per start for Milton, while the average Phillies pitcher got just 5.17 runs a game. Virtually no other starting pitcher got as much support from his team: the Braves Russ Ortiz, for example, was provided 5.17 runs per start on his way to a 15-9 record.

(And yes, that 7.89 FIP ERA means that Paul Abbott would have been worse- much worse -without help from the Phillies defense. Yikes.)

Why the variation between Milton and Millwood’s actual ERAs and their FIP ERAs? Well, there does appear to be variances in the quality of the defense Phillies pitchers had in 2004. Consider each pitcher’s DER (Defense Efficiency Ratio), a stat that measures how often fielders converted a pitcher’s balls put into play into outs:

DER:
Lidle: .741
Milton: .737
Abbott: .735
Wolf: .713
Padilla: .713
Myers: .707
Millwood: .673
Team DER: .703

With a better defense behind him, Millwood would have been the better pitcher on paper. 'Nuff said.

Before I go any further, I should note that collectively the Phillies fielding (which I dealt with in a previous post) didn’t negatively impact the team’s overall pitching. In fact, it probably helped the Phillies pitching:

Team ERA: 4.47 (13th in NL)
Team FIP ERA: 4.55 (12th in NL)
Team DIPS ERA: 4.58 (12th in NL)

(I note that better fielding would have dramatically improved the Pittsburgh Pirates pitching in 2004: their regular ERA- 4.31 -was tenth in the NL, while their FIPs ERA- 4.13 -improved to seventh. Why the variation? The Pirates were dead last in the defensive stat of Zone Rating in the NL in 2004. In short, they had the worst defense in the National League and the second-worst in baseball after the Red Sox.)

Millwood and Milton are both free agents this fall and collectively make $20 million dollars. Frankly, the Phillies would probably be better off subtracting the two from the payroll: Milton’s numbers speak for themselves, and Millwood likely has significant damage to his arm which calls into question his future effectiveness. The phrase "addition by subtraction" comes to mind...

What of Wolf, Myers, Padilla and Lidle? I actually think that the Phillies would be fine with these four and maybe a fifth starter (Ryan Madson?) in 2005. Padilla, in particular, was a hard-luck case undeserving of a .500 record: the Philles scored a total of three runs in his first three losses, so his 7-7 record clearly didn’t indicate how well he pitched. Padilla’s ability to get ground-ball outs suggest he’ll bounce back in 2005. He could well emerge as the Phillies ace next season. In fact, I expect him to. Myers also will likely bounce back with a good season in 2005: he was unlucky to give up as many home runs as he did (1.6 per nine innings pitched) while having such a good groundball-to-flyball ratio. Wolf I am unsure about. He looks like a classic No. 3 starter.

A Word About Citizens … a lot of ink has been spilled about Citizen’s reputation as a home run haven. I find it difficult to argue with the numbers:

Home Runs allowed at Home:
2002 (Vet): 74
2003 (Vet): 61
2004 (Citizens): 115

Ouch. According to ESPN's Park Factors page, Citizens was the fifth easiest park to homer in during the 2004 season, but interestingly, it just the eighteenth easiest park to get a hit in. Citizens isn't what you would call a hitters park so much as it is a sluggers park. So a word of caution: Phillies pitchers were eager to lay the blame for their bulging ERAs on Citizens' cozy confines. Yes, home runs are more frequent, but the Phillies hardly play at Coors Field East. The ball is no more likely to fall in for a single or a double than anywhere else. A solo home run here or there won't kill a pitcher's ERA.

Thanks to all of the hype, I submit that Citizens effect on Phillies pitching was partly-to-mostly mental: in June Billy Wagner blamed Citizens for the reason why Marlins skipper Jack McKeon left Eric Milton off the NL All-Star team. What Wagner didn't know was that Milton’s road WHIP and ERA were much worse than his home record:

Milton's WHIP / ERA
Home: 1.29 / 4.40
Road: 1.41 / 5.12

Milton actually gave up more home runs on the road (23) than at Citizens (20), despite pitching eight more innings at Citizens.

ERA: Home / Road (road advantage)
Milton: 4.40 / 5.12 (-0.72)
Millwood: 4.95 / 4.77 (+0.18)
Wolf: 4.95 / 3.43 (+1.52)
Padilla: 4.96 / 3.88 (+1.08)
Myers: 5.77 / 5.35 (+0.42)
Abbott: 4.68 / 7.88 (-3.2)
Lidle: 3.06 / 4.80 (-1.74)

Wolf & Padilla struggled at Citizens, but there isn't enough of a difference between all of the starters home and road ERAs to suggest that Citizens was as bad as they thought or Larry Bowa complained about on ESPN radio. Millwood seemed to do as well at home as on the road.

Naturally, though, the key to continued success for the Phillies staff will be keeping the ball down. To state something that should be obvious to an observer, groundball pitchers are less likely to give up home runs. Check out the starters 2004 groundball-to-flyball Ratio:

G/F:
Lidle: 1.48
Myers: 1.39
Padilla: 1.16
Millwood: 1.12
Abbott: 0.93
Wolf: 0.81
Milton: 0.57
Team: 1.09
NL: 1.25

As I said, Milton is a bad bet for the Phillies to re-up with: too many balls into the air. Wolf is a troubling case as well, but Padilla and Myers throw a lot of groundballs. If they can sort things out, I bet they'll prosper. Notice that a flyball pitcher like Wolf had the hardest time adjusting: his Citizens' ERA is a run and a half higher.

II. The ‘Pen: The Phillies bullpen was atrocious in 2003: closer Jose Mesa had an ERA of 6.52 (!) and a WHIP of 1.76. To put it mildly, it was a small miracle that Mesa actually had any saves in 2003, let alone 24. To deal with the situation the Phillies made some smart decisions in 2004, signing fireballing closer Billy Wagner and setup man Tim Worrell. The team's bullpen improved significantly and it actually became the strength of the team, more than the offense, more than the starting pitching and perhaps more than the team's fielding. Here is how the Phillies key relievers did:

WHIP / ERA
Madson: 1.13 / 2.34
Wagner: 0.77 / 2.42
Worrell: 1.23 / 3.68
Hernandez: 1.68 / 4.76
Telemaco: 1.29 / 4.31
Cormier: 1.19 / 3.56
Jones: 1.70 / 4.97
Rodriguez: 1.33 / 3.00

Naturally, there is more to the story than those stats, but I'll get to that ... Like Win-Loss records for starters, Saves are the stat most people look at with relievers. Unfortunately, despite the investment in Wagner and Worrell, the Phillies weren't that good on paper:

Save Opportunities / Saves / Percent: 68 / 43 (63%, 11th in NL) (the 25 blown saves were 4th in NL). The Phillies actually did better in 2003: converting 33 of 51 chances (65%).

So who got the Phillies saves?:

Saves:
Wagner: 21
Worrell: 19
Madson: 1
Jones: 1
Rodriguez: 1
Team: 43

(I tried to find out who had the Phillies blown saves but ESPN only gave me a few: Wagner blew four saves and Worrell blew eight.)

The bullpen's decrease in save percentage coincides with an increase in save opportunities by 17 from 2003. Clearly, the Phillies trusted their bullpen more than in 2003, when calling for Jose Mesa to preserve a lead seemed to shave a year off Larry Bowa's life every time. Just four Phillies pitchers threw complete games in 2004, compared with nine in 2003. Phillies starters didn't go as deep into the game:

Innings Pitched: (Starters / Relievers)
2003: 969.0 / 474.2
2004: 922.1 / 540.1
Difference: -46.2 / +65.2

As I said earlier, as with the starters the bullpen's ERAs and WHIPs are only part of the story. Here are each of the relievers FIP ERAs and the DER each pitcher got from the Phillies fielders:

FIP / DER
Madson: 3.60 / .727
Wagner: 2.48 / .764
Worrell: 3.98 / .717
Hernandez: 5.18 / .678
Telemaco: 5.82 / .759
Cormier: 4.21 / .744
Jones: 4.42 / .624
Rodriguez: 2.60 / .660

As I said in a post last week, Madson probably won't have the kind of season for the Phillies in 2005 that he had last year. He'll be an outstanding pitcher for them next year, but not quite the lights-out reliever he was in '04. (If you subtract Madson's horrific start against the White Sox, his ERA lowers to 1.65 and his WHIP lowers to 1.05.)

What will make Madson a successful pitcher in 2005 is his propensity for getting hitters to ground out to the Phillies infield, rather than hitting fly balls. The Phillies groundball-to-flyball ratio:

G / F ratio:
Madson: 1.92
Wagner: 1.11
Worrell: 1.20
Hernandez: 1.71
Telemaco: 0.90
Cormier: 1.76
Jones: 1.33
Rodriguez: 1.24

Madson was a master at getting the 6-3 groundout in 2004. The interesting thing to note about the numbers above is that they are, as a group, generally higher than the Phillies starting pitching. Given the greater success the Phillies bullpen had in 2004, the path to having successful pitching at Citizens is to sign as many ground-ball pitchers as the Phillies can find.

The Phillies weakest reliever was Amaury Telemaco: while on the surface Telemaco didn't have bad stats (1.29 WHIP / 4.31 ERA), Telemaco benefitted from terrific defense (.759 DER) and was the sole Phillies reliever to surrender more flyball outs than groundball outs. As a consequence, Telemaco was the Phillies pitcher, after Paul Abbott, most likely to surrender a home run: 2.0 home runs per nine innings pitched. Thanks to the home runs, Telemaco's FIP ERA climbs a full run and a half to 5.82. If the Phillies bring back Telemaco in '05, he'll be hit hard.

(By the way: Paul Abbott surrendered 2.6 home runs per nine innings.)

The addition of Billy Wagner was the biggest off-season move for the Phillies. After the '03 Mesa debacle, the Phillies wanted an automatic closer who would shut teams down the way Mariano Rivera would for the Yankees (before the 2004 ALCS). The fire-balling Wagner seemed a good bet: 118 saves between the 2001-2003 seasons, he had a tiny 1.78 ERA for 2003.

Unfortunately an injury sidelined Wagner for a good deal of the season. He appeared in 45 games, down from 78 in 2003, and pitched fewer innings: 48 as compared with 86 in 2003. Interestingly, Wagner logged a better WHIP in '04 than in his last year in Houston: 0.77 vs. 0.87 ... The key to Wagner's pitching is the velocity he puts on his fastball, which typically is in the high 90's and often exceeds 100 mph. Wagner's fastball helps make him the team’s strikeout artists (11.0 K/9 innings), along with Rodriguez (12.0 K/9 innings). However, Wagner's fastball also means he surrenders lots of flyballs: his 1.11 G/F ratio was low for a reliever, but better than the team average of 1.09.

So is Wagner a bad fit for the Phillies closer? A flyball pitcher in a hitters park? First let me start out by noting that Wagner had a lower WHIP at home 0.70 than on the road: 0.84. Wagner's ERA was 1.00 at Citizens and 4.22 on the road. Why did Wagner have such success at Citizens? Remarkably, despite giving up so many flyballs, Wagner gave up comparatively few home runs in 2004: five in just 48 innings, just 0.9 per nine innings pitched. It is a superior number to Worrell (1.1) and about the same as Madson (0.7). Wagner also logs lots and lots of strikeouts and very few walks: Wagner had nearly ten strikeouts for every walk last season. Wagner's control and velocity are terrific: he gets guys out and doesn't give free baserunners. He's everything the Phillies should expect from a relief pitcher. If he's healthy in 2005, Wagner should log 40-45 saves and give the Phillies a significant boost.

III. Conclusions: I searched long and hard for an adjective to describe the Phillies 2004 pitching and all I could come up with was "disappointing". We all hoped that the Phillies pitching would be as good as it was before the All-Star break in 2003, but while the team hitting improved the Phillies pitching never jelled. Many thought the Phillies Millwood-Milton-Wolf-Padilla-Myers rotation would resemble the Atlanta Braves, circa 1992, but that never happened.

Millwood is probably gone and Milton should be (as I write this, Milton has been made an offer by the Phillies, but luckily for them he has rejected it and appears headed to the Bronx to play in Pinstripes). I had a lot of faith in Padilla. I think he'll still develop into the Phillies ace. I see potential in Myers as well. Wolf and Lidle would make good #3 & #4 starters. The Phillies need a fifth starter, and have four options:

1. Re-sign Millwood.
2. Seek a free agent like the Marlins Carl Pavano.
3. Give the job to rookie Gavin Floyd.
4. Give the job to Ryan Madson.

I like any of those options: Floyd pitched well in his limited 2004 appearances: 4.06 FIP ERA, 1.52 G/F, 7.6 K/9, 0.3 HR/9. He and Madson could split duties as the fifth starter until one wins the job outright. Pavano was very good in 2004 as well: 3.57 FIP ERA, 1.49 G/F, 0.6 HR/9. If Millwood is willing to take a paycut from his $11 million salary, he still has gas left in his tank.

Aside from adding another starter, don't see many needs the Phillies have to address. The bullpen looks well stocked with arms and if the Phillies have a healthy Wagner to rely on in 2005, they should pitch well. The key will be to push thoughts of the hype surrounding Citizens out of their heads. They should ask themselves this: If Citizens was so bad for the Phillies why did a flyball pitcher like Eric Milton log a better ERA at home?

Bowa complained the park was "a joke" and would make it impossible for the Phillies to lure pitching there. That is a load of bunk and the Phillies shouldn't accept that sort of conventional wisdom. Citizens is a sluggers park: a little more likely to surrender a home run or two in, by not a hitters park the way Coors Field is friendly to home run hitters as well as doubles hitters. Groundball hitters can prosper and they will*. And if Citizens reputation makes it difficult to lure big-money pitchers than the Phillies should make a virtue of the necessity to pursue groundball pitchers: other teams like the Yankees want the flashy "money" pitchers. The Phillies should have a leg up in looking for groundball hurlers who don't post the same sort of gaudy numbers.

An improved defense would help as well: Marlon Byrd and Jason Michaels did a poor job as the Phillies centerfielders in 2004. If the Phillies do successfully pursue Steve Finley to man centerfield and re-sign Placido Polanco at second base, they will have a very good defensive alignment for 2005. The Phillies defense could help the team lower their ERA considerably. Defense is the X factor here. The Phillies defense clearly declined last season over what it had been in recent memory, so part of the blame for the decline in the quality of the Phillies pitching must lay there. An improved defense might be a bigger boost than management realizes.

The best tonic for Phillies pitching is winning: too often the pitchers felt the need to be perfect because they needed to win to hang in the division race with the Marlins or the Braves. Phillies pitchers will forget about the impact on their ERAs when they win games with consistency. I think that a confident Wolf / Myers / Padilla / Lidle / Madson-Floyd rotation will do very, very well in 2005. I don't see the Phillies leading the NL in pitching, but I think they can climb to the middle of the pack in 2005.

Coming next Monday, hopefully, is Part III. I'm also working on responses to comments people have made about Part I.

*In the interest of intellectual honestly I will point out a potential flaw with my theory about groudball pitchers: In doing research on pitching stats I glanced at a piece about DIPS 2.0 that Voros McCracken wrote nearly three years ago. I was reading the article when I came across this statement: “It has been proposed for some time that fly ball pitchers tend to have an advantage here over ground ball pitchers. In the end, I’m pretty sure this is right, but the problems currently here are tough to overcome.”

Needless to say, if this is a fact that this information contradicts my opinion that the Phillies need groundball hurlers on the pitching staff. I read a few more pieces on the subject and grasped their point: flyballs tend to be automatic outs, while groundballs greatly depend on the quality of the defense behind the pitcher. So I will say this: take what I say with a grain of salt …

I still think I’m right and here is what I say in my defense: the Phillies are the exception to the rule. They play in a park in which it is easy to hit a home run, but it is fairly average to get a hit otherwise. The Phillies propensity for surrendering confidence-shattering home runs in 2004 strongly suggests that they would be better off with ground-ballers on the mound: true, it might mean one or two extra baserunners a game, but I think the Phillies would be better off surrendering a pair of singles than a solo shot. If the differences are as minor as McCracken says, then the risk is worth it for the Phils … but as I said, I could be wrong.