A CITIZEN'S BLOG

Nobody likes to hear it, because it’s dull. But the reason you win or lose is darn near always the same – pitching.

-Earl Weaver

Being a major league baseball pitcher is a lonely job, standing on a mound, charged with hurling the ball past the batter, isolated and yet relying heavily on the other eight players on the field to get the job done. As the game of baseball evolved during the late 19th Century the role of the pitcher evolved as well. Originally, pitchers were expected to fairly loft the ball over the plate so the opposition could hammer it for hits or outs, but then role of the pitcher evolved in the 1870’s and 1880’s to be permitted to attempt to put the ball past the batter and be rewarded when the batter missed the ball.

Since then, there has been a battle in baseball over the rules to make things easier or harder for pitchers. In the early days of baseball the rules favored batters: the pitchers mound was moved back, for example, to today’s sixty feet, six inches. When hitters began to dominate too much, the owners began things like making foul-tips into strikes. The shift back to hitters began in the 1920’s and continued into the 1960’s, when baseball expanded the strike-zone out of fear that it had become too easy to hit home runs after Roger Maris broke the hallowed record of Babe Ruth with 61 home runs. By the end of the 1960’s, pitchers dominated the game so much that Bob Gibson’s 1.12 ERA was remarkable, but not entirely so. Worried they had over-did things, baseball moved back to the batters and reinterpreted the strike zone again. Today, with smaller parks and juiced players, the game is a paradise for hitters and a disaster for pitchers.

You cannot win without good pitching is the conventional wisdom in baseball and it appears that, for once, the conventional wisdom on something has hit the mark. Managers like Earl Weaver (see above) know that the pitcher is a vital part of your team because they handle the ball on each and every play. Good pitching is vital for success on the baseball mound. Teams cannot survive with mediocre pitching.

Confused about what I’m talking about when I toss letters like ERA and FIP all over the place? Well, here are the stats I refer to defined:
WHIP – Walks plus hits by innings pitched: (BB + H) / IP = WHIP
ERA – Earned Run Average: (Earned Runs * 9) / IP = ERA
FIP – Fielding Independent Pitching: (13*HR+3*BB-2*K / IP) + League Factor Evaluates a pitching by how he would have done with an average defense behind him by keeping track of things that a pitcher can control (walks, strikeouts, home runs allowed) as opposed to things he cannot (hits allowed, runs allowed).
DER – Defense Efficiency Ratio: (Batters Faced – (Hits + Walks + Hit By Pitch + Strikeouts)) / (Batters Faced – (Home Runs, Walks + Hit By Pitch + Strikeouts)) How often fielders convert balls put into play into outs.
HR/9 – Home Runs allowed per nine innings: (HR * 9) / IP
BB/9 – Walks per nine innings: (BB * 9) / IP
K/9 – Strikeouts per nine innings: (K * 9) / IP


Since the Phillies have moved to Citizens Bank Ballpark, they have not exactly been known as a team that features a strong pitching staff. In fact, since 2004, the Phillies have finished 13th, 10th, 11th, and 13th in ERA in the N.L. each season. Citizens Bank Ballpark has become Coors Field East in the minds of fans and the general public and the Phillies have become the Colorado Rockies of the mid-1990’s, the team that scores a lot of runs because they have to. 2007 was no exception. To combat this, the Phillies management focused like a laser beam on the team’s pitching. In 2007 the Phillies invested considerable time and money into their pitching staff, adding starters Freddy Garcia and Adam Eaton and they attempted to ship surplus starter Jon Lieber to another team for help in the bullpen. However, the 2007 season was a calamity for the Phillies pitchers:

Garcia was a bust, pitching poorly and then injuring his arm on the way to a 1-5, 5.90 ERA season.

Eaton likewise disappointed, going 10-10 with a 6.29 ERA. Eaton was such a liability that the Phillies left him off the playoff roster.

Lieber, trade bait and consigned to the bullpen, became a starter once Garcia went down and pitched well, not that his numbers – 3-6, 4.73 ERA – indicate (more on that later), but he too went down.

The Phillies ended up giving starts to rookies J.D. Durbin (10 starts), Kyle Kendrick (20 starts), J.A. Happ (1 start), and Zack Segovia (1 start). In one less-than-memorable weekend in mid-summer, the Phillies started three rookies (Durbin, Happ and Kendrick) for a four-game set with the Mets and got hammered, losing three of the four games and watching the Mets lengthen what seemed to be a formidable lead at the time.

When the starters were not going down the Phillies bullpen was busy collapsing. After early struggles, the Phillies were forced to send Brett Myers to the mound to be the team’s closer. Along the way the Phillies attempted to utilize cast-offs like Jose Mesa and Antonio Alfonseca to plug their leaky bullpen. It was, in short, a difficult season for the Phillies pitchers, but many turned in terrific performances in 2007 and ought to be recognized amid the chaos. Plus, there are positive signs for the future.

Let’s start with some the positives.

As everyone knows, the Phillies accomplished a remarkable feat and managed to close a massive gap with the New York Mets and erase a seven-game edge as the season came to a close. A factor, along with the terrific play of Phillies like Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley, was the Phillies bullpen down the stretch: looking at the Phillies stats, I saw that the Phillies pitching improved somewhat in September. Not significantly, but just enough to improve the team. While the N.L. ERA for September was 4.70, the Phillies were 4.56 (September ERA+: 103). The Phillies also bettered the N.L. averages for the month in walks, strikeouts and strikeout/walk ratio:

Phillies / N.L.
BB/9: 3.34 / 3.44
K/9: 7.06 / 7.02
K/BB: 2.12 / 2.04

Not surprisingly, Cole Hamels was terrific in his limited action in September: 1-0, 2.25 ERA in three starts, with 11.81 K/9, 2.25 BB/9, a 1.06 WHIP and no home runs allowed in sixteen innings of work. But Hamels limited performance doesn’t explain why the Phillies pitching improved in September. Certainly the rest of the starting pitchers didn’t improve much, if at all. Kyle Lohse was 2-0, but he had a 5.10 ERA. Adam Eaton was terrible: 1-2, 6.65 ERA. Jamie Moyer was unspectacular: 2-2, 4.67 ERA (1.29 HR/9, 3.38 BB/9, 7.27 K/9), which is basically in line with what he did the rest of the season: 12-10, 5.08 ERA (1.36 HR/9, 2.89 BB/9, 5.73 K/9) (from April – August).

No, the Phillies bullpen turned in a stunning performance in September. Collectively Brett Myers, Tom Gordon, J.C. Romero, Geoff Geary and Clay Condrey made 79 appearances in the 28 games, hurling 79 innings and accumulating a 7-2 record with 10 saves and a 2.62 ERA. Want to see the biggest reason why the Phillies made the playoffs? Their bullpen was terrific down the stretch, keeping the Phillies in tough games. Check out how good the five pitchers were:

ERA HR/9 BB/9 K/9 K/BB
Myers: 3.00 / 0.50 / 3.00 / 8.50 / 2.83
Geary: 2.65 / 0.52 / 2.65 / 4.76 / 1.80
Gordon: 3.94 / 0.56 / 1.69 / 7.31 / 4.33
Romero: 0.00 / 0.00 / 4.02 / 6.32 / 1.57
Condrey: 3.65 / 0.73 / 1.46 / 3.65 / 2.50
Collectively: 2.62 / 0.46 / 2.62 / 6.26 / 2.39

Romero didn’t allow a single home run or earned run in his fifteen and two-thirds innings of work despite allowing seven walks. I suspect that Romero is one of those pitchers who tries to hit the edge of the strike-zone on every pitch and not give the hitter anything to work with. While he did allow seven walks, he only surrendered four hits (Tom Gordon, in contrast, allowed fifteen hits and three walks in his sixteen innings). Those fifteen and two-thirds innings of work got Romero that three-year, $10 million dollar extension this off-season.

Cole Hamels was, as usual, terrific in 2007: 15-5, 3.39 ERA. Hamels will be just 24 on Opening Day, 2008, and already is in the midst of a bright future. After a strong debut season (9-8, 4.08 ERA), Hamels won fifteen games in 2007 and dominated the opposition. Had he not been injured late in the season, Hamels might have played a role in the N.L. Cy Young balloting and might have made a strong run at third place or possibly even second. His walk-to-strikeout ratio of 4.12 was actually better than Jake Peavy’s 3.53 and Brandon Webb’s 2.69. He was unquestionably the Phillies best pitcher and ought to be on a short list with Peavy and Webb for the 2008 Cy Young.

Hamels was so good that I really don’t want to spend too much time talking about him when we have other topics. Let’s move on …

Jon Lieber … Ever felt like you were under-appreciated at work? Ever thought that the flashy, show-boater at the next desk over always kept you from getting your due as a worker? Now you know Jon Lieber must feel. Lieber signed a 3-year, $21 million dollar deal with the Phillies in the winter of 2004-2005 and went 29-30, with a 4.55 ERA as a Phillie from 2005 to 2007. He never got much respect and was consistently viewed by fans and the media as a bust. Now Lieber is a free agent and will likely sign a 1-year deal with some team in need of pitching help. I think the team that signs him is going to get a steal, personally.

All Jon Lieber did was provide the Phillies with 464 & 1/3 innings of solid work the last three seasons and give a vastly under-rated performance. Every season Lieber’s defense-neutral stats showed that he was a talented pitcher who was always doing a better job then his numbers reflected.

What do I mean by that? Alright, a little history is in order. Voros McCracken was a paralegal in Chicago working for a law firm and playing fantasy baseball on the side. McCracken was looking for ways to evaluate pitchers and came up with a stupendous idea: what if pitchers cannot control what happens to the ball once it is put into play? McCracken ended up developing DIPS – Defense Independent Pitching Statistic – as a consequence. DIPS, simply put, takes, things that a pitcher can control – walks, strikeouts, home runs – and evaluates them by striping out things that a pitcher cannot control – namely hits and earned runs allowed. McCracken’s work was posted on the internet and eventually found its way to the eyes of Bill James, who positively commented on McCracken’s work in his Historical Baseball Abstract.

By the way, if you are interested in reading more on McCracken and DIPS, Michael Lewis’ Moneyball (pages 234-243) and Alan Schwarz’ The Numbers Game (pages 210-214) deal with McCracken’s ideas and how they permeated baseball over the least decade.

Alright, back to Lieber. Jon Lieber is pretty tough to get a walk out of. In 2004, with the Yankees, he allowed just 18 in 176 innings. That’s less than a walk every nine innings of work. Lieber never quite got that level of dominance with the Phillies, but as a Phillie he allowed just 1.68 BB/9. Jon Lieber didn’t allow many home runs either: just 7 in 78 innings with the Phillies in 2007. While Lieber wasn’t the king of strikeouts – a respectable 54 in 78 innings, or 6.1 K/9 – he was good and his stinginess in these other aspects of the game show you what a terrific pitcher he is. Here are the Phillies starters DIPS and how much their DIPS numbers were under (or over) their “real” ERAs:

Starters DIPS:
Hamels: 3.63 / +0.24
Lieber: 3.74 / -0.99
Moyer: 4.73 / -0.28
Durbin: 4.74 / -0.41
Kendrick: 4.85 / +0.98
Eaton: 5.69 / -0.60

Maybe you don’t think much of Jon Lieber, but think about this: Lieber’s 3.74 DIPS isn’t far off the mark of pitchers like Brandon Webb (3.18 DIPS), Tim Hudson (3.40 DIPS) or Greg Maddux (3.55 DIPS). There is nearly a full run variance between Lieber’s ERA and DIPS because year-in and year-out, the Phillies fielders don’t convert enough of the balls put into play behind Lieber into outs. Check out the Phillies DER behind Lieber:

DER:
2005: .722
2006: .697
2007: .672

Now, the idea that pitchers have no ability to influence balls put into play is not widely accepted. Baseball Prospectus, for example, argues that some pitchers can influence balls put into play (e.g., Jamie Moyer) and that sometimes pitchers do play a role in how the fielders do. I think Lieber deserves more credit than he gets, however, as a terrific pitcher who knew his role on the team: he was pitcher who threw lots of sliders, which hitters grounded into 6-3 put-outs.

Kyle Kendrick. As great as Jon Lieber’s DIPS stats were, Kyle Kendrick’s were not. The two make an interesting pair to discuss, as their pitching styles are intertwined. Kyle Kendrick began the 2007 season sitting in Reading, Pennsylvania, with the Double-A Reading Phillies. Injuries to Garcia and Lieber and Myers move to the bullpen sent the Phillies to their farm system searching for arms. Kendrick was the most major league-ready of the Phillies minor leaguers and made the trip to Citizens Bank Ballpark.

In Kendrick’s first start, he allowed three runs on six hits and two walks in six innings of work in a no-decision the Phillies went on to win. Kendrick followed with three wins in a row. Ultimately, Kendrick finished the season 10-4 with a 3.87 ERA. The Phillies won 13 of the 20 games he started and Kendrick never failed to make it to the fifth inning but one time, logging 121 innings of work for the Phillies.

As you can see from the DIPS numbers above, Kendrick’s 4.85 DIPS is pretty terrible and nearly a full run over his “real” ERA. Kendrick and Lieber are terrific examples of how pitchers can throw similar games with similar styles and yield different results. Lieber and Kendrick are the two most ground-ball oriented starters the Phillies had in 2007:

Starters G/F ratio:
Kendrick: 1.55
Lieber: 1.52
Moyer: 1.08
Eaton: 1.06
Garcia: 1.02
Lohse: 0.95

And the Phillies fielders did different things with those groundballs. They converted .719 of Kendrick’s grounders into outs. They converted .672 of Lieber’s into outs. That is where the enormous disparity between Lieber and Kendrick’s DIPS and ERAs come from.

I am a big proponent of groundball pitchers. I tend to think they have more success because groundball oriented pitchers made fewer mistakes that turn into three-run home runs. Backed with a good defense, a groundball pitcher can be deadly. Is it any coincidence that extreme groundball pitchers are some of the best? Brandon Webb (3.34 G/F), Tim Hudson (2.76 G/F), and Greg Maddux (2.15 G/F) are all extreme groundball pitchers. Add in the propensity of fly balls to turn into three-run home runs at Citizens Bank Ballpark, and pitchers like Lieber and Kendrick are the types to succeed in a Phillies uniform, I believe.

Now, there are some flaws to Kendrick’s game and Phillies fans should really treat that 10-4 record as illusory. He won’t be that good in 2008, people. Perhaps no other pitcher in the majors got the run support that Kendrick enjoyed in 2007: 7.74 runs per game. It’s not hard to win games when your offense supplies you with nearly eight runs per start.

I also don’t care for how many balls put into play Kenderick allows. He faced 499 batters in 2007, of which 16 got home runs, 25 got walks, 7 were hits by pitches, and 49 were struck out. Kendrick got only 3.64 K/9, a far, far lower percentage than Lieber (6.23). Kendrick needs his fielders. That means 402 of the 499 batters he faced put balls into play. That’s roughly four in five batters. That’s a lot of work for the defense and I don’t think Kendrick can count on his fielders to replicate their terrific work in 2008.

Jamie Moyer … “Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.” – Warren Spahn. Warren Spahn would have loved Jamie Moyer. The soft-tossing lefty was one of the great pitchers of the 1950’s and Moyer is probably the pitcher who comes the closest to replicating Spahn in the modern era of fire-balling hurlers … Here are some fun facts that illustrate Moyer’s pitching style:

According to the 2005 Bill James Handbook, Jamie Moyer had the second-slowest fastball in the American League in 2004, clocking in at 81.6 mph to Tim Wakefield’s 75.9 mph ‘fastball’. Moyer threw the largest percentage of changeups of any A.L. pitcher: 31.0%. Moyer also relied on his fastball less often than all but three other pitchers (45.7% of the time, compared to Wakefield’s 9.3%). Moving on … according to the 2006 Bill James Handbook, Jamie Moyer once more had the second-slowest fastball in the American League in 2005, clocking in at 81.8 mph to Tim Wakefield’s 76.1 mph ‘fastball’. Moyer threw the second-largest percentage of changeups of any A.L. pitcher: 27.3% to Kenny Rogers 32.9%. Moyer also relied on his fastball less often than all but Wakefield: 40.1% of the time, compared to Wakefield’s 11.9%

Moyer’s style is to toss these changeups and slow fastballs over the plate and watch batters flail helplessly at them. Moyer’s pitchers tend to be hit for shallow fly balls, which means more work for the Phillies outfielders. This tendency towards flies strongly suggested to me that Moyer might struggle with the Phillies, given Citizens Bank Ballpark’s unforgiving nature (see: Kendrick, Kyle), I assumed that a flyball pitcher like Moyer would be a failure. Between 2001 and 2006, Moyer allowed 1520 ground-balls to 1723 fly-balls: 0.87 G/F ratio.

Much to my stunned amazement, Moyer has pitched alright as a Phillie. Oh sure, 14-12 with a 5.01 ERA is nothing to brag about, but his 4.73 DIPS shows that his pitching is better than it looks. It is tough to get a walk out of him and for being a finesse pitcher he gets some strike-outs: 133 in 199 innings. Teams behind Moyer always do well defensively (the Phillies posted a staggering .753 DER behind him in 2006 in his eight starts and his 21 double plays induced were tops on the Phillies in 2007), which suggests to me that Moyer is one of those special pitchers who influence the performance on their fielders.

Let’s talk very briefly, before we move on to the relief corps, about the failures of the Phillies starters. The Phillies acquired Freddy Garcia in the hopes that he would be a stud the team could team with Myers and Hamels. Garcia went 17-9 with a 4.53 ERA for the White Sox in 2006 and was a good bet, with his heavy curveballs and high groundball percentage (1.07 G/F in 2006, but a 1.60 in 2005), to survive Citizens Bank. Instead he injured his arm and went 1-5 with a 5.90 ERA … Adam Eaton, a former Phillies draft pick the team dealt to the San Diego Padres back at the beginning of the decade, was added in the hopes that he’d round out the rotation as the solid #5 pitcher. Instead, Eaton struggled, going 10-10 with a 6.29 ERA. Just eight of Eaton’s thirty starts were “Quality Starts” meaning that they went at least six innings and he gave up three or fewer runs, probably the worst percentage on the Phillies. Eaton did little right, allowing a whopping 71 walks in 161 innings, while striking out just 97 batters. Eaton also served up a stunning thirty home runs. Eaton struggled so much he was left-off the playoff roster. Ouch. Let’s hope he will improve in 2008, but his 2007 performance and $7.2 million-dollar salary are a testament to the fact that oftentimes the marketplace in baseball yields odd results … Kyle Lohse came to the Phillies in a trade late in the year and hurled well, I am sure to the delight of his agent, Scott Boras. He went 3-0 with a 4.72 ERA with the Phillies, allowing just six home runs in 61 innings of work. Not too shabby. No doubt Boras will convert that solid, workmanlike performance into a multi-million dollar contract with some team foolish enough to sign him … Generally speaking, the Phillies starters were terrible in 2007, ranking twelfth in terms of ERA. Lots of room for improvement here.

Labels: Bullpen, Eaton, Garcia, Geary, Gordon, Hamels, Lieber, Moyer, Myers, Pitching, Romero, Rotation

What odd days for the Phillies pitching staff … Long-maligned, much-discussed, it is once more the topic of conversation here in Philadelphia. Let’s start with a quick run-down of the questions and answers:

Q: Was the Phillies overall of their rotation the team’s big focus in the off-season?

A: Yep, they signed Adam Eaton to a three-year deal and dealt away two great prospects to acquire Freddy Garcia from the White Sox. The team obviously meant to team Hamels and Myers, along with late-season acquisition Jamie Moyer, with Garcia and Eaton in the rotation. The collapse of the Phillies bullpen sent Brett Myers into the closer role, while Freddy Garcia’s injuries have further stretched the Phillies rotation.

Q: How will the Phillies replace Freddy Garcia?

A: Apparently the short-term solution is to promote Kyle Kendrick from Double-A to the bigs. Poor Kendrick is jumping into a hornets nest by making the move to the show. We’ve seen pitchers make the leap from Double-A to the bigs rarely, so I am skeptical that Kendrick is going to survive his start and I worry that getting shelled might destroy his self-esteem.

In the long-term, I expect to see the Phillies try and redouble their efforts to secure a starter by dealing Aaron Rowand. The obvious target for the Phillies is Carlos Zambrano, who has apparently worn out his welcome with the Cubs.

Q: Any big surprises?

A: Seeing Jon Lieber back in the rotation qualifies. Lieber is pitching well, as evidenced by his complete-game shutout of the Royals the other night where he surrendered three hits and no walks while getting eleven strikeouts, in what was quietly one of the best pitched games of the season. Lieber’s Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) ERA is actually a little better – 3.70 vs. 3.71 – than Cole Hamels, by the way.

Q: Oh yeah, how is that Hamels guy doing?

A: Pretty ok. 8-2 with a 3.57 ERA. Hamels is absolutely dazzling these days on the mound. He’s lowered his walks allowed down to around two every nine innings (2.18 BB/9), and he’s getting 4.36 strikeouts per walk allowed. Lieber and Moyer need to rely on their fielders to make outs, but Hamels is the only Phillies starter who can simply go after batters fearlessly. It doesn’t matter who is fielding for the Phillies, because Hamels won’t allow the batter to put the ball into play.

Q: What about that Adam Eaton guy?

A: Eaton has dramatically improved himself. After an April which saw his ERA stuck at 7.71, Eaton has lowered it and seems to be on his way to getting it under 5.00 before the All-Star Break. Eaton is, by far, the weakest of the Phillies starters. He gives up a decent number of home runs (1.32 HR/9), which isn’t a problem, but when you couple it with allowing too many walks (4.45 BB/9) and not enough strikeouts (6.03 K/9), it is a problem.

Still, I look for Eaton to improve. Last night’s performance was big, but he needs to cut down on those walks before he can be called a dominant pitcher.

More tomorrow.

Confused about what I’m talking about? Here are the stats I refer to defined:
ERA – Earned Run Average: (Earned Runs * 9) / IP = ERA
FIP – Fielding Independent Pitching: (13*HR+3*BB-2*K / IP) + League Factor Evaluates a pitching by how he would have done with an average defense behind him by keeping track of things that a pitcher can control (walks, strikeouts, home runs allowed) as opposed to things he cannot (hits allowed, runs allowed).
HR/9 – Home Runs allowed per nine innings: (HR * 9) / IP
BB/9 – Walks per nine innings: (BB * 9) / IP
K/9 – Strikeouts per nine innings: (K * 9) / IP

Labels: Eaton, Garcia, Hamels, Lieber, Moyer, Myers

A dearth of runs and typically poor bullpen pitching helped undermine a very good performance from Phillies starter Freddy Garcia last night. Despite allowing just three runs in eight innings worked, with nine strikeouts and two walks allowed, Garcia was undone when Ryan Madson allowed two runs at the top of the ninth, thus making the Phillies subsequent rally at the bottom of the inning much harder. Ultimately, despite Greg Dobbs three-run pinch-hit home run – who is this guy? – at the bottom on the inning, the Phillies still fell short by a score of 5-4.

As the Phillies enter the month of June, they are well-positioned for a run at the top. They sit above .500 at 26-25, and are seven games behind the Mets. However, the Phillies are closing fast on the slumping Atlanta Braves, and the Mets are staying on top by relying on such pitchers as John Maine and Oliver Perez. As the summer wears on, both Maine and Perez will struggle as the Mets will no longer be able to shield them with terrific defense as they are right now:

DER:
Perez: .765
Maine: .736

The Mets team DER of .737 cannot stand. They are a terrific defensive team, of that there is no doubt, but they will regress closer to the mean as the season wears on and Maine and Perez will see their ERAs balloon.

A few short takes …

In just 91 plate appearances Dobbs has four home runs and 21 RBIs. His 6.4 Runs Created a game are impressive, better actually than J.Roll (6.0). This guy can hit. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you this year’s version of Chris Coste.

Didn’t take Ryan Howard long to go on a tear since he got back, having hit three home runs with seven RBIs in just four games played. Not too shabby.

Coming up next, two more against the D-backs and then a four-spot with the San Francisco Giants. I hope the Phillies aren’t in-line to give up #756. Then the Phillies get to lock horns with the Mets. I can’t wait for that …

Labels: Coste, Dobbs, Garcia, Howard, Madson

Thursday I was watching ESPN’s coverage of last week’s Phillies – Red Sox game from Clearwater when I heard one of the announcers comment that Charlie Manuel was worried that the Phillies were playing sloppy and weren’t focused. As if right on cue, Jimmy Rollins boots a routine ground ball to short and fails to convert the 6-3 put-out. Mentally the Phillies don’t seem to be clicking. Their 9-16 spring training record is pretty meaningless, until you back it up with those observations of the team’s lackadaisical attitude towards the game at the moment.

It doesn’t seem like the Phillies are prepared, mentally, for the long haul of the season ahead. They’ve been sloppy this pre-season. They don’t seem like they are hitting the ball well and there have been a raft of injuries.

1. Freddy Garcia, the Phillies major off-season acquisition, may or may not be prepared to start the season due to a biceps injury. I tend to think that Garcia will be ready to go, but a major injury (or even just a long-term nagging one) to Garcia would be a major blow to the Phillies, who brought Garcia to Philadelphia in exchange for two outstanding pitching prospects, knowing that they were just renting him for the ’07 campaign. This is garcia’s walk year and he’ll probably expect to command millions upon millions of dollars on the open market. Dollars the Phillies cannot match, so they need Garcia to be healthy to justify the price they paid.

Ironically, the likely replacement for Garcia and Adam Eaton, the Phillies other major acquisition, Jon Lieber, is out indefinitely with an abdominal muscle, precluding the Phillies from swinging a deal to ship him somewhere in exchange for a middle relief pitcher.

2. Carlos Ruiz was also suffering from a biceps injury, but is expected back soon. Ruiz uncertain status might be good news for many Chris Coste fans out there in the blogging world: Ruiz’s status might encourage the Phillies to keep Coste with the team when it heads north.

3. Ryan Howard. Disturbingly, the 2006 N.L. MVP has been slumping at the plate recently, going 0-for-17, and apparently losing his temper when he talked with a sports writer. Howard is 12-for-52 this spring with just two home runs. Coming off of a season in which he clubbed 58 home runs, perhaps a little of a let-down was to be expected, but I think that Ryan Howard might be in for a bigger decline than we all anticipated. Between teams pitching around him and the natural regression to the mean, Howard might slump into the 35-40 home run range … If I played major league baseball, I’d be estatic hitting just ten home runs, but Ryan Howard and the Phillies would be very, very disappointed.

The 2007 Bill James Handbook doesn’t see much of a chance for Howard to slump, however: they project Ryan Howard to hit 56 home runs, 148 RBIs and have 167 Runs Created in 2007, basically what he had in 2006 (58, 149, 138). I can’t help but wonder if that is wildly optimistic.

4. Aaron Rowand & Pat Burrell are both really struggling (.169 with a home run, three doubles and eight RBIs, and .178 with a home run, three doubles and seven RBIs, respectively). Burrell I am less worried about: he’s never had a particularly high batting average because he draws a lot of walks. For Rowand, who drew 18 walks in 2006, this is a major, major cause for concern. Rowand could be a major, major anchor on the Phillies offense. Let’s hope his defense makes up for it.

A few weeks ago I was feeling very optimistic as the Phillies broke camp. Best offense in the majors, a revamped pitching staff … this team was primed to contend. Now I look and I wonder if the Phillies pitching will be healthy, and I see major problems with the Phillies 4, 5, & 6 hitters.

Hmmm….

Labels: Burrell, Garcia, Howard, Predictions, Rollins, Rowand, Ruiz, Spring Training