A CITIZEN'S BLOG

It flew under the radar but one of the best and most interesting moves made by any MLB team this off-season was the Cubs decision to sign former Phillies (and former Cubs) hurler Jon Lieber to a 1-year deal worth $3.5 million dollars. After the blockbuster Tigers – Marlins deal that moved Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera to Motown and the unconsumated ménage a troi with the Twins and the Red Sox and Yankees over Johan Santana, the Lieber signing, as quiet as it was, might well turn out to be the most significant deal of the 2007-2008 off-season.

When Jon Lieber signed with the Phillies in 2004 I applauded the move, though I had reservations about Lieber’s health. Lieber, in his three years with the Phillies largely did what I figured he’d do: he didn’t surrender a lot of walks (1.69 BB/9 in ’05, 1.28 in ’06 and 2.54 in ’07), he was pretty good about home runs (1.29 HR/9 from ’05 to ’07), and he got lots and lots of ground balls (681 groundballs to 524 flyballs, or a 1.30 G/F ratio, between ’05 and ’07). The high number of grounders would be the key to Lieber’s success in Philadelphia I felt after seeing what pitching at Citizens Bank Ballpark did to a number of the Phillies pitchers.

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).
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

Lieber never really enjoyed the success that I thought he’d have in the red pinstripes. The quality of the defense behind him was never particularly good:

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

Consistently, Lieber’s defense-neutral statistics showed that he threw better than his numbers indicated:

FIP / FIP compared to ERA
2005: 4.13 / -0.07
2006: 4.60 / -0.33
2007: 3.82 / -0.91

After being utilized as a long-reliever and trade bait after the Phillies acquired Adam Eaton and Freddy Garica, Lieber ended up being pressed into the rotation before he too went down. I think he pitched rather well: Lieber’s 3.82 FIP would have made him a top-12 pitcher in 2007. And, not that anyone noticed, but Lieber’s June 9th outing against the Kansas City Royals had the best game score* of any outing by an N.L. pitcher in 2007: Lieber notched a game score of 92 that night on his way to striking out eleven while scattering three hits in a nine-inning shutout.

* a state Bill James came up with assigning an overall number to a pitcher’s outing while evaluating how they pitched.

Instead, his pedestrian ERA in '07, age (38 in 2008), and arm trouble (missed 2003 season with surgery) resulted in having to take a 50% pay cut to return to Chicago. Re-signing him was apparently never in the Phillies plans.

So what are the Cubs getting? A pretty good #4 pitcher: the Bill James Handbook says that Lieber will go 10-8 with a 4.04 ERA in 2008, which I think is pretty reasonable and in-line with Lieber’s career stats. He could end up being a very durable starter for the Cubs and a valuable edition for the playoffs since he’s had some experience, playing with the Yankees in 2004.

Good luck in the Windy City, Jon Lieber. He might be a key piece of the puzzle for the Cubs as they gun for their first World Series title in 100 years. I'll miss seeing him pitcher for the Phillies.

Labels: Lieber, Pitching, Rotation

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 a night for offense in baseball. First Brandon Webb's consecutive scoreless innings streak comes to an end, then the Dodgers hang 15 runs on the Phillies, and finally the Rangers score 30 runs, a modern-era record, in a 30-3 win over the Orioles. Bad night for pitchers, but despite that we continue with our discussion of the Phillies pitching with a look at two of the Phillies soft-throwing hurlers, Jon Lieber and Jamie Moyer.

Guys like Cole Hamels get a lot of the headlines because of their high rate of strikeouts, but I have a lot of respect for pitchers who make their living not by blowing 95 mph fastballs by batters, but who throw at slower speeds, mixing in sliders, changeups and curveballs, relying on skill and guile more than brute force. I suppose my respect for non-fireballers comes from my analysis of Robin Roberts, the great Phillies hurler who was the team’s first member to be inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame. (Click here for Baseball Reference's page on Robin Roberts.) (And click here for my focus on Roberts for my series on the 1950 Phillies, The Wiz Kids, which I posted on this blog last fall.) Roberts had a great fastball, but he didn’t rely on strikeouts to get the job done. He threw right in the strike-zone and dared hitters to swing. As a result Roberts gave up a lot of home runs, but he didn’t allow many walks and gave his fielders great opportunities to convert balls put into play into outs.

I think Roberts is long-over due for recognition as one of the great pitchers of all-time. He was easily the most dominant pitcher in the N.L. between 1950-1955, and began to slip just when he should have been recognized for his talents with a Cy Young Award, an award that didn’t exist until 1956. Had Roberts won the Cy Young two or three times between ’50 – ’55, he’d be mentioned in the same breath as Greg Maddux or Roger Clemens or Steve Carlton or Sandy Koufax. However he didn’t, so he isn’t. Pitchers that relied on guile don’t capture the imagination of fans and writers the way the fireballers do. Which is a shame, because the soft-tossing pitchers are just as skilled and just as effective.

Labels: Lieber, Moyer, Pitching, Rotation

Yesterday I noted that the Phillies could assemble an All-Star roster consisting of the players currently on the Disabled List who wear a Phillies uniform: Chase Utley, Jon Lieber, Freddy Garcia, Shane Victorino, Michael Bourn, etc. Other Phillies hurlers have spent time on the DL too: Brett Myers comes to mind. The injury bug has particularly bit the starting rotation, which started the season with a bit of a surplus. The team’s plans to utilize Jon Lieber as trade bait / long-reliever hit a snag when Myers shifted to the bullpen, then Lieber and Freddy Garcia, the Phillies new and much ballyhooed starter from the White Sox, went down.

Looking for depth, the Phillies sought Garcia’s replacement in Double-A ball, bringing Kyle Kenderick up from Reading. (Later the Phillies went to Ottawa and plucked J.D. Durbin from the Triple-A Lynx.) Kenderick, much to everyone’s surprise, has pitched very well. Sort of. A cursory look at Kendrick’s numbers suggest that he’s doing quite well: 5-2, 3.88 ERA in ten starts.

Confused about what I’m talking about? Here are the stats I refer to defined:
ERA – Earned Run Average: (Earned Runs * 9) / IP = ERA
K/9 – Strikeouts per nine innings: (K * 9) / IP

I was looking at the quality starts turned in by Phillies starters and saw something interesting. Check out the percentage of starts that are quality starts (i.e., starts where the pitcher goes six innings or more and gives up three runs or less):

QS Pct:
Kendrick: 70.0%
Hamels: 60.8%
Moyer: 59.1%
Lieber: 41.6%
Garcia: 36.3%
Eaton: 34.8%

Seven of Kendrick’s ten starts have been quality starts. However, Kendrick hasn’t been pitching as well as advertised. Once you take a deeper look inside of his stats, the truth becomes apparent.

As many of the readers of this blog know, we look for how well pitchers do things like get strikeouts, how many walks they surrender and how many home runs they allow to judge how they are pitching because these are things they can control, as opposed to balls they allow put into play, because good / bad defenses influence those numbers. (Caveat: there is data to indicate that pitchers like the Phillies Jamie Moyer do slightly influence the outcome of balls put into play.)

The all-encompassing number for a pitchers sabremetric number has been DIPS, or Defense Independent Pitching Statistic, which is what a pitcher would do with an average defense behind him. Let’s start by looking at ERA:

Hamels: 3.57
Kendrick: 3.88
Lieber: 4.52
Moyer: 4.82
Eaton: 6.09

Now convert that to DIPS:

Lieber: 3.53
Hamels: 3.86
Moyer: 4.65
Kendrick: 4.76
Eaton: 5.23

Yeah, Jon Lieber’s ERA falls by a run and Kendrick’s jumps. That is because, unlike Lieber, a pitcher who relied on control and his heavy slider to keep the ball in the park and hitters from getting ball four, Kendrick’s pitches are, at this stage of his career, pretty ordinary. He’s not getting many strikeouts, and his home runs and walks allowed are pretty ordinary:

K/9:
Hamels: 8.67
Lieber: 6.23
Moyer: 5.62
Eaton: 5.61
Kendrick: 3.59

The problem here, with such a low strikeout rate, is that Kendrick relies too much on his fielders to get the job done. Pitchers with high strikeout rates like Hamels tend to have success because they don’t rely on variables like their fielders. Ironically, Kendrick’s home run and walks allowed rates are pretty decent, but this low strikeout rate is going to come back to bite him one day, and it will be sooner than expected.

Tomorrow: I have no idea.

Labels: Hamels, Kenderick, Lieber, Moyer, Pitching, Rotation

Well, well, well … Look who is sitting in second place? The much-maligned, much-derided, much-ignored Philadelphia Phillies. Thanks to a catastrophic three-game sweep at the hands of the Minnesota Twins, the Atlanta Braves have tumbled out of second place and the Phillies have advanced to within two games of the slumping New York Mets, who have lost five games in a row and are 2-10 in the month of June. With the red-hot Yankees hosting the Mets in the Bronx this weekend, things are definitely looking up for the Phillies. This team shaved six and a half games off their deficit to the Mets in just two weeks. Heck, they could be sitting in first place on Monday morning. Time shall tell.

First thing’s first, the Phillies match up with the Detroit Tigers this weekend in what promises to be a bruising battle. The Tigers are a great team, loaded with pitching and hitting, every bit the equal of the ’06 team that made it to the World Series. Taking this series is going to be a tall order. Here are the match ups:

Confused about what I’m talking about? Here are the stats I refer to defined:
Isolated Power (ISO): .SLG - .BA = .ISO. Measures a player’s raw power by subtracting singles from their slugging percentage.
On-Base Percentage (OBP): How often a player gets on base. (H + BB + HBP) / (Plate Appearances)
Walks per plate appearance (BB/PA): BB / PA = .BB/PA Avg
Slugging Percentage (SLG): Total Bases / At-Bats = Slugging Percentage. Power at the plate.
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
K/9 – Strikeouts per nine innings: (K * 9) / IP
BB/9 – Walks per nine innings: (BB * 9) / IP
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.

Pitching … Tonight is Jeremy Bonderman vs. Jon Lieber. The Tigers hold a huge edge in this match up in many respects. Let’s start with the fact that Bonderman is 6-0 this season. That only tells part of the story. He’s striking out eight batters every nine innings (an exact 8.00 K/9), and his Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) ERA is a low, low, low 2.96. Bonderman is allowing just 1.75 walks per nine innings pitched, which is actually lower than Lieber (2.39), a well-known skinflint when it comes to allowing walks. Advantage: Tigers for this evening. Saturday night is Jamie Moyer vs. Andrew Miller. The rookie Tigers pitcher is doing well, but is nowhere near as good as his teammate, Bonderman. That said, Jamie Moyer has been struggling quite a big of late. His FIP has soared to 4.99 … Even so, I give the Phillies a slight edge.

Finally, on Sunday night the Phillies send Adam Eaton to square-off with 2006 AL Rookie of the Year and owner of a recent no-hitter, Justin Verlander. Verlander is actually nowhere near as good as his numbers suggest – his 2.79 ERA is actually concealing a 4.00 FIP because Verlander has given up a decent number of walks (3.21 BB/9) and has benefited from some absurdly strong defense behind him. Specifically, Tigers fielders have converted .753 of the balls put into play behind Verlander into outs. Not too shabby.

On the other hand, Verlander might get a bit of a surprise. Eaton has been pitching well and might actually out-duel Verlander. The Phillies won’t be sending the strongest and weakest portions of their rotation to the mound this weekend – Cole Hamels and Kyle Kendrick.

As a team the Tigers are an offensive juggernaut. They score nearly six runs a game (5.94), by far the best in the majors. They lead, by a wide margin I might add, the A.L. in Isolated Power at the plate (.190) and are the fourth-best team in the A.L. in On-Base Percentage. If the Phillies allow the Tigers to put men on base they well get burned. The Tigers are hitting a startling .328 with runners in scoring position (BA/RISP), by far the best in the majors (the A.L. average is .272).

Defensively the Tigers are average – their .697 Defense Efficiency Ratio (DER) is a little better than the A.L. average of .695. Their plus / minus rating as a team is -2. Their fielders do little to shield their pitchers, who aren’t quite as good as they were last season this year. The Tigers 4.72 FIP is worse than the league average (4.40) largely because the Tigers give up slightly more than the A.L. average in walks and home runs and don’t get nearly the same number of strikeouts that their A.L. compatriots do.

The Tigers offense vs. the Phillies offense ought to be a fun match up – while the Tigers lead the A.L. (and the MLB) in runs scored per game, so do the Phillies (5.04) lead the N.L. in runs scored. The Phillies are the best team in the N.L. in On-Base Percentage and one of the best in terms of Isolated Power at the plate. Not too shabby. Even BA/RISP, typically one of the Phillies weaknesses, is pretty o.k. this season. The Phillies are .258 vs. the league average of .257. Add in the fact that the Phillies are getting Ryan Howard back after he was missing and unhealthy even when in the lineup, and you have to figure that the Phillies are going to explode this month and next.

And that is a good thing, because the Phillies pitching and fielding are mediocre. The Phillies are +1 and their DER is belong the league average (.687 vs. .698). Their FIP is also below par: 4.59 to 4.16.

Expect to see a lot of high-scoring games this weekend. Saturday night, in particular, could be a 11-9 slugfest. I hope to see the Phillies come out on top and sit in first place on Monday, but I am projecting a 1-2 split in favor of the Tigers. See everyone on Monday!

Labels: Eaton, Howard, Lieber, Moyer, Pitching, Power-Hitting

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

With May and April in the bag the Phillies turn their gaze towards the month of June and the stretch run towards the All-Star Break. What does the Phillies schedule look like in the coming month?

The Phillies start a four-game series at home against the San Francisco Giants tonight, which runs to Monday afternoon. Tonight’s game marks the first of thirteen consecutive games for the Phillies, who then have to pack their bags on Monday night and journey north to New York to play the Mets in Queens for Tuesday. The Mets get the Phillies for a three-game set (June 5-7), before the Phillies journey westward to Kansas City to play a rematch of the 1980 World Series against the Royals (June 8-10). After that the Phillies go back home to play the White Sox in a three-game set on June 11-13.

After playing three games against the Tigers June 15-17, the Phillies go to beautiful Cleveland and get the Indians for three games on June 18-20.

Returning from Interleague play, the Phillies get to feast on some creampuffs called the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds at the end of the month before starting a four-game series with the Mets on Friday, June 29, which is a double-header … I don’t think that the month of June is particularly vital to the Phillies season as long as they do not collapse and utterly fall out of contention. Part of the issue, to me, is that the Phillies play 12 games against the American League this month, which means that the Phillies aren’t playing teams they are fighting over a division with or a wildcard slot with. In a playoff race you want to face-off with teams are in competing with because then you control your own fate.

Looking at the Phillies schedule it strikes me that the Phillies caught a break not having to play the Minnesota Twins and Johan Santana, but their A.L. Central enemies are tough: the Indians are 33-19 and the Tigers are 30-23. Neither of these teams are going to be pushovers. The White Sox are a little under .500 but they are a tough team loaded with offensive firepower. Hopefully the Royals (19-35) are going to be three easy wins.

I like the fact that the Phillies get games against a pair of terrible teams, the Cincinnati Reds (21-34) and the St. Louis Cardinals (22-29). The Phillies have had real success against the N.L. Central this season (9-4), so any and every game against the Central – probably the weakest division in baseball these days – is a good thing.

This weekend’s match-up against the Giants will be interesting, and when I say that I refer to the traveling freak-show that Barry Bonds pursuit of Hank Aaron has become. Thankfully Bonds won’t get a chance to break the record against the Phillies. I cannot believe that he’ll hit ten home runs this weekend, and in any case, I am sure that Charlie Manuel would prefer to intentionally walk Bonds rather than having the Phillies name etched in history as his victims.

The Giants themselves don’t look terribly imposing either – they are a sub-.500 team that aren’t particularly good any phase of the game. A 3-1 series victory is a possibility.

It is a pity that Monday’s game doesn’t match Barry Zito with Jamie Moyer. Instead, the Phillies send Jon Lieber to duel with Zito. I’d have loved to see two soft-throwing, fly-ball oriented lefties going at it.

Have a nice weekend everyone. Next week, in honor of the MLB Draft on Thursday, I’ll be looking at some minor leaguers in the Phillies system and well as providing a draft preview / general notes.

Labels: Lieber, Moyer

Entering this season the Phillies had been 14-5 against the Diamondbacks over the last three seasons (2004-2006) and hadn’t lost the season series to the D-backs since 2003. With a 1-4 record against them this year, that isn’t a possibility any longer. Last night’s 11-5 loss to the D-backs was a minor disaster for the team, which had been playing so good for so long. Alas, the Phillies are mired at .500 and sit a full eight games behind the New York Mets. It’s not quite time to start thinking about the wildcard, but …

Let’s just say that there was a lot to be discouraged about from last night:

-I am sure Ryan Howard will be fine, but the sight of him limping in the game wasn’t good and probably filled people with terror and dread.

-Jon Lieber surrendered five runs in his half of the game.

-The Phillies bullpen gave up another six runs, but none of them were earned. Going into last night’s game the Phillies had give up twelve unearned runs. Last night alone they surrendered six. Ouch. I think someone needs to chat with the Phillies about their defense, because they are playing terrible in the field again. Their Defense Efficiency Ratio (DER) is amongst the worst in the N.L. and they have committed a boat-load of errors. I am unimpressed.

Tonight is Jamie Moyer vs. Randy Johnson, a rematch of the pitching matchup from the Phillies 9-3 win over the D-backs on May 9, the Phillies sole win over the D-backs this season. Let’s hope this game goes as well as that one did.

Labels: Fielding, Howard, Lieber, Moyer

When Jamie Moyer broke into the Major Leagues in 1986 with the Chicago Cubs, future teammate Cole Hamels was just three years old. Ronald Reagan was President of the United States and a massive wall in Berlin divided the free world from that of the oppressed. Twenty-one years, 3,408 innings, 527 starts and 220 victories later, there he will be tonight, taking his place in the rotation again to throw to the Atlanta Braves. The Incomparable Jamie Moyer, about to pitch another game.


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).
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.
G/F – Groundball-to-Flyball ratio.
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

When the Phillies traded for Jamie Moyer in September of 2006, I was extremely skeptical about the move. The Phillies had a decent rotation and have a lot of pitchers on their way up to join the team. Why bring in this 43-year old pitcher from the Mariners who was in his 40’s and had a record of just 6-12?

Turns out that Pat Gillick was, with respect to this decision, much wiser than myself and the rest of the Phillies blogging universe. Bringing Jamie Moyer on-board was a very smart move. Very smart. Let’s start with the veteran component. Moyer has been around for 21 seasons and has hurled for six teams before joining the Phillies. He pitched in the playoffs for the Mariners in 1997 and 2001, rare experience on a Phillies team whose best pitchers, Brett Myers and Cole Hamels, have never been in the post-season. Hamels in particular has apparently sought out Moyer’s advice and has been considered to be his protégé.

Moyer wasn’t a slouch on the field either. Moyer started eight games for the Phillies in 2006, going 5-2 with a 4.03 ERA. Thus far this season Moyer is 4-3 in his eight starts with a 4.37 ERA. Take a quick look:

2006 / 2007
ERA: 4.03 / 4.37
FIP: 4.64 / 4.60
HR/9: 1.40 / 0.83
BB/9: 1.22 / 2.82
K/9: 4.56 / 5.30
K/BB: 3.71 / 1.88

So what is Moyer’s secret? His secret is the reason I wonder why he even got into the major leagues to begin with – unlike Cole Hamels, with his nasty fastball – Jamie Moyer confounds the opposition with some of the slowest fastballs in baseball along with changeups galore. In an age where you can’t attract the attention of major league scouts unless your fastball tops out at 95 mph, Jamie Moyer makes a living throwing lots of off-speed pitches. In his Historical Baseball Abstract, James placed Moyer in the Warren Spahn Group of “Easy-Motion” Left Handers comparable to Spahn, Tom Glavine and others. (See, page 896.) Moyer and Glavine and the rest are lefties that relied on precision and skill more than brawn to get the job done. According to the 2006 Bill James Handbook, Jamie Moyer had the lowest percentage of fastballs thrown (40.1%) of any AL pitcher except knuckle-baller Tim Wakefield (11.9%) in 2005. Moyer’s average fastball that season was also slowest of any AL pitcher (81.8 mph) except the aforementioned Wakefield (76.1 mph). He threw 1,169 pitches of less than 80 mph, third in the AL after Barry Zito (1,205) and Wakefield (2,305). The numbers from 2004 tell pretty much the same story: Moyer was second to Wakefield in throwing pitches under 80 (1,448 to Wakefield’s 1,750), he threw the second-slowest fastball (81.6 mph) to Wakefield (75.9 mph), and he led the A.L. in changeups with 31%. Just 45.7% of his pitches were fastballs, the fourth-lowest in the A.L. Interestingly, his then-and-now teammate Freddy Garcia was also an infrequent fastball pitcher, throwing just 45% of his pitches as fastballs: 20% of Garcia’s pitches were sliders and 16.2% were curveballs in 2004.

If you are wondering how Moyer ranked in 2006, I haven’t a clue because Moyer threw just 160 innings with the Mariners and 51 & 1/3 with the Phillies, falling short of the 162 needed innings to qualify in either league. With Barry Zito now a Giant I am certain that Moyer will be challenged as king of the off-speed pitch in the N.L.

Jamie Moyer is an illustration of the principals that I thought might lead Jon Lieber to have success as a Phillie: batters want to see fastballs generally. Pitchers with fastballs get a lot of strikeouts, but they also surrender lots of home runs. Pitchers that rely on changeups and sliders tend to get a lot of batted balls that stay in the park. To my disappointment, Lieber has struggled in that role with the Phillies. He was a pitcher who relied heavily on sliders to get outs – in 2006, for example, 35.4% of Lieber’s pitches were sliders, the highest such percentage in the major leagues. Lieber’s heavy slider ought to have been difficult to hit for a home run, and yet teams hit 1.44 home runs off Lieber every nine innings he pitched in 2006 and 1.36 in 2005. So much for that theory.

Moyer has been having remarkable success though. If you add up his 2006 and 2007 stats so far as a Phillie, he’s surrendered 1.10 Home Runs per nine innings, 2.04 walks, and 4.94 strikeouts. His 2.41 K/BB ratio is pretty darn good for a control pitcher. How is he doing it? Unlike Lieber, Moyer is getting guys to pop-up weakly and ground-out occasionally. The interesting thing to me was that in 2004 and 2005 Jamie Moyer had one of the lowest groundball-to-flyball ratios in the A.L.: 0.91 and 0.90 respectively. Theoretically, a pitcher like Moyer ought to be a dead man at Citizens. In 2004 Eric Milton, in his sole campaign as a Phillie, had the worst groundball-flyball ratio in the N.L. and surrendered a whopping 43 home runs (23 on the road, so don’t blame Citizens … I’m talking to you, Billy Wagner). So far this year Jamie Moyer has a 0.79 G/F ratio and yet he’s doing pretty well. Moyer, unlike Lieber, is that rare pitcher who can help his fielders get to balls put into play. According to page 92 of Baseball Between the Numbers (written by the staff of Baseball Prospectus), Moyer is that rare pitcher who does influence the balls put into play and deserves credit for the performance his defense turns in. Last season Moyer saw the fielders behind him convert .753 of the balls put into play into outs. The Phillies team Defense Efficiency Ratio (DER) was an absurdly poor .683 in 2005. This season the Phillies are struggling again in the field, with a .686 DER, while Moyer once more is watching his fielders convert .753 of the balls put into play into outs.

Oh, and Moyer is leading the Phillies in Quality Starts with seven in nine games started ... His disasterous start on Saturday against the Blue Jays doesn't qualify, as a quality start is a start where the pitcher goes at least six innings and gives up three or fewer earned runs.

Moyer has clearly been a huge boost to the Phillies battered rotation and has helped the team contend this season. He is 44 this season, but I hope that he can pitcher until he’s 50, because the positive effect he’s had on the Phillies rotation cannot be understated. I can't wait to watch him tonight as he strides to the mound and spends the game confounding Chipper Jones with his changeups and barely-over-the-speed-limit fastballs.

See everyone on Tuesday!

Labels: Hamels, Lieber, Moyer, Pitching, Rotation

When the Phillies signed Jon Lieber to a three-year, $21 million dollar deal in December of 2004, I was surprised and somewhat impressed by the deal. At the time I wrote:

Ed Wade & Co. probably over-paid for Lieber, but I think they might be getting a decent-to-very good pitcher… This guy doesn't give free passes batters, which is a quality I like seeing in a Phillies pitcher.

As a Yankee in 2004, Lieber allowed 0.91 walks per nine innings pitched (BB/9). He actually allowed fewer walks (18) than Home Runs (20) as a Yankee and went 14-8 with a 4.33 ERA for the Bronx Bombers. What really grabbed my attention was the fact that Lieber’s Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) ERA was just 3.77. The lousy Yankees defense – .677 DER – turned in behind Lieber cost him some runs. Generally, Lieber was a pitcher who didn’t give up walks or home runs, and while he may not have gotten many strikeouts, he kept the ball on the ground and gave the fielders a chance to make some outs. Lieber’s 1.43 ground-ball / fly-ball ratio was one of the best in the majors. I looked at the Phillies need for a ground-ball pitcher, their terrific defensive alignment, and thought that Lieber would be a good fit.


Confused about what I’m talking about? 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.
G/F – Groundball-to-Flyball ratio.
HR/9 – Home Runs allowed per nine innings: (HR * 9) / IP
K/9 – Strikeouts per nine innings: (K * 9) / IP
BB/9 – Walks per nine innings: (BB * 9) / IP


Lieber’s first year as a Phillie was interesting … after a rough start prior to the All-Star Break (8-8, 5.09), Lieber settled down and seemed to adjust to being the Philles workhorse quite well, going 9-5 with a 3.28 ERA down the stretch. Lieber had surrendered 23 home runs, 26 walks and got 69 strikeouts in 111 innings of work. In the second half, Lieber gave up just 10 home runs, 15 walks and got 80 strikeouts in virtually the same number of innings. Hope were high that Lieber’s 2006 campaign would be just as good. It was not to be … After a terrible 4-8 start, Lieber missed the entire month of June and finished the season 9-11 with a 4.93 ERA. With the decline in the Phillies defense (in Lieber’s case the DER behind him went from .722 to .697), Lieber's method of getting hitters to ground into double plays and routine 6-3 groundouts proved fatal to his success on the mound.


Moved to the bullpen to make room for Adam Eaton and Freddy Garcia, Lieber hurled just two and one-thirds of an inning before returning to the rotation when the team sent Brett Myers to the bullpen to bolster a terrible meltdown the team had in the ‘pen. In stepped Lieber and he immediately went to work, going 2-2 with a 2.50 ERA in six starts for the Phillies. Simply put, Lieber has been spectacular since he moved from the bullpen to the rotation, almost an entirely different pitcher from the veteran who has been such a disappointment until now … As I write this Jon Lieber has the lowest ERA of any Phillies starting pitcher. His stats are astonishing:

ERA: 2.50
WHIP: 1.13
HR/9: 0.91
BB/9: 2.27
K/9: 5.67

Are the numbers real or a mirage? Credit lays with the Phillies defense, or random luck, depending on one’s point of view … If you want to credit the Phillies defense, the story goes from here: the Phillies are playing superb defense behind Lieber these days. The team DER behind Lieber is an astonishing .734, .037 higher than it was last season and higher even than in 2005. As a consequence, the Phillies defenders are masking some ordinary stats from Lieber. His walks allowed are actually far worse than in seasons past (1.69 BB/9 in 2005, and 1.29 BB/9 in 2006), and his strikeouts are pretty much in-line with the rest of his career stats. For the first time in years, Lieber’s ERA is actually better than his FIP ERA: 3.00 to 4.18. In previous seasons, Lieber always had an ERA that lagged his FIP:

2004: -0.56
2005: -0.07
2006: -0.33
2007: +1.18

No longer. If you subscribe to the belief that a pitcher has no impact whatsoever on his defense behind him, and that what players behind a pitcher do is utterly random, then Lieber hasn’t improved at all … On the other hand, if you believe that sometimes a pitcher impacts what players do behind him, then there are a few things to note. First is that Lieber is giving his fielders tremendous opportunities in the field. Consider how often the Phillies have been turning the double play behind Lieber …

Double Plays Induced per Nine Innings:
2004: 1.069
2005: 0.577
2006: 0.750
2007: 1.929

That is a substantial jump and not easily explained away by not giving Lieber credit. . His 1.43 ground-ball / fly-ball ratio in 2004 was clearly a factor that impressed the Phillies and led to his massive contract in 2004. This year has been the best year of Lieber’s life in terms of inducing grounders: 1.78, far better than his 1.29 in 2005 and 1.23 in 2006 … in fact, he hasn’t been this good at it since 1997, when his G/F ratio was 1.81.


Importantly, Lieber has also taken steps to lower the number of home runs he’s allowed, his main Achilles Heel as a Phillie. His slugging percentage allowed (.410) is the lowest he’s had since he was a member of the Chicago Cubs in 2001 (.401). By not allowing the long ball, he’s really giving the Phillies a chance to win:

HR/9:
2005: 1.36
2006: 1.44
2007: 1.07

So I guess it is all a matter of perspective. Personally, I want to think that Lieber has improved a lot and is going to keep pitching like this. My gut tells me that Lieber will regress to the mean as the season wears on and that his ERA will climb towards 4.00. That may happen, but at the moment he’s turning in a great performance. Let’s sit back and watch…

Labels: Lieber, Pitching, Rotation

For the next few days we'll be talking about pitching, and today we are setting our gaze on Brett Myers and the Phillies bullpen. As I suspected when the season started, Tom Gordon struggled as the Phillies closer and left the team in the lurch, without a reliable option to close games down. What would Pat Gillick and Charlie Manuel do? Do they trade Jon Lieber for a closer? Move Ryan Madson over to the spot? The Phillies surprised me by opting to shift Lieber, who had been trade bait for months since the team signed Freddy Garcia and Adam Eaton, to the starting rotation and move Brett Myers to the bullpen.

Confused about what I’m talking about? Here are the stats I refer to defined:
ERA – Earned Run Average: (Earned Runs * 9) / IP = ERA
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


It was a move that caught me and every other observer by surprise. Prior to this season Myers had pitched in relief in a single game in 2004 while making 140 starts. The last two seasons he had rebounded from his disasterous 2004 campaign (11-11, 5.52 ERA, 1.58 HR/9), going 13-8, 3.72, 1.30 in 2005 and 12-7, 3.91, 1.32 in 2006. Myers was mentioned as a potential Cy Young candidate and he deserved the praise. Myers was durable (103.7 pitches per start in 2006, eighth-best in the N.L.), and had a lot of the tools that I think made for a successful pitcher at Citizens Bank Ballpark – namely, he didn’t rely on his fastball to get the job done. In 2006 Myers had the ninth-lowest percentage of pitches as fastballs, just 49.2%. Myers is a curveball artist. Here, according to the last three Bill James Handbooks, are Myers percentage of pitches that were curves and how they ranked him amongst N.L. pitchers:

2006: 20.7% / 3rd
2005: 20.4% / 4th
2004: 25.4% / 4th

Myers got good defense from the fielders (.707, .724 and .700 DER in 2004, 2005 and 2006), and turned himself into a strikeout pitcher, going from 5.93 K/9 in 2004 to 8.69 and 8.59 in 2005 and 2006. Myers also cut down on the walks and went from a roughly 2-to-1 K/BB ratio to 3-to-1. The slugging percentage against dropped from .490 in 2004 to .410 and .431. Myers looked like a good bet for the Cy Young. Though hot-shot Cole Hamels got a lot of ink from the press, Myers got the start on Opening Day. He was seen as the team’s number one pitcher in the eyes of the brass.

Then April happened. Myers started the season with a good seven inning outing on Opening Day that ought to have been a win for the Phillies, surrendering just three runs in seven and two-thirds of an inning, while getting nine strikeouts and two walks. Myers was then badly beaten in his next two starts, allowing thirteen runs in just seven and two-thirds of an inning. The losses, coming during the Phillies terrible stumble at the start of the season, sent Myers packing to the bullpen while Jon Lieber was summoned to replace him. After being used as a set-up man following Ryan Madson’s struggles, Myers was tasked to replace the injured Gordon, who had blown three of his eight save opportunities, and had a 4.82 ERA.

Since becoming the team’s closer after May 1, Myers has done a nice job, converting six of seven save opportunities … his sole blown save turned into a win when Carlos Ruiz hit his dramatic bottom-of-the-ninth home run against the Brewers on May 15th. His ERA as a reliever is just 1.02. In seventeen and two-thirds innings, Myers got 26 strikeouts to five walks and allowed a single home run (May 15th, vs. the Brewers). If Myers keeps this up, he could be a Cy Young candidate anyway, just as a closer. 35-40 saves is a distinct possibility. The obvious parallel here is to John Smoltz, the terrific Braves hurler who won 157 games for the Braves from 1988 to 2000 then shifted to the bullpen in 2001. From 2001 to 2004 Smoltz saved 154 of 168 games for the Braves, or almost 92% of his opportunities. Like Myers, Smoltz saw his already good ERA drop with his move to the ‘pen, from 3.19 in 2000 to 3.25 in 2002 and 1.12 in 2003, when he saved 45 of 49 games and 2.76 in 2004, when he saved 44 of 49 games. Smoltz returned to the rotation and saw his ERA rise in 2005 and 2006, but he’s still a dominant starter. Obviously the Phillies would like to see Myers make the same transition.

Which brings up an interesting question. How do the Phillies use Myers? The Braves used Smoltz as a ninth inning man. 75% of the time Smoltz’s appearances ended in fifteen pitches or less in 2004, for example. As sabremetricians have complained, teams somewhat misuse their closers these days, employing them as ninth-inning guys only when the threat might be in the seventh or eighth inning. Argues Keith Woolner in Baseball Between the Numbers:

During the “stopper” era of the 1970s, it was common to see a relief ace such as Rollie Fingers or Goose Gossage come in as early as the sixth inning to halt a nascent rally. That was the smart way to go. Focusing on situational leverage, rather than the accumulation of easy ninth-inning saves, is the best way to get the most out of a relief ace.

(See, Chapter 2.2, “Are Teams Letting Their Closers Go to Waste?”, page 73.) Myers is a durable hurler who pitched 176, 215 & 1/3 and 198 innings the last three years. He’ll probably log 70-80 innings as a relief artist in 2007, which is a waste. Why not let Myers close-out games by starting the eighth and pitching the ninth? After Cole Hamels goes seven innings I’d prefer to see Brett Myers enter the game than to see Ryan Madson try to bridge Hamels and Myers terrific skills for an inning. It makes more sense to see Myers throw 120-150 innings as a closer than see him enter the game to record a blah 1-2-3 ninth inning.

I think credit for the Phillies recent surge lies, in no small part, with Myers. Having such a smart and determined pitcher available to close out a game is giving the rejuvenated starting rotation a lot of confidence. They know a good pitching performance won’t be wasted on the Phillies struggling bullpen. I’d like to see the Phillies utilize Myers more aggressively though. Don’t make Cole Hamels wonder as he pitches whether he needs to save himself for the eighth inning because otherwise he’s handing the game to Ryan Madson or some other struggling set-up man who might lose it or turn it into a no-decision. Use Myers as a real relief artist, not a ninth-inning mercenary.

Labels: Bullpen, Gordon, Hamels, Lieber, Madson, Myers, Pitching