A CITIZEN'S BLOG

Everyone's throats sore from booing J.D. Drew last night? I remember booing Drew back in '99 at the Vet when he hit that home run. Good times. Alas, last night's 7-4 loss to the Red Sox drops the Phillies a little back in the division race. This weekend: the Angels of Los Angeles or Anaheim or California home to town, followed by a trip to the West Coast to play the A's. I'll preview both series.

Right now I am working on a book about the Wiz Kids, that lovable collection of young Phillies players who captured the 1950 pennant then settled into baseball obscurity after the team’s chronic refusal to sign African-American ballplayers caused the team to remain an also-ran. I ran a big series on the Wiz Kids back in ’06 and I immediately thought about relief pitcher extraordinaire Jim Konstanty, who won the 1950 N.L. MVP award on the strength of his amazing relief performances for the team that season.

For those not familiar with the tale of the Wiz Kids, Konstanty went 16-7 with a 2.66 ERA (that’s an ERA+ of 152) and 22 saves that season. Konstanty’s 22 saves were 14 more than the Pirates Bill Werle. Konstanty also pitched in 74 of the Phillies 152 games (that’s 48% of them) and finished 62 (41%). In an era where the starting pitcher went the distance in two of every five starts (there were 498 complete games in 1236 games that season), Konstanty was the major reason why the Phillies went 30-16 in one-run games and bested the Dodgers for the pennant, the sole pennant (or division title) the team won between ’15 and ’76.

I was thinking about Konstanty when I sat down and looked over the stats from the Phillies bullpen this season. I haven’t been watching Baseball Tonight of late, but I hope that the Baseball Tonight team has commented on the Phillies astonishing bullpen strength this season. People looking for a reason why the Phillies went 13-4 down the stretch last season and best the Mets for the 2007 N.L. East title can look at the bullpen. People looking for a reason why the Phillies are 42-31 and sit three games ahead of the Marlins (and six and a half ahead of the Braves and Mets) in the N.L. East race can look at the bullpen once more. People looking for a reason why the Phillies will win the N.L. East again in 2008 can look at the bullpen.

How good is the Phillies bullpen? Well, they have an ERA of 2.58, the best in the National League (that’s an ERA+ of 147), to go with 20 saves in 26 opportunities (fourth in the N.L., with a 77% save percentage, which is best in the N.L.) and a sterling 17-9 record. The Phillies relief corps has the lowest OPS in the N.L. at .633.

Want to compare that to last season? Last year the Phillies ‘pen had an ERA of 4.41 (that’s an ERA+ of 92) and an OPS of .764. The Phillies leaky bullpen blew one in every three save opportunities.

So how are they doing it? Interestingly, the Phillies bullpen ranks below the N.L. averages in strikeouts per nine innings (7.28 K/9 vs. 7.44 K/9) and in strikeout-to-walk ratio (1.84 vs. 1.94). Initially I was tempted to dismiss the bullpen’s success on the Phillies offense: the Phillies propensity towards late-game comebacks is a big reason why the Phillies bullpen ranks second in the N.L. in run support at 4.61 (just 0.05 under than the Cubs), but that doesn’t explain why the Phillies aren’t allowing many walks or home runs. Is it good pitching? Or is it good defense?

As Bill James noted in his final Baseball Abstract in 1988, much of what we think of as good pitching is, in reality, good defense. To be sure, the performance the Phillies relief corps is putting in right now is partly thanks to good defense. But most of it is because the Phillies pitchers aren’t giving guys anything to hit. Interesting thing I observed, when looking at the Phillies stats, is how the Phillies relief guys seemed to go deeper into the counts than the starters do. (I’m cautious reading too much into this because that might just be the nature of the beast: you’ve got to be careful when you inherit runners on base. More on this later.)

Of the twelve guys who have taken the mound for the Phillies in 2008, the five starters rank second (Kyle Kendrick), third (Jamie Moyer), fourth (Brett Myers), fifth (Cole Hamels) and seventh (Adam Eaton) in fewest pitches per plate appearance. Rudy Seanez ranks sixth, Chad Durbin ranks eighth, J.C. Romero ranks ninth, Ryan Madson ranks tenth, Tom Gordon ranks eleventh, and Brad Lidge ranks twelfth in pitches per plate appearance. Here are the numbers and their rank amongst the ninety relief pitchers who have tossed 20+ innings:

P/PA:
Lidge: 4.00 (21st)
Gordon: 3.95 (28th)
Madson: 3.94 (30th)
Romero: 3.94 (31st)
Durbin: 3.81 (56th)
Seanez: 3.79 (61st)

Confused about what I’m talking about? Here are the stats I refer to defined with respect to pitching stats:
Earned Run Average (ERA): Runs Allowed * 9 / Innings Pitched = What a pitcher would give up if they hurled a nine-inning game.
Defense Efficiency Ratio (DER): Balls Put Into Play that are converted into outs.
Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP): (((13 * HR) + (3 * BB) – (2 * K)) / IP) + League Factor. Basically a measure of how a pitcher would have done if he had an average defense behind him.
Home Runs per 9 Innings (HR/9): (HR * 9) / IP
Walks per 9 Innings (BB/9): (BB * 9) / IP
Strikeouts per 9 Innings (K/9): (K * 9) / IP

Looking at Romero, who threw a lot of pitches per batter when he joined the Phillies last season (4.2 P/PA), I was struck about Bill James efforts to classify pitchers by types and his assessment of the Nolan Ryan-type of pitcher: the guy who never gave you anything to hit and so had a lot of walks, a lot of strikeouts, never gave up home runs and threw a lot of pitches over the course of a start. The relief corps largely seems to follow this pattern: while the average N.L. bullpen gives up 0.91 home runs per nine innings, the Phillies gave up 11 in 209 innings – or 0.47 HR/9. While the average N.L. bullpen gives up 3.89 walks per nine innings, the Phillies gave up 92 walks in those 209 innings – or 3.96 BB/9. That careful nipping at the plate is the reason why the Phillies have had a lot of success coming from their ‘pen.

Lidge, who has converted all eighteen of his saves after blowing eight in twenty-seven tries last season, has been fantastic this season. In 29 innings of work Lidge has yet to surrender a home run and has fanned 37 hitters, or 11.48 K/9. His 0.93 ERA is absurdly low and compares well to his predecessor as the Astros and Phillies closer, Billy Wagner (2.17 ERA, five blown saves in twenty tries).

The biggest surprise, to me, has been Chad Durbin, the former Detroit Tiger who challenged Adam Eaton for the #5 slot in the rotation before moving to the bullpen and becoming the Phillies bullpen workhorse. Durbin has surrendered just one home run in the forty and two-thirds of an inning he has worked this season. He’s pitching nowhere near as well as his 1.55 ERA indicates (his Fielding Independent Pitching, or FIP, ERA is 3.20, which is actually second-best on the team after Lidge at 1.75), but he’s pitching very well. Despite pitching in a ballpark that makes pitchers very vulnerable to home runs, Durbin has found success with a modest 1.11 groundball-to-flyball ratio (G/F), especially compared with the more groundball-oriented pitchers on the staff like Seanez (2.64 G/F), Romero (2.10 G/F), Lidge (1.38 G/F), and Madson (1.29 G/F).

I’m sure that there are pundits and bloggers out there who dismiss the Phillies success and believe that it can’t last, but I’m reminded of how unlikely Konstanty’s success was in 1950. He had pitched just 128 innings in the majors before joining the Phillies in 1947 and had meager success. When the sportswriters compiled their list of MVP candidates in the preseason, it is safe to assume he appeared on nobody’s list, and yet there he was helping the under-manned Phillies steal the pennant with timely pitching. Konstanty was the consensus pick as the MVP by the sportswriters.

Nobody respects the Phillies ‘pen, especially when compared with the Braves or Mets, but Chad Durbin, Ryan Madson and J.C. Romero are going to be the ones popping the champagne come October, not Billy Wagner.

Labels: Bullpen, Durbin, Gordon, Lidge, Madson, Pitching, Romero, Seánez

Last night's 9-5 victory over the Rockies was sweet revenge. Too bad we couldn't move that game to last October ... Another rough start for Kyle Kendrick though: 5 IP, 5 ER, 2 K, 2 BB, 2 HR. Kendrick's style, allowing the hitters to make contact and relying on the Phillies fielders, is starting to really bite him in the a--, because now when hitters make contact they are launching home runs. He also needs to avoid issuing these walks. You can get by without getting a lot of strikeouts, but nobody can survive a 1:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, much less Kendrick's 0.72 K/BB ratio (11 walks, 8 strikeouts) ... On the plus side, the rest of the Phillies pitching staff was fine. The relief corps threw the last four innings and allowed just one hit, zero runs, and got five strikeouts.

We're roughly one-eighth of the way through the 2008 baseball season and I thought that I might comment on some things are surprising to me and perhaps to others as well. We'll start with ...

The Not-So-Improved Nats. The Nationals, supposedly new and improved with the acquisitions of Lasting Milledge, Paul Lo Duca, and Elijah Dukes and their new multi-million dollar digs in our Nation's Capitol were supposed to compete. Instead Dukes really hasn't played, Lo Duca stinks (.200 Batting Average), Milledge has been ok (.345 OBP) and superstar Ryan Zimmerman has struggled (2 home runs, 7 RBI, .244 OBP). Strike that. Struggled badly. Meanwhile Nats pitchers have been as bad as advertised, with a 4.73 ERA.

Thunder from the Desert. The 13-5 Diamondbacks are easily the best team in the National League right now and probably in baseball. Forget the Mets, the D-Backs might have bought themselves a pennant when they teamed Dan Haren (3-0, 1.80 ERA, 4 Quality Starts, 6.83 K/9) with Brandon Webb (4-0, 1.86 ERA, 4 Quality Starts, 6.84 ERA). Along with Micah Owings (3-0, 2.29 ERA, 3 Quality Starts, 8.69 K/9), the D-Backs are easily the most deadly team in the majors in pitching. Their offensive unit is playing well too: they've scored 116 runs, which puts them on pace to score 900 or so. Eric Byrnes (.908 OPS) is great, but Justin Upton (5 Home Runs, 13 RBI, 1.068 OPS) has been fantastic.

Injuries. At the moment the Phillies feature a lot of players sitting on the Disabled List. Jimmy Rollins, Shane Victorino and Chris Snelling are the notables. Snelling himself, ironically, had been recalled from Lehigh Valley to fill-in for Victorino.

Speed. Thus far in 2008, the Phillies have stolen eight of eleven bases in twenty games, a pretty lethargic total for a team that really cut-loose in 2007, stealing 138 bases in 157 attempts, a success rate of 87.9%. The 138 steals were second-best in the National League after the Mets 200. The Phillies also led the N.L. in triples with 41. Like many sabremetricians, I am distainful of the "small ball"-types that chirp about how teams have to manufacture runs with bunts and steals and the like to score runs. I am a big believer in the idea that the home run is the most efficient means of scoring runs and winning baseball games. However, I do credit the resurgence in interest in speed with playing a major factor in the Phillies 2007 campaign for the N.L. East crowd. Under the careful instruction of First Base Coach Davey Lopes, the Phillies were faster on the bases in 2007. Jimmy Rollins hit 20 triples and stole 41 bases. Victorino hit 3 triples and stole 37 bases in 41 tries. Michael Bourn hit 3 triples and stole 18 bases in 19 tries. That extra-dimension of speed played a major factor in helping the Phillies win the N.L. East.

Fast forward to 2008. In the off-season Davey Lopes was diagnosed with cancer and is currently undergoing treatment. Since undergoing surgery on March 17th he hasn't been with the team and isn't expected to return until May. The team dealt Michael Bourn to the Houston Astros as part of the Brad Lidge / Eric Bruntlett deal. As an Astro, Bourn has successfully stolen eleven of eleven bases, though his absurdly low batting average (.211) constrains his effectiveness. With Jimmy Rollins and Victorino out of the lineup with injuries, the Phillies are left without any major weapons on the bases. Thus far in 2008 they've stolen eight of eleven bases and have hit 2 triples in twenty games. At their current pace the Phillies will hit half as many triples as they hit last year and will steal just 65 bases, or roughly half what they did in 2007.

Power. Some idiot sniped at me when I did a talk-back for another blog about a prediction I had made that Chase Utley was capable of making a run at the triple crown. Apparently this guy thought I was an idiot for believing that Chase Utley could out-homer David Wright, Ryan Howard, Prince Fielder and the rest. Well ... I looked at the numbers this morning and Chase Utley leads the major leagues with nine home runs. He's also hitting .356 and has 18 RBI (the N.L. leader has 19) ... Pat Burrell has been great too, having hit seven home runs and nineteen RBI. Burrell's 15 walks also give him an astonishing .476 OBP to go along with all of that power ... Chris Coste has made the most of his playing time and owns the team's best OPS: 1.205. What really impresses me about Coste is that he's drawn four walks and has struckout just twice. He's really making a powerful argument that the Phillies ought to play him more and make him their #1 pinch-hitter ... The Phillies are really packing a punch this season. They've hit 33 home runs so far and their team isolated power at the plate is a robust .200 ... Isolated Power is where you eliminate singles from slugging percentage by subtracting batting average from slugging percentage ... I am only concerned that their power is going for naught as they have a pedestrian .337 OBP, which is just seventh in the N.L. As a consequence they've scored just 94 runs to the D-Backs 120.

Pitching. I'm not saying that the Phillies pitchers are as good as the D-Backs, but the team ERA os 3.61 is very, very respectable and suggests that the Phillies are making strides. The rotation is pretty predictable: Hamels (2-2, 1.86 ERA) and Myers (2-1, 3.96 ERA) are both terrific, while Kendrick (1-2, 5.59 ERA) is struggling and Adam Eaton (0-0, 4.74 ERA) and Jamie Moyer (1-1, 4.79 ERA) have both been solid. In Eaton's case, "solid" is a major improvement. What is really startling to me is how well the bullpen has done. Rudy Seanez, Brad Lidge and J.C. Romero all own ERAs of 0.00, and Chad Durbin's 0.64 ERA is right there with them. I'm pleasantly surprised.

Labels: Bourn, Burrell, Durbin, Eaton, Hamels, Howard, Kenderick, Lidge, Moyer, Myers, Pitching, Rollins, Romero, Seánez, Snelling, Speed, State of the Phillies, Utley, Victorino

I wanted to take another look at the Phillies pitching and was casting around for ideas when I decided to look at Pitching Runs Created (PRC). PRC is a stat developed by The Hardball Times (THT) David Glassko to get a universal baseline for how a pitcher performs. The idea of PRC is to give you a means to compare the contributions of pitchers as they compare to hitters. (see, Dave's article on PRC.)

I’ve dismissed PRC in the past (see, my review of THT’s Baseball Annual), stating that I didn’t understand how it works and what it is supposed to measure. I suppose that my real issue is that it seemed like an attempt to graft a hitters stat, or a hitters measurement, onto a pitcher. I’ve decided to give PRC a chance and wanted to see how and what it turned up in looking at the Phillies stats.

In applying PRC, I elected to try and come up with some way to smooth out the numbers to compare everyone to everyone. I rarely post Runs Created for hitters without noting what their Runs Created per 27 Outs were: ((RC / Outs) * 27) = RC/27. I decided to take PRC, divide it by innings pitched, and post PRC per 200 Innings pitched. 200 Innings, of course, being the number the workhorse on a team’s pitching staff will hurl in a season.

Cole Hamels, for example, had 101 PRC in 183 & 1/3 innings pitched, so: ((101 PRC / 183 & 1/3 IP) * 200 IP) = 110.2 PRC/200.

So let’s turn our attention towards the Phillies …

PRC/200:

Starters:

Hamels: 110.2

Kendrick: 82.6

Lohse: 75.4

Lieber: 71.8

Moyer: 68.2

Garcia: 62.1

Eaton: 53.2

Not surprisingly, PRC rates Hamels as the strongest of the Phillies starting pitchers and gives a big edge to Kyle Kendrick, who had a nice season with the Phillies despite posting some pedestrian strikeout numbers (3.8 K/9). Also, not surprisingly, Adam Eaton rates dead-last on the list, even worse than Freddy Garcia. The real surprise to me is Jamie Moyer, who actually led the Phillies in innings pitched with 199 and one-third of an inning, rates so poorly. I like Moyer so much as a pitcher

Let’s go back to Hamels. First, let’s compare PRC/200 in ’07 (110.2) to ’06 (93.72). Hamels obviously improved, but I think those numbers go to illustrate what a strong debut Hamels had in 2006 to begin with. Next, I compared Hamels with some of the top pitchers in the National League. Hamels rates very well:

PRC/200:

Jake Peavy: 128.1

Cole Hamels: 110.2

Brandon Webb: 109.2

John Smoltz: 108.9

Roy Oswalt: 103.8

Brad Penny: 103.8

Aaron Harang: 102.8

Tim Hudson: 96.3

Carlos Zambrano: 91.5

What caught my eye was the fact that Hamels actually rates better under this scale than Webb, the 2006 Cy Young Award winner and 2007 consensus runner-up to Jake Peavy. Hamels, you’ll recall, tied for sixth in the Cy Young voting, just getting a handful of votes, behind Brad Penny, Aaron Harang and Carlos Zambrano, tied with Smoltz and Jose Valverde, a relief pitcher with the Diamondbacks (PRC/200: 136.9).

Valverde’s numbers raise an interesting issue. Does PRC rate relief pitchers too high? I’ve noticed that a lot of relievers rate higher than I’d expect. Billy Wagner: 128.8 PRC/200. Francisco Cordero: 123.2. Trevor Hoffman: 101.2. Now let’s turn our attention to the Phillies:

Bullpen:

Romero: 225.9

Madson: 117.9

Myers: 96.1

Gordon: 80.0

Condrey: 64.0

Alfonseca: 60.0

Geary: 59.4

Mesa: 46.2

I think my theory is borne out a little here. Does anyone really feel that Ryan Madson was a better pitcher than Cole Hamels? That he’s more effective? I know that starters and relievers do different things, but I find it hard to believe that Madson out-pitched Cole Hamels. But, I’ll keep an open mind.

Moving along … How great was J.C. Romero’s campaign in 2007? After being cast-off by the Red Sox, Romero hooked up with the Phillies, pitched in fifty-one games, finishing with a 1.24 ERA. He allowed just one home run in thirty-six innings.

Any thoughts? Comments?

Labels: Bullpen, Hamels, Kenderick, Moyer, Pitching, Romero, 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

With the winter meetings coming up, I think you can expect some wheeling and dealing, in part because everyone needs pitching and the market for pitchers is pretty thin. Who wants to spend $10+ mil on Carlos Silva (13-14, 4.19 ERA)? This is going to be a pretty active trade market.

So far the most active team has been the Anaheim Angels, who continue to vastly over-pay for talent, swapping their Gold Glove shortstop to the White Sox for solid-but-unspectacular pitcher Jon Garland (10-13, 4.23 ERA) and paying $18 million bucks a year for the next five years to Torii Hunter, a talented outfielder whose career might be in decline and certainly isn’t worth $18 mil. I suppose that you can do so when your owner is willing to shell out $120-$140 million bucks a year. The Angels were fifth in payroll in 2007 ($109 mil), and they ought to run into the rarified air of the Mets ($116 mil), Red Sox ($143 mil), and Yankees ($195 mil) next season.

The Twins are talking about a deal for Johan Santana with the Yankees or with the Mets. The Evil Empire and its bumbling counterpart strikes again. Santana struggled a little in 2007, but that was just a run of bad luck. He allowed 33 home runs last season (1.45 HR/9) after allowing 24 in about fifteen fewer innings (1.00 HR/9), which is pretty much the sole reason why his ERA rose from 2.77 to 3.33 … Even an off-season for Santana is still fantastic … Backed with a decent defense, in a park friendlier to pitchers and buoyed with an offense capable of producing six runs a game, Santana could be a perennial Cy Young Award candidate. Oh, by the way, he’s 2-0 with a 1.17 ERA in three career starts at Yankees Stadium.

The Yankees would probably be willing to part with some talent like Joba Chamberlain or Phillip Hughes as part of the deal. Makes sense to add such a dominating pitcher to the rotation, which would patch up the biggest hole they have right now.

The Mets, equally strapped for pitching now that Tom Glavine is back in ATL, might be a better fit. Would the Mets deal for Santana if it meant packaging Reyes? Well, while the Mets have refused to part with Reyes in the past he played badly at the end of the season and the opportunity to pair Cy Young Award winner Santana with Cy Young winner Pedro Martinez is too tantalizing to pass up. One of the two New York teams will end up with Santana because they are the only teams capable of signing Santana to the $20 million dollars a year he’ll make on the open market in 2008.

On to Phillies news … The Phillies snared Shane Youman off waivers from the Pittsburgh Pirates. I’m not sure what to make of Youman. Like J.C. Romero, he allows a lot of walks (3.5 BB/9), too many for my comfort, as a matter of fact, but like Romero he doesn’t allow a lot of home runs: 0.76 HR/9. I’m on the fence. I think there are some things to like and there are some issues. I’m eager to see how he’ll do.

The Phillies acquired Chris Snelling off waivers from the D-Rays. Looks like Snelling and Chris Roberson will battle it out to see who’ll be the fifth outfielder in 2008.

Labels: Mets, Romero, Snelling, Youman

I’ve been pretty busy lately, slaving away at my Season in Review series. I wanted to make some comments about all of the big, big news out there in the baseball world.

-Barry Bonds is federally indicted. I’ll admit off the top that I have a bias against Bonds. He’s a jerk. He’s an angry, ego-centric, embittered a-hole. His contempt for the fans is something I think is disgraceful. However, I would agree with one of my colleagues at work: character is not a prerequisite for the Hall of Fame.

That said, Bonds legacy is in tatters, regardless of how his trial turns out. Bonds has expressed bitterness over his historic 756 home run ball being displayed with an asterisk. Now Bonds has to contend with the fact that his pursuit of the home run record led him to jail. It would be a fitting dénouement to his story.

Oh, and Bonds is in trouble, because the Feds rarely proceed to trial unless they feel it is a sure thing. If they moved to indict Bonds, they must have some pretty good information.

Make no mistake about it: Bonds career is over. Nobody is going to touch him for 2008 with this criminal indictment hanging over his head. He’s done. Who wants to sign a 43-year old baseball player with a pending criminal indictment? No team will want to deal with that kind of agony. That’s it. Goodbye.

-Alex Rodriguez is going to ink a 10-year, $275 million deal with the Yankees. I’m pretty surprised given that the Yankees High Command basically said, “hit the road, jack” when A-Rod opted out of his contract. The Yankees have their big bat in the lineup and the biggest free agent is off the market just days before Thanksgiving.

One column that I read argued that A-Rod is now baseball’s golden boy because the game needs for A-Rod to break Bond’s current record of 762 home runs and do it soon. If A-Rod really does play the next ten years, he could do it. He’s 244 from tying right now. I’m sure baseball would love to see A-Rod break it: a star about whom doping accusations have never been made, plays in New York City and is charismatic and interesting. Baseball, say hello to your new golden boy.

-The Phillies managed to re-sign J.C. Romero to a 3-year deal. He’ll be the set-up man for new closer Brad Lidge now that Geoff Geary went to Houston as part of the deal that brought Lidge here. I’m not a fan of Romero’s: his DIPS ERA was 4.11 in 2007, a full 2.87 runs higher than his ERA. He allows a LOT of walks (25 in 36 innings with the Phillies), too many in my opinion, to be a successful pitcher. I’m worried that he’ll get shelled this season.

-I wonder which of the big free agent centerfielders will be the first to sign: Torii Hunter, Andruw Jones or Rowand? My money is on Hunter inking the first deal to set the market. Jones will go second and Rowand will benefit from the fact that teams desperate for a bat will give him big, big money. Kinda like Carlos Lee from last season.

-We’ll have to see another big deal in the first week of December. With the Twins trying to move Johan Santana to the highest bidder in all likelihood, there have to be some mega-deals out there. With the dearth of pitching on the market, trades are going to be the only way that teams build up their rotations. Mark my words: the Phillies will contact the White Sox about a deal for Jon Garland and soon.

-The Phillies won’t pursue Mike Lowell. They’ll focus on pitching and try to snare a third baseman as an add-on to any trade.

-The Phillies might go out and re-sign Randy Wolf if the price the White Sox mention for Garland is too high. Wolf had a so-so year for the Dodgers (9-6, 4.73 ERA), but I actually think he pitched rather well, surrendering just ten home runs in 102 & 2/3 innings (0.87 HR/9) and getting a lot of strikeouts (8.24 K/9). I think he’d be a solid pickup if the Phillies can’t get Garland.

Labels: 756, Free Agency, Pitching, Romero, Rowand, Wolf

Today’s a Friday and I haven’t gotten a chance to put together a discussion of the Phillies other three minor league teams yet. I’m also working on my Season in Review series right now, so there are a lot of logs in the fire.

So far the following Phillies have declared Free Agency:

Kyle Lohse
Freddy Garcia
Rod Barajas
J.C. Romero
Antonio Alfonseca
Jose Mesa
Abraham Nunez
Aaron Rowand
Jon Lieber

Obviously the Phillies have no interest in re-signing Nunez and Barajas since they declined their options in both players. Garcia is out of the Phillies price range, so he’s a goner, and Mesa, Alfonseca and Lieber are players whom the Phillies likely regard as too old and possessing declining skills. There are only three players who the Phillies would be interested in re-signing. Lohse, Romero and Rowand.

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

Kyle Lohse – I believe Scott Boras is Lohse’s agent, so the chances of the Phillies re-signing Lohse is slim-to-none. A talented pitcher on a market which is nearly devoid of quality pitching, Boras knows he’ll be able to command a king’s ransom for Lohse’s services. Expect Boras to leverage Lohse solid 2007 campaign (9-12, 4.62 ERA as a Red and Phillie) into big bucks. $10 million plus is not outside the realm of possibility here.

Chances of re-signing with the Phillies: 5%.

J.C. Romero – Here is a player the Phillies would dearly love to keep. I’m actually not that impressed by Romero’s stats, however. As a Phillie he gave up 25 walks in 36 innings of work, which means he’d give up 6.25 walks per nine innings pitched. Romero pitched waaaay worse than his 1.24 ERA as a Phillie suggests. His Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) ERA is 3.98, over three times higher than his official ERA. Romero has consistently allowed a lot of walks throughout his career in the major leagues. As a Minnesota Twin in 2004 and 2005 he gave up 4.6 BB/9 and 5.7 BB/9 respectively, and as an Anaheim Angel in 2006 he gave up 4.8 BB/9. I know that the Phillies want to bring him back, but I am unimpressed.

Romero made 1.6 million in 2007 and while I think that the chances of bringing him back are good, the scarcity of quality pitching might drive Romero’s asking price too high for the Phillies blood.

Chances of re-signing with the Phillies: 20%.

Aaron Rowand – the Phillies want to bring Rowand back, but it isn’t going to happen. The Phillies won’t, after the Pat Burrell experience, ink a deal longer than three or four years, while Rowand appears fixed on five or six, and they won’t go higher than $10 million a year, while Rowand looks like he wants to go into the $12-14 million dollar range. Expect the Phillies to go through the motions of re-signing Rowand, but they have cheaper options on their roster who would do the job well and they want to commit some of that money to a long-term deal for Ryan Howard and securing more pitching this off-season. Don’t be surprised to see Shane Victorino or Michael Bourn manning centerfield in 2008.

Chances of re-signing with the Phillies: 1%.

Have a nice weekend!

Labels: Free Agency, Lohse, Pitching, Romero, Rowand

With the 2007 season over, I am busy writing my Year in Review and mulling over what the 2008 version of the Phillies is going to look like. I have some thoughts on who will return and who is as good as gone from the Phillies. Here they are:

Starting Pitching. The Phillies will need five starters for 2008. Pencil in Cole Hamels and Jamie Moyer into slots #1 and #2. That’s two. Kyle Kendrick seems to have a firm grasp on the #3 slot. The logic choice, partly due to his contract, for #4 would be Adam Eaton, which means that the Phillies need a fifth starter for the rotation again. Possibilities here include trade deals involving Jon Garland, Rich Harden, Dontrelle Willis, and, tantalizingly, Johan Santana. Expect this to be the area where the Phillies devote the bulk of the $20 million or so they have to spend this off-season to, and also expect the Phillies to deal something from their minor league system to acquire pitching.

The Bullpen. Pencil in Brett Myers as the Phillies closer for 2008. It’s a job that he’s proven himself to be quite good at and it would give the Phillies the lights-out closer they desperate need and lacked for years. Setting up Myers are J.C. Romero, who needs to be re-signed, and Geoff Geary. Perhaps Ryan Madson can work his way back here. The other three slots in the Phillies bullpen are up for grabs. Look for the Phillies to spend some time and money to upgrade these slots.

The problem, as Pat Gillick has noted, is that pitching is at a premium in the major leagues and when you want to buy it off the open market (i.e., free agency), you tend to pay outrageous prices. It’s basic economics. Expect pitching to once again be at a premium in the off-season, and expect the Phillies to be forced to over-pay. Either in bringing free agents to town or in affecting a trade to secure help in the bullpen.

Third Base. Wes Helms was not the answer. He hit just five home runs and had a mere 39 RBI. He hit .198 with runners in scoring position. His On-Base Percentage was .297. Utility infielder (calling him “light-hitting” would imply that he hits something) Abraham Nunez isn’t the answer either, because the Phillies elected to not exercise their $2.5 million dollar option for him for 2008. The Phillies need someone who can play the hot-corner and provide some pop to the lineup. I wonder if Tadahito Iguchi, the Phillies acquisition from the White Sox, can do the job. He’s not a power-hitter – just a .138 ISO – but he’s a good contact hitter who has some speed and makes good decisions. After getting a fifth starter, this is where the Phillies will spend some dough. I wonder: Mike Lowell as a Phillie?

Who’ll be back. Cole Hamels, Jamie Moyer, Kyle Kendrick, Kyle Lohse, Adam Eaton, Brett Myers, J.C. Romero (hopefully), Geoff Geary, Jayson Werth, Shane Victorino, Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Carlos Ruiz, Tadahito Iguchi, Michael Bourn, Pat Burrell, Wes Helms. That’s basically sixteen of the Phillies twenty-five players right there. Notable is how young the core of the Phillies roster is: Cole Hamels is 23. Bourn is 24. Werth is 29. Kendrick is 23. Myers is 28. Victorino is 27. You get the idea.

What is really exciting about the 2008, 2009, 2010 Phillies is that the core of the team is 30 or younger and these guys are going to be around for years. If the Phillies can hold off the Braves and Mets, this could be a dynasty in the making, a team a lot like the mid-1990’s Cleveland Indians, which dominated their division with a young core of talent.

Who’s Gone. Abraham Nunez, Rod Barajas, Antonio Alfonseca, Jose Mesa, Jon Lieber, Freddy Garcia, Kyle Lohse. Lieber won’t be back despite pitching some strong performances in 2008. The team that signs him will be getting one heck of a pitcher, but that won’t be the Phillies. (The Mets?) Garcia, likewise, won’t be back because he can command millions on the open market place despite his arm injury last season. I see him in a Yankees uniform in 2008. Lohse is being represented by Scott Boras, so count on him leaving the Phillies and signing a mega-deal ($12-14 mil) for some team desperate for pitching. Nunez, the non-hitting utility infielder, is gone now that the Phillies won't exercise their option. The Phillies have also declined options on catcher Rod Barajas (4 Home Runs, 10 RBI), which is addition by subtraction as far as I am concerned.

On the bubble. Aaron Rowand. Will the Phillies re-sign him? Will they over-pay? My guess is that the Phillies will let Rowand walk rather than sign him to the $10 to $11 million a year he’ll command on the open market (Gary Matthews, Jr. inked a 5-year, $50 million deal last season, can Rowand be expected to ask for less?), and that’s not completely a bad thing. I’ll expand upon this next week a little, but Rowand has some flaws as a ballplayer. Sure, the fans and his teammates love his passion, fire and walk-through walls mentality. However, Rowand's got some flaws in his game. E.g., Rowand’s 47 walks (.069 BB/PA) is a rarity for his career. He’s a free-swinging hitter who rarely works counts, rarely draws walks and is the most consistent producer of outs on the Phillies roster after Jimmy Rollins, and he lacks Rollins speed on the base-paths. Rowand’s ability to get on base is predicated on his ability to get a hit, and players who are purely dedicated to hits at the plate tend to be inconsistent. Rowand had a good year at the plate – he hit .309, better than the .262 and .270 he hit in 2006 and 2005 – but that’s probably a fluke. Rowand’s BB/PA over the last few seasons is utterly abysmal: .040 in 2006, .050 in 2005, .056 in 2004 … And Rowand’s defensive skills have been a disappointment after he was so good manning center field for the White Sox in 2005. No … I see Shane Victorino or Michael Bourn as the Phillies starting center fielder on Opening Day, 2008.

Farm Hands. Lost in all of this talk is the Phillies farm system. They’ve got a lot of great talent sitting down in Ottawa and Reading and Clearwater and you can expect to see a lot of it up in Philadelphia in 2008. Mike Costanzo, who hit .270 with 27 Home Runs and 89 RBI in 2007 with the Reading Phillies, will probably being playing with the Lehigh Valley Ironpigs in 2008, the Phillies new Triple-A affiliate. A mid-season call up is a definite possibility. Carlos Carrasco, the Phillies spectacular pitcher who finished the season in Double-A Reading, cold head to Philadelphia by mid-season as well. Carrasco is the top prospect in the Phillies system and could wind up being their fifth starter ultimately. Costanzo, Carrasco, Josh Outman, Jason Donald, Adrian Cardenas, and Kyle Drabek are all potential minor-league trade bait for help on the mound.

These are all very preliminary thoughts. I’ll expand on some this week coming up a little.

Posting schedule:
Monday: Aaron Rowand
Tuesday: Will Johan Santana be a Phillie?
Wednesday: No Post
Thursday: Musings on Citizens Bank Ballpark
Friday: Chris Coste

Labels: Alfonseca, Bourn, Burrell, Eaton, Gordon, Hamels, Kenderick, Mesa, Moyer, Myers, Nunez, Pitching, Rollins, Romero, Rotation, Rowand, Victorino

What a horrible week for Phillies baseball. After Sunday ended with the Phillies triumph over the Mets for the N.L. East crown, nothing went right for the Phillies.

First, the San Diego Padres blew a lead to the Colorado Rockies and sent to the Rockies to the playoffs as the N.L. wildcard. The Rockies had concluded their season with victories in 14 of 15 games. They were the only team in baseball playing with more confidence and more momentum than the Phillies.

Then the Phillies dropped both of the opening games at home, before going onto Colorado and dropping the final game of the series 2-1 Saturday Night (late, I might add, I stayed up until 12:30 AM to watch it) in the Mile-High City. The quick exit tarnished the Phillies September run and has left a sour taste in the mouths of Phillies phandom.

Let’s go back and give a few reasons why the Phillies lost in the first place. Good pitching always defeats good hitting and vice versa, said Yogi Berra. Good pitching was the difference here. The Rockies managed to hold the Phillies to eight runs and a .274 OBP, about eighty points under the Phillies season average. The Phillies .366 slugging percentage was ninety-two points lower. The Phillies OPS in the series was just .640, compared to their .812 in the regular season.

More stats of note: in their 27 innings of work, the Rockies struck-out 26 Phillies and issued 12 walks.

As I poured through the numbers it became apparent that the Phillies never got going against the Rockies hitters. They hit poorly in the clutch: 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position (.091 BA/RISP), but part of that was that the Phillies rarely had runners in scoring position. Aside from their five home runs, there were just two Phillies hits for extra-bases: a triple of Jimmy Rollins and a double by Carlos Ruiz. The Phillies also only stole three bases.

Every Phillies hitter struggled. Aside from hitting solo home runs in Game One, Aaron Rowand and Pat Burrell were virtually automatic outs. Rowand was 1-for-12 and Burrell was 2-for-11. Throw out those home runs they hit, and the two went 1-for-21 with no runs, no RBI and seven strike-outs.

Chase Utley was 2-for-11 with five strikeouts. Ryan Howard was 3-for-12 with seven strikeouts. The supporting cast wasn’t a help either: Wes Helms was 0-for-2, Jayson Werth was 0-for-3, and Greg Dobbs was 0-for-3. Jimmy Rollins went 2-for-11, but he also had a triple, a home run, hit four RBI, had a stolen base and drew two walks. Out of all of the Phillies, he played the best.

The Phillies pitchers deserve some of the blame for the debacle, but you have to acknowledge that Cole Hamels and Jamie Moyer pitched well. Moyer, in particular, was a surprise since he hadn’t beaten the Rockies in his career, his start in Denver this season had gone so poorly, and his soft-tossing style seemed to promise hits sailing into the outfield. Yet Jamie Moyer tried to keep the Phillies in the series with a brilliant performance in Game Three, allowing just one run on five hits and two walks in six innings of work.

Cole Hamels pitched well in Game One, allowing just three runs in six and two-thirds of an inning of work, tagging seven strikeouts and allowing just three hits and four walks. He seemed in control of the game and had he gotten some run support from his brethren, he might have won Game One for the Phillies.

The rest of the Phillies pitching staff is another story entirely. Kyle Kendrick pitched poorly in Game Two and Kyle Lohse allowed the pivotal home run in Game Two that effectively sank the Phillies chances in the series. J.C. Romero failed the Phillies in the eighth inning Saturday Night. Jose Mesa’s ERA in the series was 81.00. ‘Nuff said.

Simply put, the Phillies couldn’t hold a candle to the Rockies pitching staff, which is vastly under-rated and under-appreciated. As I watched the Rockies on Saturday Night, I thought: poor Diamondbacks. They don’t have a chance. The Rockies pitching staff is very good and was the real difference-maker. If they pitch this well against the D-backs more punch-less offense, I don’t see how the Rockies could lose.

What of Charlie Manuel? He certainly made mistakes in the series. His decision in Game Three to take out Tom Gordon and put J.C. Romero in can be second-guessed. His decision in Game Two to intentionally walk Yorvit Torrealba was baffling and came back to bite the Phillies when Seth Smith hit an infield single to load the bases, then Manuel brought in Lohse to surrender the pivotal grand slam to Kaz Matsui. The walk to Torrealba looms large as a blunder, but allowing Romero to pitch while saving Brett Myers for the ninth-inning and extra-innings seemed like a reasonable strategy in Game Three, and bringing in Lohse to pitch to Matsui seemed like a good move given that Kendrick had thrown a number of pitches by that juncture. I don’t think you can pin this loss in the series on Charlie Manuel. That would be unfair.

The odd thing I noticed in the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer was how upbeat the coverage of the Phillies was. Despite the tragic sweep, the people who cover this team seem to be optimistic about its future. E.g., check out Jim Salisbury's take. It’s players seem to be optimistic. The fans need to be too. This is only the beginning of the Phillies run, not the end.

In summing up, let me just comment on the stunning fact that three of the four divisional series were sweeps: the Rockies over the Phillies, the Diamondbacks over the Cubs, the Red Sox over the Angels. I’d like to add that I got every one of those series wrong. The Cubs are a much stronger team on paper than the Diamondbacks and I was certain they’d take the series, especially with the momentum they’ve been playing with. Lou Pinella’s decision to pull Carlos Zambrano in Game One of their series looks to be the thread that unwound the Cubs tapestry. Burdened by decades of history and expectations, they folded quietly. Wait ‘til next year.

Over in the American League, I was stunned by how the Red Sox pitching utterly dominated the Angels. I really thought that the Angels would have an edge here, but they did not. Josh Beckett’s nine-inning, four-hit, eight-strikeout masterpiece in Game One set the tone. Meanwhile, the Yankees kept alive, but I think the Indians will win the series regardless. That one will go to five games.

Alright, so here is the posting schedule for the week coming up:

Tuesday: Rockies – Diamondbacks Analysis
Wednesday: Bring Back Charlie Manuel?
Thursday: Speed & the Phillies in 2007
Friday: The Blueprint for 2008

Labels: Dobbs, Gordon, Hamels, Helms, Howard, Kenderick, Lohse, Managing, Mesa, Playoffs, Power-Hitting, Rollins, Romero, Rowand, Utley, Werth