Roy Halladay and the Aces: The Philadelphia Phillies Rotation Through 48 Games

The Phillies starting rotation has been pretty good this year.  While scoring very intermittently, the team has been able to win 29 games.  The sad reality is, if we were to look at the starter’s stats, we would expect them to win quite a few more.  

Here’s an in-depth look at how they’ve performed so far.

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Phillies, Marlins, Braves in Tight Race in NL East

With the Philadelphia Phillies falling 6-3 Tuesday night to the Cincinnati Reds, the race in the NL East tightened yet again. The Florida Marlins drew closer with a 5-1 victory over the San Francisco Giants and are only one game back of the Phillies. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Braves shut out the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0 and trail the division-leading Phillies by only 3 games.

The NL East is now the division to watch. Although entering the season the Phillies were seen as the division’s clear-cut front-runner, it appears that this “all-star” team could be overtaken shortly by either the Marlins or the Braves.

The division is up for grabs.  Anything short of a division title would surely be seen as a disappointment in Philadelphia, and I do not disagree with them.  The Phillies have a great pitching staff that features all-stars Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt, and Cole Hamels.  The team’s offense simply hasn’t delivered, and ranks 20th in baseball in runs scored. Injuries and a lack of depth have also been factors.  With a 29-19 record, the Phillies are winning but have not led the way quite as predicted.

Before the beginning of the season, I penciled in the Florida Marlins to be semi-competitive through 2012, when their new ballpark opens, and perhaps opens the owner’s pockets as well for a few big-name free agents.

However, I have been surprised by the Marlins’ best start in franchise history.  Good pitching has thus far propelled the Marlins to a solid 27-19 record. They may not feature many big names, but Josh Johnson, Ricky Nolasco, and Anibal Sanchez have performed very well. The team’s revamped bullpen has also come up huge in holding leads.

Florida has hitting with power as well, led by contact hitter Gaby Sanchez and power hitter Mike Stanton, who has 11 home runs already this season.  Despite Hanley Ramirez’s offensive struggles, the Marlins have not needed to blow away teams with offense because their pitching has been so strong this season.

We can not forget about the Atlanta Braves, who at one time were the best team  in the National League during the 1990’s.  Just like the Marlins, the Braves’ pitching has been a major factor in their success this season.  They are ranked second in the majors with a 3.01 ERA and have recorded 31 quality starts from their pitching staff.

Hitting has been a struggle for Atlanta.  Dan Uggla, who signed a major contract in the off-season, is struggling mightily with a batting average below .200.  In fact, the Braves team leader in home runs is Jason Heyward, with seven. He, too, is hitting only .214.  The Braves’ highest batting average belongs to Martin Prado, who is hitting .286.

Despite the Braves’ offensive struggles, their pitching has been superb. In order to keep up with the races both in the NL East and in the Wild Card, the Braves will need to generate more offense to support their solid pitching.

In the end, who will come out in first place?  Right now, the NL East appears to be completely up for grabs, courtesy of some nice surprises from the Marlins and Braves.  

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Roy Halladay: Could His Dominance Result in Both the NL Cy Young and MVP?

Phillies ace Roy Halladay is a vital piece to Philadelphia’s vaunted starting rotation.  Not only that, but Halladay is showing in the early going of 2011 that he is also the most valuable player to this Phillies team, if not the most valuable in the entire National League.  

In 2010, Halladay took the reigns as the de facto ace of the staff on the way to compiling 21 wins, as well as a perfect game and a postseason no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds.  His impressive National League debut led him to his second career Cy Young award.  

Thus far in 2011, Halladay is 6-3 with a 2.21 ERA, 80 strikeouts, and four complete games.  Compared to 2010, the numbers are very similar except for allowing nine less hits, three less runs, and, most impressive of all, recording 21 more strikeouts in the same amount of innings (77IP) as a year ago.  That is a jump of 6.5 K’s per nine innings in 2010 to 8.8 K’s per nine innings in 2011. 

Halladay’s dominance comes at a time when the Phillies offense is struggling to find an identity.  Every fifth game, Halladay is expected to turn in a stellar performance each time he takes the mound.  Each start, it is reasonable to expect 7, 8, and when he’s on, 9 innings of baffled swings and weak outs, accompanied by 1-3 runs allowed in any given start.

With the offense struggling, Halladay’s performance every fifth day is the most crucial to the team’s success.  Following a fifth starter of the likes of a Joe Blanton or Vance Worley, Halladay is the stopper.  Much like four-fifths of the Phillies rotation, Halladay gives the team a chance to win every night.  With an average of three runs being scored by the offense, Halladay accepts the challenge and bears down every time he takes the mound to limit the damage, while having little room for error. 

Other position players across the league may mean more to their team, but a special exception must be made in this era of the pitcher.  Halladay proves how much a great starting pitcher not only means to a team’s pitching staff, but to the entire ball club. 

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Joe Savery and the 5 Players the Philadelphia Phillies Should Trade

No, I am not going to say trade Vance Worley.  I know some people have thrown out that idea, and I have to say that makes almost no sense.  He is one of the few young pitchers the Philadelphia Phillies have that are actually big league-ready now.  His ERA is the lowest of all qualifying pitchers and he has nothing but upside.

Secondly, contrary to popular opinion, the Phils are not really in need of much big-league help  They have a strong team of hitters that are working their way out of a slump.  While I don’t believe that the 10-run game last night will become the standard, I also don’t believe that scoring two runs a game will become their standard operating procedure. 

But the Phillies do have the opportunity to let go of some of their minor league players who will never contribute to their major league roster.

With that in mind, let’s get started.

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Philadelphia Phillies: Are the Phillies Looking to Trade Vance Worley?

For as long as most Philadelphia fans can remember, the Phillies have been an offense-first, pitching-whenever team. 

There was a time when trading away Cory Lidle seemed like a mistake, acquiring Kyle Lohse helped the team and re-sigining Jamie Moyer was vital to the team’s success.

Which is why it seems so odd now to sit at the kitchen table, behind the wheel of the car or under a tree in the park, and listen to local baseball-talking heads discuss trading away young pitching prospect Vance Worley.  

After all, there was a time when Worley would have been a highly-coveted piece of the Phillies’ puzzle for years to come.

Vance Worley Fun Fact: Worley is currently the active leader in ERA for all pitchers with at least four starts, with a 1.24 ERA, which is good for a 322 ERA+.

But these are not your grandfather’s Phillies—or your father’s Phillies, or your Phillies for that matter.

These are the new and improved, alternate-reality, bizarro-Phillies—a team for whom Brett Myers, J.A. Happ and Worley are all on the outside looking in, somehow not talented enough to make a rotation that has four aces and Joe Blanton.

At the same time, Monday night’s offensive explosion notwithstanding, it is also a team in dire need of hitting.  

The Phillies’ hitting woes have been well-documented, so we won’t recollect them here, but suffice to say that the Phils’ could use another bat. And the prospect of squandering one of the finest rotations in baseball history because the offense cannot squeak across three runs per night must be keeping Phillies GM Ruben Amaro up at night.

To be fair, Worley will not continue to put up the numbers he has so far in his career; while we will not go so far as to call his 3-1 record, 1.24 ERA and 0.931 WHIP an aberration, this is simply not who Worley is as a pitcher.  

But it does appear as though Worley could be a quality major league starter, and major league baseball teams are often willing to give up quite a bit to haul in one of those.

For what it is worth, the major league rumor mills are not exactly alive with Vance Worley trade talk; thus far such propositions have been coming from guys like Mike Missanelli on 97.5 The Fanatic, which represents little more than expostulation.

At the same time, though, something about it does feel right. It just seems odd that this Philadelphia Phillies‘ team will soon trade away a future major league starting pitcher because they need a bat. 

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B/R Exclusive: Phillies Trying to Break Out of Slump Without Breaking Routine

Slump.

It’s a word the Philadelphia Phillies have heard a lot lately and frankly, it’s a word they are becoming quite irritated with.

Regardless of how many times they hear phrases like, “Every team and every major-league hitter goes through slumps,” the Phils are obviously frustrated with their offensive output over the last few weeks.

Entering Monday night’s series opener against the Cincinnati Reds, the Phillies hadn’t scored more than three runs in a game since May 13 in Atlanta and, to push the topic even further, hadn’t scored more than five runs since May 9, doing so just three times in the month of May as a whole.

Usually, however, when people around baseball talk about a slump, they’re talking about a single player. The Phillies have slumped as a whole team, though, causing some concern throughout the city.

Up and down the lineup, the Phils’ bats are struggling to get things going, and a number of players have taken hitless streaks well into double-digit at-bats.

At the beginning of the month, Raul Ibanez went hitless for so long that fans were calling for his head in left field, but he wasn’t the only Phillie they were worried about. Carlos Ruiz took his slump to the disabled list with him and joined Ryan Howard in a struggling lineup when he returned.

Luckily enough for the Phillies, the star-studded pitching rotation that they had assembled in the offseason was doing more than just keeping them in games—it was shutting down the opposition and leading the Phillies to wins.

However low the offense has gotten over the last month or so, the pitching has been well above average, leading the Phils to a National League-best record of 28-18. Who knows where they’d be without this rotation or with a bit of offense?

Regardless of that, the Phillies know that they have to get back on track offensively. Sure, guys like Roy Halladay are almost always going to keep you within striking distance of a win, but you can’t put a win in the left column unless you score runs.

Obviously, you can’t score runs if you can’t hit the ball, and that’s been the real problem with this team over the last month—too many good hitters slumping their way into offensive oblivion.

But how do you get out of a slump? If it were as simple as a quick fix, the Phils would be way up in first place.

I caught up with Phillies infielder Pete Orr over the weekend, and he provided an interesting quote about how major-league players break out of slumps—they don’t do anything differently.

“You just continue to believe in yourself and work hard, obviously,” said Orr. “You do the things that got you here and made you successful. You don’t want to do things that are out of your element.”

When you think about what Orr said, it makes a lot of sense. While half of the city is calling for a blockbuster trade for a legitimate offensive threat, the Phillies are trying their hardest not to change a single thing.

For these players, baseball is their lives. They’ve grown up working hard on their hitting, and changing something now could end their careers. For a lot of these players, Orr included, the best way to break free of an offensive slump is to weather the storm.

“You are always going to go through slumps. You just have to believe you can get out of them,” said Orr.

The Phillies are a team that believes it can hit, and why not? With the best rotation of baseball wearing the Phils jersey and a lineup filled with All-Stars from top to bottom, putting runs on the scoreboard should not be as hard as the Phillies are making it on themselves.

One guy that believes in the Phillies offense is hitting coach Greg Gross, who joined the team during an offensive slump last season. Specifically, he believes that the Phillies are only a couple of hot hitters away from breaking out of this slump for good: “Ryan Howard could get this team on track,” quipped Gross.

Like Orr before him, Gross made it resoundingly clear that changing a hitter’s approach to hitting was not going to break him out of a tough slump. In Howard’s case, a lot of people believe that with the exaggerated defensive over-shift that teams play on him, going to the left side of the field would improve his numbers.

The Phils’ hitting coach couldn’t disagree more.

“He’s the type of guy who will work his way out of a slump. He doesn’t go the other way because he is a natural pull hitter. Teams recognize this, and when they put the shift on him, they also pitch him inside. He’ll work his way out of it.”

Once again, changing a hitter’s approach is not on Gross’ agenda, and he believes that breaking out of this slump could be something as simple as being more aggressive early in the count.

Slumps have a tendency to get in the head of a hitter and they start taking good pitches for strikes. Gross believes that feeling comfortable at the plate and hitting good pitches are the keys to offensive success.

Charlie Manuel echoed those sentiments about his cleanup hitter following Saturday’s game against the Texas Rangers.

“I thought he stayed on the ball real good,” said the Phillies manager. “Pitchers like to change speeds on Howard to keep him off balance.”

He preached about how plate discipline was the key to freeing themselves of the offensive shackles that are this slump and like Gross believes that hitting is a matter of hitting a pitch you can handle.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel for the Phillies. Not only did the team activate their All-Star second baseman Chase Utley from the disabled list on Monday, but they also recalled slugging right fielder Domonic Brown, who Gross believes has “very good hand-eye coordination.”

When Shane Victorino returns from his injury, the lineup will look more intimidating then it has all season.

Pair that with the starting rotation that has helped them to the best record in the National League and the depth that kept them afloat as they weathered the storm, and it certainly isn’t hard to see why this team was projected as one of the best in baseball entering the 2011 season.

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Philadelphia Phillies: 5 Reasons Why They Should Fear the Atlanta Braves

At the beginning of the 2011 season, most baseball fans were quite willing to give the Philadelphia Phillies the National League East division crown before a game was even played. Unfortunately for the City of Brotherly Love, titles are won, not given.

Although the season has not been perfect, shades of what Philadelphia could be have been seen around the diamond. Their four aces, Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt, and Cole Hamels, have all pitched marquee games. The offense, headlined by two studs in Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins, has also produced, as Philadelphia remains aggressive on the basepaths and continues to come through with the long ball. With Chase Utley, arguably their best player, returning this week, everything looks to be headed in the right direction.

But there will be plenty of obstacles for them to cross before they reach the playoffs. Most ominously, their rivals to the south, the Atlanta Braves, are arguably just as talented, just as deep, and just as hungry for another berth in the postseason. 

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Philadelphia Phillies: 10 Solutions to Their Offensive Struggles

How great of a time in Phillies history are we in right now? The Phillies have the best record in Major League Baseball and a starting rotation that has shut out opponents seven times this season.

Phillies Nation could (should?) be checking their calenders and telling their families that no vacations are to be booked in October. The Phillies are clearly the class of the NL East, and their rotation has the potential to completely dominate the opposition four out of every five days.

But Philadelphia knows better, they have seen this before. Something needs to be done about their anemic offense. But what? Jim Salisbury wrote a terrific piece on Saturday indicating just how close the Phil’s are to the luxury tax.

The Phillies are literally “maxed out.”

How to fix the offensive struggles? How do we make sure the bats do not let us down in the playoffs like they did last year against the Giants?

Allow me to play GM for a few minutes, here are 10 solutions to the Phillies offensive struggles.

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Philadelphia Phillies: Chase Utley Shows Up While Phillies Offense Wakes Up

Chase Utley finished off what would normally be considered a bad night for anyone, let alone a player of Utley’s caliber, by grounding out in the bottom of the eighth to complete an 0-for-5 performance at the plate.

Oddly enough, the fans responded with a round of applause, then headed for the exits.

For at least one day, the Phillies offense had awoken from its recent slumber to the tune of 14 hits and 10 runs. While the outcome of the game was still an inning away from being solidified, a lot of the fans headed home early, satisfied with seeing Chase in action for the first time this year, in the type of complete team performance has fans dreaming of another parade down Broad Street.

While the Phils record now stands at 29-18, giving them a two game division lead and the best record in the National League, there has been a surprising amount of angst and frustration coming from the fans in recent weeks.

Mainly due to a recent nine game stretch in which the Phillies failed to score more than three runs in any single game, the ire has been focused almost entirely on the offense.

Only a few years removed from being considered one of the most potent lineups in the majors, the Phillies have lost the pop that made them so special.

That concern was voiced the minute that Jayson Werth departed for Washington and people realized this lineup was now without a right-handed power bat to protect Ryan Howard. But Ben Francisco’s April—where he was batting close to .270 with four home runs and 18 RBI—alleviated those concerns for the time being.

Well it turns out that April showers sometime bring May flounders (come on that was so bad it was funny), as Francisco is hitting .111 this month and losing playing time to John Mayberry Jr. and the returning Dominic Brown.

Ryan Howard has followed suit, batting only .178 this month including a recent 0-for-23 stretch, after having an excellent April in which he hit .290 with six home runs and 27 RBI.

On the flip side, Raul Ibanez, who started the season hitting so poorly that the Phillies announcers couldn’t tell if the fans were booing him or just giving him their customary Raaauuuuul, has hit much better with an average of .324 so far in the month of May.

Those factors, combined with Shane Victorino’s current stint on the DL, have left Charlie Manuel in an all too familiar position where he is constantly tinkering with his lineup in search of some consistency.

It’s likely that questions will continue to face this lineup for the rest of the season. Who should lead off? Who should bat behind Howard? Is there a right-handed power bat out there that the Phils can trade for?

While those are all very valid questions, for at least one day, the Philly fans should just take a cue from Bobby McFerrin’s 1988 hit song, “What’s that?”

You don’t get the reference? Well tough—you can simply look it up online.

The season is long my friends. When you’re finding things to complain about on a team this good, take a step back and consider how much worse things could be.

You could be a Mets fan.

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Philadelphia Phillies: Top 10 Prospects to Get Excited About

Some think it’s still too early to call up Domonic Brown.

My question: Why is calling him up a bad thing?

To me, if he has all of the tools, he’ll take this particular opportunity and run with it.

There’s no question that he can swing the stick.  He’s done nothing but mash the baseball at the minor-league level.

He’s yet to overcome the psychological hurdle of the big leagues.  He’s found success at every level but the big one.

It looks like Charlie Manuel will bat Brown in the seven-hole like he did last night. 

We’ll find out what his mental makeup is all about in the coming months.  I think he’ll be fine.

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