Phillies Pitching Success Runs Deeper Than Four Aces

Although it’s hard to believe at times, the Phillies‘ pitching staff consists of more than just Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels. 

A combined 29 wins, 2.59 ERA, 369 strikeouts, 11 complete games and an opponent batting average of .228 is enough to give the Phillies three of the game’s best pitchers through the first half of the season. 

However, the success of the Phillies’ pitching staff is being enjoyed by more than just these three pitchers.  With injuries to five members of the team’s bullpen, a fair share of innings have been up for grabs all season long. 

So far, there have been no shortage of takers.

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MLB Trade Talk: 15 Deals the Philadelphia Phillies Should Avoid

Despite having the best record in the majors and a respectable division lead in the NL East, the Philadelphia Phillies are in no means a perfect team.

Sure, they have Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Cole Hamels bolstering down the MLB‘s best rotation, but Philadelphia has encountered some major issues that could plague them later in the year.

Chase Utley has had a relatively slow start in the power department, Roy Oswalt is battling a back issue that could potentially end his career, and an array of mystery men have culminated into the Phillies suspect bullpen.

Moving forward into the second half of the season, manager Charlie Manuel could push for a trade, either to help his squad offensively or contribute to securing their late-inning opportunities.

With that said, it’s become evident that some of the more well-known names are surfacing throughout trade talks and trade speculations, but how good are these select players?

Here are the top-15 trades the Philadelphia Phillies should avoid this July.

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Philadelphia Phillies: 7 Ways the Team Can Thrive Without Roy Oswalt

Players continue to get injured but the Philadelphia Phillies continue to win. The team is on pace for 102 victories at this point and has shown that they are the team to beat in the National League once again.

Cole Hamels, Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee have all been dominating in 2011 and they were each rewarded with All-star selections. Roy Oswalt was the final piece of the “Four Aces” puzzle, but injuries are threatening to derail his season and possibly his career.

The Phillies have shown that they can win in the short-term without a guy that is fifth among active pitchers in career winning percentage, but can they survive the second-half of the season?

Here are seven ways the Philadelphia Phillies can not only survive, but thrive without Roy Oswalt.

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Roy Halladay, Philadelphia Phillies: Ace Putting Together Better 2011 Than 2010

Don’t look now, but Roy Halladay is doing it again. Not only has his 2011 once again been fantastic—and, some would argue, machinelike—it is even better than his 2010.

Some would find it hard to believe that the Philadelphia ace could do any better than a perfect game and no-hitter in the same season. Alright, he hasn’t done that yet in 2011, but overall, he has been more dominating thus far in 2011 than he was in 2010.

On Saturday Halladay finished off his former team, the Toronto Blue Jays, in quick and efficient fashion for his sixth complete game of the season. Exactly one-third of Halladay’s starts in 2011 have ended with him putting together a complete game.

He is now 11-3 with a 2.44 ERA after finishing 2010 with a 21-10 record and a 2.44 ERA. Looking deeper into the numbers, though, one can get a true appreciation of what Halladay has done in 2011.

His K/BB ratio of 7.71 is best in the Major Leagues, and would shatter his career-best 7.3 number which he posted in 2010. Just to show how dominant Halladay is, take a look at the numbers in this category closely. The second closest in this category is his teammate, Cole Hamels, at 5.24. No, that’s not a mistake. He has been that good.

His control has been impeccable, and he is striking out batters at a higher rate than ever. All the while, Halladay is doing so while even being slightly less lucky than last season’s .290 BABIP. He has a BABIP of .302 in 2011.

Halladay’s sabermetric numbers are all trending in his favor, including his Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) number, which is at 2.20 in 2011 after being at 3.01 in 2010. One could truly make the case that the only difference in Halladay’s game this year is that his strikeout numbers have gone up.

Take a glance at the statistics, and the WHIP, walk, and hits numbers are just about the same. He could thank the change-up that he has developed under pitching coach Rich Dubee for his increase in strikeouts. While Halladay’s fastball is still decent, it’s the cutter and change-up that have helped him immensely in 2011.

Meanwhile, SIERA, a statistic developed by Baseball Prospectus’ Matt Swartz, also shows how much better Halladay has been in 2011 than 2010. SIERA “estimates ERA through walk rate, strikeout rate and ground ball rate, eliminating the effects of park, defense and luck.” Last year, Halladay’s SIERA of 2.93 was very strong, but his 2.68 number this year is, simply put, sparkling.

It’s almost hard to describe what Halladay is doing anymore because his numbers are just so absolutely impressive. He is on his way to another All-Star Game, the eighth of his illustrious career. There are few things left for Halladay to prove, few questions left to be answered.

He would obviously love to win a World Series ring, something he has a very good chance of doing in Philadelphia. He could try to make up a new pitch on his own and probably be pretty good at it. He could try to be a better hitter, although teammate Cliff Lee seems to have him beat there.

Kidding aside, Halladay is a pleasure to watch every fifth day. Once in a while, you can put the stats aside and simply enjoy watching the man work in a nearly robotic manner. But when you do have to pull out the stats, they do back him up pretty nicely.

Amazingly, he’s been better this year than last, save for the perfect game and no-hitter, which he is lacking in 2011.

But hey, you never know when Halladay will pull one of those tricks out of his hat.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Can Antonio Bastardo Continue to Shine for the Philadelphia Phillies?

Antonio Bastardo has been pretty popular lately, to say the least.

When I went on to RotoWorld.com this morning, I saw that, over the past seven days, he was the 10th-most highly searched player in baseball.

Since I was on RotoWorld.com, most of these questions probably related to how much value he has for a fantasy team.

That led me to wonder, “Why do people doubt his value so much?”

Why can’t they just look at the raw numbers that he has been producing?

Or, are people looking at his numbers because they are intrigued from him coming out of nowhere?

Most of them are probably there because when he came up last year, he appeared in 25 games, posted an ERA of 4.34, and allowed right-handers to hit .300 against him.

Not quite stellar.

For the sabermetrics believers out there, according to the FanGraphs method of Wins Above Replacement (WAR), he was at 0.3. Anything under zero essentially means that that player is replaceable by any average Major League Baseball player.

He is already at 0.6 this season.

Since it is cumulative, what this is essentially saying is that he has already provided the Phillies with twice as many wins as last season.

Part of this is because he has pitched more innings, but he has also been really hot this year—he has allowed just three earned runs in 30 innings and ha an ERA of 0.90.

This is why so many people doubt Bastardo and feel the need to research him. They wonder if this type production is sustainable or if is this just a flash in the pan.

One important statistic to look at is how he is handling right-handed batters.

There are many more right-handed batters than left handed batters in Major League Baseball, and if a pitcher is going to be successful in either the closer or setup role (as opposed to just being a specialist), he needs to be able to handle right-handed hitting.

This season, right-handers are batting .111 against Bastardo.

Another important stat for relief pitchers is how many runners they strand on base.

Bastardo has stranded an amazing 99.1 percent of runners on base. This is the second-highest among all relievers in baseball behind only Tyler Clippard of the Washington Nationals.

If Bastardo is able to sustain his current level of play, it would simply be amazing—almost impossible.

However, to put this numbers in perspective, last season only two pitchers in all of Major League Baseball stranded over 90 percent of runners.

The same was true in 2009.

Antonio Bastardo is having an amazing year so far.

I don’t think that anybody can criticize his current performance, but it seems as if people are questioning whether or not he can sustain it.

In my book, the raw numbers tell me that Bastardo is indeed having an excellent year, and the Phillies have benefited greatly from his success in what has been an injury-plagued bullpen.

While he might not be able to perfectly sustain every statistic, I predict that he will finish off this great start with continued success.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

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