Can Anyone Keep Roy Halladay from Repeating as NL Cy Young?

Roy Halladay was last year’s National League Cy Young winner, and the argument could be made that the eight-time All-Star has been even better this time around.

His ERA last season was 2.44, just slightly ahead of his 2.51 this season.  He’s already won 15 games, and barring injury, should get to 20 for the fourth time in his career and the third time in the last four seasons.

He’s been just as effective at keeping runners off the basepaths as in years past, posting the same WHIP of 1.04 and league-leading walks per nine innings rate of 1.1.

Knowing that Halladay’s own stats compare to his Cy Young season a year ago would be enough to make him the frontrunner for the award again, but he’s been better in a couple of important areas to voters. 

He’s currently 15-4, and the winning percentage is the best of his career. He has hit double figures in losses the last three seasons because he pitches deep into games, but won’t approach that mark this year.

Additionally, he’s improved his strikeouts per nine innings to a career best 8.4.  Impressive considering he hasn’t needed to sacrifice control for that improvement.

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Philadelphia Phillies: Anticipation Growing for October Baseball

Nothing has been clinched yet. The Philadelphia Phillies‘ magic number remains at 34, and there is still well over a month of play left this season. Nonetheless, barring a catastrophic collapse of epic proportions, it’s only a matter of time before the Phillies win the division, and clinch the best record in the league. Only a matter of time.

But after an off-day, followed by a rainout, that time seems increasingly endless.

It’s incredible to think that merely five years ago, a postseason birth was the only thing on the minds of Phillies fans. Because, of course, after 13 years of failed attempts, just getting there was exciting enough. But now, winning the division is hardly the sole accomplishment the fans have in mind. The only thing they’re really focused on now is the Phillies’ postseason play. Who they’ll play, when they’ll play and how they’ll play. Nothing else really matters anymore.

Sure, there are some intriguing subplots such as Roy Oswalt’s recovery, Placido Polanco’s sports hernia and the fate of the division rival Atlanta Braves, all of which could affect this year’s postseason. But, aside from these subplots, the schedule lacks any matchups that will spark any major form of interest or attention.

That’s how good this team has become.

Aside from this week’s series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, and a four-game set with Milwaukee in September, the Phillies will not face any current first place teams until, presumably, the postseason. For the most part, the remanding “competition” will consist of the Astros, Marlins, Nationals and Mets. 

As this team continues to extend their lead in the division, blow out the opposition and break all sorts of records, all we can do now as fans is wait. Because it won’t mean anything until October. Until then, the anticipation continues to grow even quicker than the win total continues to climb.

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The State of the Philadelphia Phillies with 43 Games to Go

After Sunday’s rain-out, the Phillies have 43 games to go in the regular season—including the make-up game on September 20 at 1:05 p.m. as part of a split-doubleheader.  As of today, the Phillies still lead all of baseball with 78 wins and are nine game in front of the Braves in the NL East.

With all of the injuries suffered by the Phillies this year so far, it is even more impressive that they have been this dominant.  Four starting position players, two starting pitchers and three relievers have all spent time on the DL—and some of them made multiple trips.

They have also used four different closers because of the injuries and two spot/replacement starters.

And while Placido Polanco, the starting third baseman, is not technically on the DL right now, he has not played since August 6th due to a sports hernia.  After receiving an injection, Polanco is expected to decide by Tuesday whether or not to have surgery, which could put him out nearly the rest of the regular season.

Still, the Phillies keep finding ways to win.  Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels have been terrific on the mound.  But while the pitching seems to have carried the team through the first half of the year, the recent addition of Hunter Pence has jump-started the offense.  And once again, late in the season, Ryan Howard is heating up.

Jimmy Rollins is having his best year since the 2008 season.  Although hitting .265 is not spectacular, he is taking more pitches, drawing more walks and has been healthy all year.

Since coming off the DL with major knee issues, Chase Utley appears to be almost be back to his old self.  Shane Victorino is also having a great year despite two trips to the DL, batting .313.

The younger role-players have also been key to the Phillies success so far.  Michael Martinez, Wilson Valdez and John Mayberry Jr. have all made big contributions, filling in for injured players.  Young pitchers Antonio Bastardo, Michael Stutes and Vance Worley have been slightly overused for guys at their level of experience, but they have all responded very, very well.

The point is, this team is winning and shows no signs of slowing down.  This is a very special time to be a Phillies fan.  We could very well be witnessing something historic right now.  The season is far from over, but I like their chances.

While the team is off today, think about it.  Sit still for a moment and soak it all in.  Then, take a deep breath.  Can you smell it? 

…43 games to go.

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Domingo Santana Is the Player to Be Named Later in Hunter Pence Deal

Add another top-10 prospect to the Hunter Pence deal. In a deal that didn’t have to be made, the Phillies shelled out a heap for the 28-year-old outfielder. With the addition of Domingo Santana, the overall package is now roughly close to the package the Phillies sent to the Blue Jays for Roy Halladay.

Domingo Santana, 19, is a very young, toolsy outfielder with lots of upside. Standing 6’5, 200 pounds, his best tool is his power potential, which he began displaying more this year, hitting a career-high seven homers and a .166 isolated slugging percentage, up from .115 last year at the same level.

While he’s demonstrated a very good walk-rate in the minors entering this year, he’s struck out much too often. His strikeout rate has been a career best this year but remains a very poor 30.7 percent of plate appearances. If he would continue showing marked improvement, while maintaining his walk rate, he’d have the potential to be another top 50 prospect.

Like many of the prospects in the Phillies system, Santana was a boom or bust prospect. He could have been another Ryan Howard or could have been another Anthony Hewitt. Sooner or later, giving up all these top prospects will come back to haunt the team. 

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MLB Power Rankings: Phillies, Red Sox or Yankees? Who Sits Atop the Heap?

With a little more than a month left in the 2011 regular season, three teams have pulled ahead of the pack as potential World Series favorites: the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies.

Although it comes as no surprise that these three teams also have the top three payrolls in MLB, an NL East vs. AL East World Series could prove to be one of the greatest best-of-seven game series of all time. Matchups such as C.C. Sabathia against Roy Halladay, or even Jon Lester against Cliff Lee, would make the Fall Classic one of the best in history.

But first, the three high-spending teams must make it through the regular season. That being said, here is a brief recap of the three teams’ seasons, as well as a numerical ranking, based on their performance so far in 2011.

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Fantasy Baseball: 5 Late-Season Additions Who Could Make the Difference

There are some great divisional battles shaping up across Major League Baseball for the stretch run, and I’m sure that is the same for your fantasy baseball league. MLB teams have the opportunity to pluck players off the waiver wire, and fantasy player’s should be doing the same.

There are teams that are guaranteed to make the playoffs and those that are not. With only a few weeks left, these are some available players who could make all of the difference for your team.

Here are five late-season additions that you should add to your fantasy team

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Philadelphia Phillies: 10 Weakest Throwing Arms in Team History

I’m a positive guy.

I don’t dwell. I don’t nitpick. I don’t fume.

Not without good reason — or invaluable material, like flimsiest-armed throwers in Phillies history.

If you’re a Phillies fan, years of David Bell one-hopping put-out tries tests your patience. And your ears could power 18th-century engines after only months of Ben Francisco and Raul Ibanez.

It’s inexcusable–and mildly hilarious–that some baseball players can’t throw. Of all the sport’s five tools, only running seems more natural, more fundamental. You’d think guys might struggle with a stick or glove first, but throwing?

It’s the only thing mocked as girly. You’d figure that incentive enough for an 8-year-old to scribble notes. For those who skated by by compensating with everything else, you’d think six-figure salaries might trigger motivation.

In other words: If MLBers can’t throw by now, we seamheads have free rein to heckle.

Unless, of course, players simply don’t have it in them, in which case we should all share a laugh. Because “If you can’t laugh at yourself…” right?

So hats off–or hate on–to the proud few who’ve made the cut. Or whose elbows make you wonder if something was.

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Who Is Philadelphia Phillies’ 4th Playoff Starter, Roy Oswalt or Vance Worley?

The Philadelphia Phillies are a virtual lock for the playoffs. Their continued dominance thus far this season has resulted in an MLB best 78-41 record and a nine game lead in the NL East (through Sunday), rendering the remaining six weeks of the regular season to be little more than a dress rehearsal for the playoffs. For two right-handed pitchers, however, the future isn’t so crystal clear.

For Vance Worley and Roy Oswalt, 2011 has been the tale of two seasons; the best of times and the worst of times. Worley is in the midst of a season that reads like the script of a Disney movie. A third-round pick in 2008, the 23-year-old Worley was not expected to be a contributor to this year’s team as he broke spring training as a member of the Triple-A Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs. However, his performance in spring training was strong enough that, when Joe Blanton went down with an injury in late April, the Phillies turned to Worley to fill Blanton’s role as the team’s fifth starter.

Worley’s first start was impressive, allowing just two hits in six shutout innings against the New York Mets, and he has been on fire ever since. His stat line belies his stature as a rookie trying to find his way through his first full season in the big leagues. In 16 appearances, 14 of them starts, Worley is sporting a tidy 8-1 record, with a 2.85 ERA through 88.1 innings. Even more impressive is his WHIP, currently hovering just north of 1.1. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to Rick Vaughn, Worley has quickly become a fan favorite at Citizens Bank Park.

Oswalt, on the other hand, would probably like to take a mulligan on 2011 altogether. His season to forget started to go sour in spring training when a ball hit by Manny Ramirez struck Oswalt in the head, just under his right ear. Things have not gotten much better since then for Oswalt. First came a lower back strain in late April that landed him on the 15-day DL, followed by a devastating tornado which destroyed his hometown in Mississippi, precipitating a short leave of absence from the team. In late June, Oswalt returned to the DL with pain in his lower back, diagnosed as a “mild bulging disc”. That stint on the DL lasted six weeks.

 

Oswalt only recently returned and has had two mediocre outings in the time since. He is carrying a pedestrian 5-7 record through 15 games, with a 3.84 ERA through 84.1 innings. In contrast to Worley, Oswalt’s WHIP is an uncharacteristic 1.4.

As the Phillies gain steam towards another postseason run, Charlie Manuel must begin to closely examine which pitcher would serve best as the team’s fourth postseason starter.

Obviously, if Oswalt is able to return to form, he will warrant the position on name alone. He is a proven commodity and, if healthy, will have the job. However, if his struggles continue and his health does not improve, Worley’s performance thus far this year has to earn him at least some consideration for the job.

That being said, it must be noted that rookie pitchers’ futures are amongst the hardest to project in all of sports. All too often, a rookie pitcher comes out of the gate sizzling, only to fizzle as time wears on as hitters gain familiarity with his delivery and tendencies.

In baseball, where hitters have less than a split-second to decide whether a pitch is a fastball or an off-speed pitch, a ball or a strike and finally whether to swing or watch the ball fly by, an odd quirk in a delivery, the ability of a pitcher to hide the ball for a fraction of a second longer than his average peer or even the tempo at which he pitches a game can swing the balance of power in the pitcher’s favor.

This advantage is evident the first, second and sometimes even third time a particular pitcher faces a particular team. As hitters develop a scouting report on a pitcher, that advantage tends to fade. Phillies fans will recall the promising rookie seasons of Gavin Floyd, Brandon Duckworth and Tyler Green, pitchers who each had rookie campaigns that seemed to be the start of a much more successful career than each actually went on to have.

Worley’s last start was arguably his worst. The Los Angeles Dodgers tagged him for six earned runs on seven hits in just four innings. It will be interesting to see if his struggles were an aberration or a sign of what is to come. The encouraging news is that he has bounced back from a poor start before after being lit up by the New York Mets early in the season, however, as the season wears on and the scouting report on Worley grows, hitters are beginning to learn what to look for from him making a recovery all the more difficult to come by.

The final six weeks of regular season baseball will mostly serve as a tune-up for the playoffs for the Philadelphia Phillies. This year’s playoff run carries more weight than those in recent years, as it will be only with a successful playoff run that this team can claim its true place in Philadelphia baseball history.

For Worley and Oswalt, however, the final six weeks will be much more important. Worley must prove that he is more than simply a fill-in on one of the best pitching staffs in baseball history. Oswalt, on the other hand, will seek to regain the Cy Young-caliber form that had Phillies fans so excited for his arrival last year. It will be an interesting subplot for fans to follow, and the next six weeks will go a long way in helping Charlie Manuel to determine who to tab as his fourth playoff starter.

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Philadelphia Phillies: Six-Man Rotation with Kyle Kendrick Is Not a Good Idea

Recently, after Cole Hamels struggled in his last start, Phillies pitching coach Rich Dubee stated he is not ruling out the possibility of a six-man rotation. This would be a mistake.

It seems Dubee, like many fans, have become results orientated with Kyle Kendrick. Once again, some fans are thinking Kendrick’s current 3.25 ERA means he’s a good pitcher. They see a low ERA and assume a pitcher is better than what he is. Kendrick currently is a prime example.

He’s still pretty much the same pitcher he’s always been. While his year-to-year ERA is very volatile and much more susceptible to variance and luck, looking at more skill-based metrics are not. When looking at his peripherals, nothing really has changed.

While he has decent control and can get some grounders, he still cannot miss bats. Even though his 4.45 SIERA is essentially at a career best (not counting 2009’s 26 innings), he’s still pretty much the same pitcher across the board.

Kendrick	SIERA	xFIP	GB%	K%	BB%	Contact %	Swinging-Strike%	BABIP	LOB%
2011	4.45	4.42	49.2%	11.1%	7.4%	88.5%	5.4%	.265	76.1%
Career	4.87	4.66	46.2%	10.4%	6.8%	88.7%	4.9%	.288	72.1%

 

While normal luck stats, such as BABIP and left-on-base percentage, have been a tad bit luckier than his career norms, it does not exactly jump off the page. Having to look deeper, the main culprit in his much lower ERA is what’s been occurring with runners on base and in scoring position, where his BABIP is an unsustainable .214 and .212, respectively.

Not only is Kendrick not the pitcher his ERA dictates, the use of a strict six-man rotation in itself is not optimal. Pitchers, on average, typically do worse on six days of rest than on four or five days of rest. In “The Book: Playing the Percentages of Baseball” they performed a study comparing starting pitchers in regard to how many days of rest they received: 

“There were 4,456 starts where a pitcher had exactly five days of rest. Their wOBA in these starts was .346. On four days of rest, the same pitchers had a wOBA of .350.”

As for six days of rest:

“We have 645 games in those cases, with a wOBA of .355.”

Keep in mind that most of the time in a six-man rotation, pitchers will get six days of rest and not five, because of the typical off-days on a Monday or Thursday.

Even if there were no off-days and every pitcher got exactly five days of rest each time, the slight increase in overall performance would most likely be more than canceled out by the fact you are sacrificing starts for your best (Halladay, Hamels, Lee) in favor of getting starts for your worst (Kendrick).

In addition, the Phillies cannot afford to go without a long reliever in the bullpen. The last thing they need is to use Lidge, Madson and Bastardo for multiple innings if another 19th inning game arises, or a starter needs to be pulled early. If they want to make a spot start for Kendrick every now and then when days off aren’t on the near horizon, then so be it, but do not make the mistake of making it an every week occurrence.

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Philadelphia Phillies “Stun” the World by Losing to Washington Nationals

We have known all season that this Philadelphia Phillies team would have the ability to stun the world.

We’re not completely sure we thought it would happen in August.

Stunning victories are, for lack of a better word, stunning. Sometimes, they leave the viewer sitting agog in his or her seat, unable to conceive of what just happened.

Other times, a stunning victory will cause sheer elation—a moment of heightened sensation akin to the birth of a child or the winning of a lottery.

At the end of the day, though, it can be said that a victory stuns fans when it comes against all odds, against all expectations, in the unlikeliest of scenarios.

We all remember the great “stunning” victories:

In 1951, Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants “stunned” the Brooklyn Dodgers with his Shot Heard ‘Round the World, to beat the Dodgers in Game 3 of the NL tiebreaker series, catapulting the Giants to the World Series.

Ten years later, in 1960, Bill Mazeroski stunned the baseball world with his World Series-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 against the mighty New York Yankees; the unlikeliest hero delivering the winning shot for the unlikeliest champions.

In 1969, Joe Namath stunned the world when he predicted that the New York Jets would beat the mighty Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, and then did just that.

So, too, was the world stunned in 1980 when the United States Olympic hockey team topped the Russian national team in Lake Placid, New York.

In 1988, Kirk Gibson stunned the Oakland Athletics in Game 1 of the World Series when, with two injured knees, he limped to the plate against Hall of Fame closer Dennis Eckersley and cranked the game-winner over the right field wall.

Other stunning victories came for the Toronto Blue Jays in 1993 (Joe Carter), the Florida Marlins in 1997 (Edgar Renteria) and the New York Giants in 2008 (helmet catch).

These are just some of the many “stunning” victories over the years—shocking, momentous, unpredictable and somewhat unbelievable victories in important moments.

And now, we can add one more.

On August 12, 2011, Livan Hernandez took the mound against the Philadelphia Phillies in Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park in a divisional matchup between NL East foes. Little was in doubt, as the Phillies are running away with the division and the Nationals, loaded with young talent but not quite ready for prime time, are out of the race already.

It looked to be just another game in the dogs days of summer.

But Livan had other things in his mind.

Hernandez pitched 6.2 innings, allowing only one unearned run, and also managed to go 2-for-3 with two RBI singles. The Nationals held down the fort for Hernandez, and the Nationals won by a score of 4-2.

Just another night, right? Not if you are CBS Sports.

In the next day’s recap, made up of compiled CBS Sports Wire reports, came under the following headline:

“Hernandez single-handedly stuns Phillies as Nats win.”

And there it is.

Overreaction? Sure. Hyperbole? Maybe. A statement about the disparate positions of these two franchises? Of course.

But at the end of the day, Philadelphia Phillies fans, take a moment to love it.

It was just another game on just another August night; a game on a night in a sport in which any team can lose to any other team on any night.

But on this night, the losing team was the Philadelphia Phillies.

And in Major League Baseball in 2011, that fact alone stuns the world.

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