30 Thoughts on The First Two Months Of The 2010 Baseball Season.

Today is June 1st. The 2010 baseball season is, figuratively speaking, one third of the way through.  The Philadelphia Phillies find themselves in second place in the NL East and are playing terrible ball – perfect games aside – heading into the summer months.  

The Phillies need Jimmy Rollins back, and soon.

Here are 30 other thoughts regarding the 30 teams and the things they have done so far.

30. The Colorado Rockies are 27-24 despite the fact that Ubaldo Jimenez is 10-1.  The Kansas City Royals are 21-31 despite the fact that Zack Greinke is 1-6.  That means, without their star pitchers, the Rockies are 17-23 while the Royals are 20-24.

29. Ty Wigginton, who wasn’t supposed to be a starter for the Baltimore Orioles this year, leads the team in runs, homeruns, RBI, OPS, OPS+, and adjusted batting runs.

28. Lost in all the talk about Ubaldo, Roy Halladay, and Tim Lincecum, the Cardinals’ Jaime Garcia has gotten off to a 5-1 start with a 1.32 ERA and has only allowed 46 hits through 61.1 innings pitched.

27. The first, second, fourth and fifth best records in the American League belong to division mates the Tampa Bay Rays, the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, and the Toronto Blue Jays.

26. In case you thought we were returning to 1980’s style baseball, you are right in at least one respect: Oakland’s Rajai Davis leads the majors with 22 stolen bases despite his .315 on-base percentage.

25. Alexis Rios, waived by the Blue Jays last August, has 11 home runs, 16 stolen bases, 32 runs scored, and a .312 batting average.  All of these numbers put him on pace for career highs.

24. By my calculations, the Curtis Granderson three-team deal in December of last year netted the Tigers Max Scherzer, Austin Jackson, and Daniel Schlereth for Edwin Jackson and Granderson.  Schlereth has a 2.25 ERA at Triple-A with 30 strikeouts in 24 innings; Scherzer just struck out 14 batters in 5.2 innings last weekend; and Austin Jackson is hitting .330 with a 121 OPS+. 

Meanwhile, Granderson is hitting .232 with a 102 OPS+ in 27 games, and Edwin Jackson leads the National League in earned runs allowed and wild pitches.

23. Josh Johnson accomplished something this week that is shockingly common: he became the seventh starting pitcher to take a loss without allowing a single earned run against an opposing pitcher throwing a perfect game.  Jim McCormick did it against Lee Richmond; Ed Walsh did it against Addie Joss; Bob Hendley did it against Sandy Koufax; Charlie Hough did it against Mike Witt; Tim Belcher did it against Tom Browning; and Mike Morgan did it against Dennis Martinez.

22. Four players finished ahead of Casey McGehee in the 2009 NL Rookie of the Year voting.  Chris Coghlan currently has a .568 OPS, J.A. Happ has pitched 10.1 innings, Tommy Hanson has an ERA in the high-threes, and Andrew McCutcheon is doing fine.  Meanwhile, McGehee leads the National League in RBI, has an .876 OPS, and is ranked sixth in total bases.

21. What are the odds that Robinson Cano would be the leading hitter on a team with Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Mark Teixeira?

20. I’m not sure there is a larger trail of broken dreams than the one running through the Cleveland Indians clubhouse, which features Kerry Wood, Travis Hafner, Grady Sizemore, Andy Marte, Shelley Duncan, Austin Kearns, and Russ Branyan.

19. Mark Reynolds is quietly on pace to break the single-season strikeout record for the third year in a row.  What’s worse, Reynolds and Justin Upton are on pace to become the first ever 200 strikeout teammates.

18. The San Diego Padres have the best record in the NL despite getting absolutely no production from Kyle Blanks, Everth Cabrera, Tony Gwynn Jr., or Jerry Hairston, Jr.

17. Brandon Wood may be having the worst season of any length of all time.  He is hitting .156 with a .381 OPS (yes, OPS), and 36 strikeouts to go with 2 walks.

16. As uninteresting as the NL Cy Young Award race is at the moment, there is no clear leader in the AL.  Jeff Niemann is your ERA and ERA+ leader; David Price, Andy Pettitte, and Clay Buchholz are tied for the league lead in wins with seven; and Ricky Romero leads the league in strikeouts with 79.

15.  Roy Oswalt is averaging over a strikeout per inning for the first time since his rookie season.

14. If Ivan Rodriguez (currently on the disabled list) can add “taking the Washington Nationals to the playoffs” to “taking the Detroit Tigers to the World Series” and “taking the Florida Marlins to a World Series Championship” on his resume, does that make him the greatest catcher of all time?

13. The fact that Jamey Wright still has a job in Major League Baseball is enough to make you believe in conspiracy theories.

12. Phillies’ record with Jimmy Rollins in the lineup: 9-3; Phillies’ record without Jimmy Rollins in the lineup: 19-20.

11. If Joakim Soria is still a Royal after the trade deadline, then several teams aren’t trying to win and the Royals aren’t trying to rebuild.

10. With 14.4 strikeouts per nine innings, a 4.57 K/BB ratio, and a 231 ERA+, Billy Wagner is back in the Hall of Fame closer conversation.

9. This year’s NL Most Valuable Player Award is bound to be historic.  Right now, it appears as though it will either go to a pitcher, a rookie, or a guy who has already won it three times.

8. Until he proves me wrong, my new nickname for David Wright is “HoJo”, as his career trajectory is tracing, almost perfectly, that of Howard Johnson.

7. Carlos Silva, currently 7-0 with a 3.12 ERA after going a combined 5-18 with a 6.18 ERA in the last two seasons is clearly the Comeback Player of the Year so far.

6. Is there any way Seattle trades Ichiro?

5. In almost half as many games as he played all of last year (100 vs. 49), Vlad Guerrero has almost reached last season’s totals in home runs (15) and RBI (50).

4. Charlie Morton is 1-9 with a 9.35 ERA and 12 home runs allowed in 10 starts this season.  How did he get to 10 starts this season?

3. Cincinnati’s ace this season is Mike Leake, who was drafted last season and has never played a game in the minor leagues but has a 4-0 record and a 2.45 ERA.

2. The National League leader in OPS+ is currently Albert Pujols.  The second place leader is rookie Jason Heyward, the fourth youngest player in the league.

1. The second half of the 2010 baseball season begins on June 8th, when Stephen Strasburg takes the mound for the Washington Nationals against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

And that’s the first two months.  We’ll have to check in after another couple of months to see where we stand.

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The Philadelphia Phillies: What The Hell Is Going On Here?

There is a scene in Back to the Future II when Marty McFly is staring down the barrel of a shotgun being held by what had been his high school’s disciplinarian Mr. Strickland.  Marty is in the Alternate 1985, the 1985 in which Biff Tannen has become rich and powerful, and has turned Hill Valley upside down.

As Strickland threatens to Marty that he has “three seconds to get off this porch with your nuts in tact,” a confused, overwhelmed, and scared Marty screams “Please, Mr. Strickland, I just wanna know what the hell’s going on here!”

As of right now, the 2010 baseball season has become the Alternate 1985, the Philadelphia Phillies are Mr. Strickland, and Philadelphia Phillies fans are Marty McFly.

We just wanna know what the hell is going on here.

With their 9-3 loss to the Atlanta Braves on Monday afternoon, the Philadelphia Phillies have now lost nine out of their last 13 games; what’s worse, they have officially fallen out of first place.

The problem with this 13 game skid, of course, is that the Phillies have been lucky to have won the four games they’ve won.  Remember, one of those wins was a 1-0 victory in which Roy Halladay had to pitch a perfect game to ensure the Phillies’ win when the Phils managed only one unearned run.

Suddenly, the Phillies are in an alternate universe in which they have to rely on pitching and defense to win games because their offense is too anemic to consistently score runs. The problem, of course, is that this team is not built around pitching, and defense.  

Admittedly, Jamie Moyer is losing hard-luck games—he has three losses in his last three starts despite giving up only seven earned runs in 18 innings—for the first time in his career.  Nevertheless, this is not a staff that is going to hold teams to four or fewer earned runs very often.

Where this all gets scary is when you look at the offensive numbers for the Phils during the last 13 games.  

In eight of the last 13 games, the Phillies have scored either one run or no runs. During that stretch the Phillies have gone from one of the top offenses in the National League to seventh in the NL. The Phillies haven’t finished a season that low in offense since 2002.

The Phillies went an entire week without a homerun from Sunday May 23rd to Monday May 31st.  The Phillies haven’t gone that long without a homerun since 1999. Plus, the last homerun they hit was by Ross Gload; no offense to Ross, but he’s not the guy we need homeruns from.

And then there are the individual stats: Jayson Werth, who had the day off on Monday, is currently on an 0-for-17 slump, and has watched his batting average drop 40 points in 13 games.

Chase Utley has also watched his average drop almost forty points, and is now hitting .277, which would be a full season career worst.

With an 0-for-4 outting on Monday, Ryan Howard’s OPS dropped below .800; his career OPS is .950.

The first two months of the Phillies season are now over, and it would be difficult to say that this has been a “bad start” to the season.  The Phillies are still six games over .500, and they are still only half a game out of first place in the NL East.

However, what has been a near-historically lethargic month for one of the best offenses in baseball is troubling nonetheless, and the Phillies need to prove to themselves and their fans that they can still snap out of this funk.

At the end of Back to the Future II, Doc and Marty catch up to Biff back in 1955 and save the day, returning the Alternate 1985 to the real 1985, and returning all life to normal.  Will the Phillies be so lucky?

Mr. Strickland’s got his gun pointed at the Phillies’ fans nuts, and we’ve got three seconds to get off his porch.

If the Phillies can’t get this offense turned around soon, we may all find ourselves stuck in the Alternate 1985 forever.

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Wake Up Call: Ryan Howard Is Not in the Top 10 First Basemen in Baseball

 

What’s the problem with giving a huge extension to a player before their contract year?  The Philadelphia Phillies are finding out.

The Phillies and their fans were very excited about the new contract extension that General Manager Ruben Amaro just gave to Ryan Howard last month.  The Phillies will be paying Howard one of the highest salaries in the history of baseball starting in 2011; Howard will be making $25 million per year, which is known in baseball as “A-Rod Money” because only Alex Rodriguez has ever made that much.

Get ready for the bad news, Phillies fans.

A guy making A-Rod Money should be, at the very least, the best player on his team.  Unfortunately, Howard is not – at least not at the moment.

Thus far in 2010, Jayson Werth – who will need a new contract of his own soon – has been the Phillies’ best hitter.  Howard isn’t the Phillies’ second best hitter either – that title goes to Chase Utley.  

But that’s okay – lots of teams pay big money who players who aren’t the best player on their own team.  Not “A-Rod Money,” but whatever.

If Howard can’t be the best player on his team, one would hope that he would at least the best player in baseball at his own position.

Hold on to your hats.

No one would argue that Howard is the best first baseman in baseball – that honor goes to Albert Pujols – but we also wouldn’t require it either.  It is no fault to be the second best first baseman behind Albert Pujols.

Unfortunately, Howard isn’t that, either.

Third place ain’t bad, right?  If Howard were the third best first baseman in baseball, we’d be very happy for him.  Heck, if he were the fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh best first baseman in baseball, we might still be thrilled.

But how thrilling is this:

Using OPS as a barometer of overall performance, in 2010 Ryan Howard is currently being out-performed by . . . wait for it . . . fourteen other first baseman.

Maybe we need a different barometer.

Using adjusted batting runs instead, Howard ranks 17th overall amongst first basemen in baseball, behind Aubrey Huff and ahead of Russ Branyan.  That’s right – he is in the bottom half of the list.

Ranking first basemen by homeruns, Howard comes in 12th.  He is seventh amongst first basemen in runs and sixth amongst first basemen in RBI.  These numbers are better, but remember, we’re talking about A-Rod Money.

So Ryan Howard is not performing amongst the elite first basemen in baseball; first basemen are traditionally amongst the best hitters in baseball, so we could at least expect him to be amongst the top 20 or so hitters in the game.

We can expect it, but that won’t make it so.

To this point in the 2010, using OPS as a barometer for overall performance, Ryan Howard is currently the 70th ranked hitter in major league baseball.  Shifting to adjusted batting runs, Howard is ranked 83rd in the league.

He is currently 37th in homeruns, 19th in RBI, and 37th in runs scored.

The clincher here is that Howard’s contract wasn’t even up until 2011.  That means Amaro had a whole year to see how Howard was going to perform.  

So what’s the point of all this?

Suppose Howard continues to perform at this level.  Would Amaro really have thought Howard was worth A-Rod Money after a season’s worth of this kind of performance?  Could the Phillies have saved five, 10, or even 15 million dollars per season on this deal?

For years Phillies fans have wanted the Phillies to spend top quality money on top quality players.  For Phillies fans, the crushing blow here is that, apparently, the Philadelphia Phillies were finally willing to spend A-Rod Money, but they didn’t get A-Rod Value in return. 

Imagine if they had?  

If Howard could have been re-signed to a value-appropriate extension, the Phillies could have spent that A-Rod Money on a whole host of players on small market teams who will be looking for new homes in the near future – guys like Hanley Ramirez, Zack Greinke, Adrian Gonzalez, Roy Oswalt, Ryan Braun or – brace yourself – Albert Pujols.

Instead, the Phillies gave A-Rod Money to a player they already had, and could have re-signed for far less.

And that is why you never give a huge extension to a player who isn’t even in his contract year.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

New York Mets Shut Out Philadelphia Phillies for Third Game in a Row

Has anyone seen that panic button anywhere?

After Thursday night’s shutout, the Philadelphia Phillies leave New York having not scored a single run in their three-game set there, and having been shut out four times in the last five games.

Charlie, we have a major problem: there is no good precedent for the Phillies being shut out for an entire series.

The last time the Phllies were shutout for an entire three game set was—strangely enough—also during the last week of May, back in 1979.  There, the Phillies were shutout by the Chicago Cubs on May 25, followed by a scoreless three game set against the Montreal Expos from May 29 to May 30.

It gets crazier: the Phillies record going into that game against the Cubs was 26-14, and once the Expos were done with them their record had fallen to 27-20.  Meanwhile, the current Phillies squad went into last Saturday’s shutout loss against the Boston Red Sox with a 26-15 record, and they are now 26-20.

The bad news, Phillies fans, is this: that was just the beginning of a bad run that eventually got manager Danny Ozark fired, and the 1979 Phillies team was the only squad out of five straight teams from 1976 to 1981 to not go to the playoffs.

Yikes.

There is good news, though: Cole Hamels pitched effectively against the Mets on Thursday.  Hamels pitching well at this point in the season is far more important to the Phillies ultimate goals than the Phillies offense scoring runs at this point in the season, so this is good news.

Still, it would also be nice to score some runs.

Meanwhile, the Phillies head to Florida for a three-game set starting tonight, and for the first time in a while the Phillies enter a series in a position to lose first place by the end of the series.

Worse yet, with all five teams in the NL East within three games of each other, the Phillies could, quite literally, be in last place by the end of this Marlins series.

Better keep that panic button at the ready.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Glavine’s Turbo Tanking and the Dawn of the Phillies Dynasty

On September 30, 2007, the New York Mets took the field needing a win and a Phillies loss to win the National League East and stave off one of the worst collapses in baseball history.

The Mets had been up on the Phils by seven games on September 12th, with 17 games to play.  Going into the final game, they’d improbably blown 11 of 16 games and went into the final game in a dead tie.

The Mets sent future Hall of Famer Tom Glavine to the mound that day to face off against a 70-91 Florida Marlins team playing for little more than pride at the end of a disappointing season.

What happened, of course, is part of baseball lore: Glavine gave up seven earned runs on five hits and two walks while retiring only one batter, the Mets’ season was over, and a Philadelphia dynasty was born.

In the biggest game of the year, needing one victory for a chance at the playoffs, Tom Glavine got Turbo Tanked.

What Does It Mean To Get Turbo Tanked?

Everyone knows what it means when a pitcher gets “tanked”—it means he gave up lots of runs.  It is a subjective standard, but generally speaking we’re talking about enough runs to lose the game, and usually enough runs to keep him from going five innings. Give up five runs in six innings of play, and you had a bad outing; give up six runs in three innings, and you got tanked.

But a Turbo Tanking has a far more specific definition.

A Turbo Tanking occurs any time a pitcher pitches so poorly that he can’t even get out of the first inning.  Whenever you see a number less than one in the innings pitched column and a big number in the runs column, it means the pitcher got Turbo Tanked.

We can only imagine what went through Dave Bush’s head when he took the mound against the Minnesota Twins on May 21st.  Perhaps he was feeling good.  Perhaps he was thinking he needed to pitch the whole game because Trevor Hoffman has been as reliable as the Postal Service.  I’d be willing to bet he was not thinking that he would be leaving the mound before his team even got a chance to bat, but that is exactly what happened.

Bush got Turbo Tanked.

How Bad Can a Turbo Tanking Get?

Glavine’s Turbo Tanking may have been one of the highest profile Turbo Tankings of all time, but it was certainly not the worst.  The title of “Worst Turbo Tanking of All Time” probably belongs to the Florida Marlins, in what was actually a team effort.

On June 27, 2003, the Marlins were in Boston for an interleague matchup featuring Carl Pavano and Byung-Hyun Kim.  Pavano had pitched well the game before against Tampa Bay, and by the time Pavano took the mound the Marlins had already staked him to a 1-0 lead.

The lead did not last.

Pavano faced six batters and got absolutely tagged—the Sox went double-single-double-home run-double-single and chased Pavano from the game after scoring five runs.  They brought Michael Tejera to the mound for the Marlins to pitch in relief of Pavano.  Except, Tejera came in and the Red Sox promptly went single-walk-single-triple-single off of him, tacking on five more runs and chasing him from the game.

The Marlins had used two pitchers and hadn’t recorded an out.

It wasn’t until Allen Levrault came into the game that the Marlins finally recorded their first out, and then a mere four runs later the inning was over, but not before Johnny Damon had come the plate for the third time.

At the end of the day, Pavano and Tejera had combined for the incredibly rare “Two-Man Turbo Tanking.” And, because neither Pavano and Tejera had not recorded a single out, it was also what we call a “Pure” Turbo Tanking.

Famous Turbo Tankings

The nice thing about a Turbo Tanking is that there is always the next game.  But that isn’t always a good thing.  We all know about Johnny Vander Meer’s consecutive no-hitters in 1938, but in 1933 Sad Sam Jones had back-to-back Turbo Tankings against the Washington Senators and Philadelphia Athletics.

And for some Turbo Tankers, there is no tomorrow; the saddest Turbo Tanking is the Turbo Tanking that ends a player’s career.  There are none more famous than Nolan Ryan.

Ryan took the mound for the final time on September 22, 1993, against the Seattle Mariners.  Pitching to Ivan Rodriguez, Ryan gave up a leadoff single to Omar Vizquel, walked Rich Amaral and Ken Griffey, Jr., and then walked Jay Buhner to bring in the first run of the game.  The next batter hit a 1-2 pitch for a grand slam and Nolan Ryan left his final game without recording an out.

Charlie Hough would end his career in similar fashion the following year for the Marlins against the Phillies, giving up an HBP, three singles, a double, and a walk before being pulled from the game for the final time.

Nolan Ryan’s old teammate with the 1969 Mets, Jerry Koosman, also failed to finish the first inning in his final start on August 21, 1985.

How Does Knowing about Turbo Tankings Help Us?

We call it “taking one for the team,” when a pitcher stays in a game to give up tons of runs in a clearly lost game, thereby preserving the arms of the relief pitchers for another day.

But for a starting pitcher, taking a Turbo Tanking might also be considered “taking one for the team” in the sense that, if a manager can yank a struggling pitcher early enough it gives the pitcher’s team a chance to get back into the game.

This doesn’t happen as often as one might think, but just last season it happened to the Detroit Tigers; Armando Galarraga got Turbo Tanked, giving up five earned runs on four hits and three walks, but Jim Leyland got him out of there and the Tigers managed an 11-7 come-from-behind win.

Sometimes a Turbo Tanking can save a championship.  In Game Seven of the 1925 World Series, the Pittsburgh Pirates gave Vic Aldridge a quick yank after he gave up four runs on two hits and three walks, and ended up winning the game, 9-7, and the Series against none other than Walter Johnson himself.

So What’s the Point of all This?

Baseball is all about happenings. We love it when a pitcher has a no-hitter going, when a batter is hitting for the cycle, when a fielder has an errorless streak, or when Bobby Cox is about to get tossed again to extend his Major League record.

Rarely is the average baseball fan aware, however, that when the starting pitcher fails to get out of the first inning, that too is a happening.

So, next time you are reminiscing about the Dawn of the Phillies Dynasty, you don’t have to say:

“Remember that time the Mets sent Glavine to the mound with the season on the line and he gave up some many hits, walks, and runs that they had to take him out of the game before he could finish the first inning?”

Instead, you can say:

“Hey, remember Glavine’s Turbo Tanking?”

We’ll all know what you mean.

Truly, it was one of the great moments in Phillies’ history.

 

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Philadelphia Phillies Get Shut Out for the Third Time in Four Games

There are times when a Major League Baseball team can’t seem to catch a break, and the reasons are not so obvious.  Good news, Philadelphia Phillies fans: this is not one of those situations.

In losing Wednesday night to the New York Mets, the Phillies struggled with the same two problems that have killed them during the current eight game streak in which they are 2-6 against four inferior baseball teams.

Those two problems?  Simple: the pitchers aren’t pitching and the hitters aren’t hitting.

During the last eight games, the Phillies have scored 15 runs, but ten of those runs came in back-to-back games against the Cubs and Red Sox.  In the other six games, the Phillies have scored three runs once and one run twice while being shut out three times.

Meanwhile, Phillies pitchers can’t exactly blame the lack of support for these losses—in the last four games Phillies pitchers have allowed eight runs twice and five runs twice.

Let’s talk a little recent Phillies’ history:

– The last time the Phillies were shut out three times inside of a week’s time was September 15 through September 19, 1992, when they were shutout by the Expos, Cubs, and Pirates three times in five games.  That Phillies team finished 70-92, which was good for last place in the NL East.

– The last time the Phillies were shut out three times in four games was in June of 1990, when the Mets and the Pirates pulled off the feat.  That Phillies team finished 77-85, which was good for fourth place.

Now, to be fair, it hasn’t been an ordinary stretch of games for the Phillies.  Indeed, the Phillies have faced some wacky pitchers during the last week. 

The first loss of this stretch came against lefty-finesse guy Zach Duke, who is usually totally on or totally off.  The third loss of this stretch came against Daisuke Matsuzaka, who has about six different pitches that he likes to throw and came four outs from a no-hitter.

Then, the Phillies lost consecutive games to knuckleball pitchers Tim Wakefield and R.A. Dickey who, oh by the way, are buddies and exchange advance information about teams they’ve each faced.

It is bad enough that the Phillies became the first team to face back-to-back knuckleballers since the 1985 Detroit Tigers; evidently the Phillies were facing a guy on Tuesday who got a scouting report from the guy who had just faced them on Sunday, who had been in the park the previous night when his teammate almost pitched a no-hitter against them.

Finally, on Wednesday night the Phillies were shutout by a combination of Hisanori Takahashi and three relievers.  Takahashi, of course, just joined the Mets this season from Japan, so the Phillies haven’t had lots of opportunity to scout him.  He is also a left-hander, which makes him lethal against the Phils, and he has four pitches including a screwball.

In short, for the Phillies’ hitters, it has been a frustrating stretch featuring either left-handed pitchers or unorthodox pitchers with screwy stuff.  It has just been a bad stretch.

As for the pitching, while the Phillies are currently in the middle of a streak in which they have not scored a run off of a starting pitcher in 26 innings, Phillies starters have allowed 21 runs during that same period.  While we might expect to receive sub-par performances from Jamie Moyer, Joe Blanton, and Kyle Kendrick, keep in mind that Roy Halladay gave up 7 runs during that period as well.

Unfortunately, things don’t get any easier in the next few days.  The Phillies send Cole Hamels to the mound in the finale in New York against Mike Pelfrey, who is having a terrific season (6-1, 2.86 ERA). 

The Phils then go on the road to Miami, where they’ll face unfavorable pitching matchups against the Marlins in the form of Kyle Kendrick against Chris Volstad and Jamie Moyer against Anibal Sanchez.  Even Roy Halladay will be facing off against Marlins ace Josh Johnson.

Following the Marlins, the Phils are on the road again in Atlanta—who is suddenly 2.5 games behind the Phillies—before returning home for a set next weekend against the San Diego Padres, the only team in the NL that currently has a better record than the Phillies.

This is a crucial time for the Philadelphia Phillies, and they look positively lost.  While no one expects the Philadelphia to sweep a nine game road trip against three divisional opponents, I think most Phillies fans would, at the very least, hope that the team was losing competitively rather than not even really showing up.

We know what is wrong with this team.  Now, let’s get out there and try to fix it.

 

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Carl Yastrzemski All-Stars: Top 25 Mispronounceable Names in MLB History

Admit it: you don’t know if J.A. Happ’s name is “Jay” or “J.A.” Despite the fact that his name is clearly listed in every scorecard, box score, and recap as “J.A.’, announcers uniformly refer to him as “Jay Happ.”

Happ is hardly the first baseball player in major league history to have a name that befuddles fans and sportscasters alike. Part of the fun of America’s most international sport is a wide array of easily mis-pronounced names.

For a lot of these guys, baseball being an international sport is only technically an excuse.

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A Brief History of Left-Handed Hitting in Philadelphia

In 2010, the Philadelphia Phillies fully anticipate making the playoffs for the fourth straight year, and for many Philadelphians anything less than a World Series appearance would be a disappointment.

The Phillies have gotten to this point, in part, on the basis of the best left-handed hitting in the National League.

There was a time, however, when dominant left-handed hitting by the Philadelphia Phillies was incredibly deceptive and actually masked severe deficiencies in the Phillies’ lineup.

In fact, for an entire generation—from 1890 to 1938—if it appeared that a Phillies batter was an elite hitter, there was one question that you could ask to determine if he was truly great or if it was a facade.

Did he hit left-handed?

In essence, if a Phillies batter hit left-handed during this period, his numbers were almost certainly inflated as a result of having played in the Baker Bowl.

You see, the Baker Bowl had a relatively conservative left field (335-341.5 feet down the line, 408 feet to center) but right-center and right field in the Baker Bowl were ridiculous (300 feet to right center, 272-280.5 feet down the line). Because the stadium was designed to fit within the city grid, the stadium had an absurdly small right and right-center field, which made hitting a small task for left-handed hitters.

So up until 1938, when the Phils left for Shibe Park, the stats of left-handed hitting Philadelphia Phillies are incredibly unreliable as indications of overall hitting abilities.

This means you, Lefty O’Doul, Chuck Klein, Cy Williams, Sam Thompson, and Billy Hamilton. This means you too, Gavvy Cravath, with your crafty opposite-field right-handed hitting.

 

Chuck Klein

The effect of the Baker Bowl is particularly vivid with respect to Chuck Klein’s career statistics. From 1928 to 1933, Klein played in one of the friendliest hitting contexts of all time—he was a left-handed hitter in one of the smallest ballparks in baseball history, and he was hitting in the most explosive era in National League history.

During those years, Klein had 200 hits, 100 runs, 120 RBI, and 28 or more home runs every season. He twice hit 50 doubles, hit no lower than .337 in any one season, and had only one year in which his OBP dropped below .400 and his SLG dropped below .500. He won the MVP in 1932 and finished second in 1931 and 1933, while taking the Triple Crown in 1933. 

Then in 1934, as the offensively explosive era was coming to a close, Klein left the Phillies and joined the Cubs, who played in Wrigley Field, a bigger park, though by no means a pitcher’s park (how small is your park when moving to Wrigley Field represents a disadvantage?!).

He enjoyed (or did not enjoy, rather) two injury-plagued seasons during which his batting average fell precipitously (from .368 in 1933 to .301 and then .293), and his OPS numbers stayed respectable but were less than incredible.

Klein returned to the Phillies midway through 1936 and in 1937 hit .325, though again in limited play.

In 1938, a season in which the Phillies switched mid-year to Shibe Park, Klein was awful, hitting less than .200 with an OPS of .673 in 25 games before being released and then signing with the Pirates. Klein enjoyed a renaissance with the Pirates, hitting .300 with an OPS of .872 in 85 games in Forbes Field with its 300-foot right foul line.

Back with the Phils in 1940, Klein hit .218, and his career was effectively over.

 

So, Klein sucked?

Whenever I think of players whose performance was skewed positively by their home ballpark, I think of guys like Jim Rice and Vinny Castilla. But Chuck Klein was not just very good from 1928 to 1933—his unadjusted numbers were easily the best in the National League over that period, and he was a dominant offensive player.

Thus, I am less capable of dismissing him out of hand as I would if I were comparing him to Rice or Castilla. Playing in the Baker Bowl didn’t just make Klein good; it made him one of the best players in his league for six seasons. I have a hard time taking that from him without concrete split stats to back it up.

Thus, I think of him as more of a Sammy Sosa or Todd Helton-type player than a Jim Rice-type player. Cy Williams, Lefty O’Doul, et al. fall in line behind him from there.

For fun, here’s some other conspicuous performances by left-handed hitters in the Baker Bowl.

Cy Williams

Cy Williams is an exciting player when you first see his stats. In truth, you think you’ve stumbled upon the National League’s Babe Ruth—he led the league in home runs four times from 1916 to 1927 and finished in the top three 11 times during that period.

Williams actually played in Wrigley Field in 1916 and 1917 and led the NL with 12 home runs in 1916. But his truly dominant era would come in Philly; he peaked with 41 home runs in just 136 games in 1923.

Fred Luderus

A left-handed hitter, he finished in the top 10 in home runs in the NL eight times in nine years with the Phillies from 1911 to 1919, including 1911, when he finished second with 16 behind Wildfire Schulte, and 1915, when he hit 18 and finished second behind Cravath, who had 19. That year, three of the top four home run hitters in the National League were Cravath, Luderus, and Sherry Magee (a Phillies right-hander).

Beals Becker

In 1913, Beals Becker was a left-handed-hitting outfielder with the Cincinnati Reds with 15 career home runs in five seasons. After 30 games, Beals had zero home runs and was traded to the Phillies. In 88 games with the Phillies that year, Becker hit nine home runs, good enough to finish sixth in the National League. The following year, he hit nine more and set career highs with a .325 average and .370 on-base percentage.

In 1915, he would hit 11 home runs in 112 games, good enough to finish fourth in the National League behind Cravath and Cy Williams and Wildfire Schulte of the Cubs. It would be Becker’s final season.

Dave Bancroft

Bancroft was a switch hitter. In 1915, as a rookie, Bancroft hit seven home runs, good enough for sixth in the league. In 15 remaining seasons played with the Phillies, Giants, Braves, and Dodgers, Bancroft would only hit 25 more home runs.

Elmer Flick

In 1900, the 24-year-old, left-handed-hitting Flick finished second in the National League with 11 home runs. In 1902 he joined the American League and never hit more than six again.

George Harper

In 1924, the lefty-hitting George Harper had five career home runs in 350-plus games with the Tigers and Reds, and none 28 games into that season. Harper was traded to the Phillies and hit 16 home runs in 109 games with Philadelphia in the remainder of 1924.

Don Hurst

Hurst was a lefty scorcher for the Phillies who benefited not only from his ballpark, but also his era; he was the lesser Chuck Klein. He debuted at the age of 22 in 1928 and hit 19 home runs in 107 games. He then hit 31 bombs with 125 RBI and 100 runs in 1929 and hit 24 home runs with 143 RBI in 1932.

In 1933, with the offensive explosion era coming to a close, he hit only eight home runs in 550 at-bats, and he was out of baseball in 1934 at the age of 28.

Lefty O’Doul

O’Doul failed to make it as a pitcher in the early part of the ’20s and disappeared from 1924 to 1927. He re-emerged in 1928, but by the end of that season, he’d hit only eight home runs in 190 career games.

In 1929, at the age of 32, he joined the Phillies and hit 32 home runs with 122 RBI, amassed 254 hits, scored 152 runs, and finished with a .398 average and an OPS of 1.087. He had 202 hits the following season and 22 more home runs. In 1931 he left Philly and joined the Dodgers, whose ballpark itself was quite the hitter’s park, and his numbers fell off dramatically.

Johnny Moore

From 1928 to 1933, Johnny Moore was a nobody with the Chicago Cubs, having enjoyed brief success in 1932 when he hit .305 with 13 home runs. The Reds acquired him in 1934 but traded him to the Phillies after he hit .190 with a .506 OPS through 16 games.

In the remainder of the 1934 season, Moore hit 11 home runs with a .343 average. In 1935 he hit 19 home runs with a .323 average, and in 1936 he hit 16 home runs with a .328 average in just 124 games.

Dolph Camilli

Camilli established himself as a slugger for three-plus seasons with the Phillies before joining the Dodgers, with whom he is better known. The two best seasons of his career came with the Phils, when he hit 28 home runs and posted a .315/.441/.577 in 1936 and then hit 27 home runs with a .339/.446/.587 in 1937.

Camilli was saved, in a sense, because when the Phillies switched parks in 1938, Camilli was already in Brooklyn, playing in another park that favored left-handed hitters.

 

So, what’s the point of all this?

You can rest assured—while we can almost completely write off the performances of left-handed Phillies hitting in the Baker Bowl, today’s left-handed Phillies are earning everything they get. Citizens Bank Park still favors hitters, but it is 330 down the right field line and 329 down the left field line.

No gimmes for Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and company.

 

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com .

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Philadelphia Phillies-New York Mets: Is Jose Reyes the Modern Day Juan Samuel?

Fresh off of taking two of three from the New York Yankees in the Subway Series this past weekend, the New York Mets play host to Philadelphia for a three-game set starting Tuesday, hoping to get back into the NL East race. 

While the Mets find themselves looking up at the Phillies in the standings,  they may need to look into the Philadelphia Phillies’ past to figure out what to do with one of their current struggling superstars.

The Mets couldn’t be welcoming the Phillies to town at a better time.  Jimmy Rollins, the human embodiment of the Mets-Phillies rivalry, has just gone back on the disabled list with a lingering calf injury.  Rollins, who certainly draws the ire of Mets fans whenever his name is mentioned, also serves as a sparkplug in the Phillies offense and a motivating force in the Mets-Phillies rivalry.

The Rollins injury couldn’t come at a worse time for the Phillies, whose bats have suddenly gone cold for the second time this season.  After scoring 12 runs against the Pirates last Monday, the Phillies have scored a grand total of 15 runs in six subsequent games against the Bucs, Cubs, and Red Sox, including one game in which Daisuke Matzusaka came four outs away from no-hitting the usually robust Phillies offense.

The Mets are not without their own problems, however.  Just two years ago the Mets featured two of the most promising young players in all of baseball on the left side of their infield in David Wright and Jose Reyes.  In 2010, though, there is trouble in Mets-land.  Wright simply seems to have forgotten how to hit the ball; he is hitting a career worst .261 with 60 strikeouts in only 44 games.

Meanwhile, Jose Reyes, who missed almost all of the 2009 season due to injuries and discovered at the beginning of this season that he has a thyroid disorder, has entered the Quentin McCracken Zone (named after the Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder who regularly flirted with a batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percent all under .300; this is also known as the 200/200/200 Club).  Reyes currently had an RSL of .222/.266/.284/.550.

So what’s eating Jose Reyes?  As soon as the Phillies get to town, the Mets should ask them what to expect from Reyes, because they’ve been here before.

In the early-to-mid 1980s, the Phillies had their own speedy five-tool infielder from the Dominican Republic by the name of Juan Samuel.

Like Reyes, Samuel could hit for power and steal bases.  Like Reyes, Samuel led the league in triples and at-bats multiple times, and regularly had over 700 plate appearances.  Like Reyes, Samuel had four great seasons in which he looked to be the paradigm for the new generation of ball players.

At the age of 27, however, Juan Samuel figuratively fell off the cliff.  All of his numbers dropped significantly; his on-base percentage went under .300, he had career lows in triples, home runs, RBI, stolen bases, and runs scored, while finishing with a below league-average OPS for the first time.

(Full disclosure: I’ve compared a current player to Juan Samuel before, and it didn’t turn out so well ).

The problem with Samuel was the same problem that Reyes may be having.  Like Reyes, Samuel was never considered to be a patient hitter.  Reyes, like Samuel, relies on his ability to make contact and use his speed to get on base.

The problem with that approach is that once a player who uses that approach begins to lose a little bat-speed, not to mention a little foot-speed, it becomes very difficult to continue to play at a high level.

Samuel was never the same player after he fell off the cliff.  Fortunately for the Phillies, they recognized this almost immediately and got rid of him while he still had some market value.  Ironically, the Phillies sent Samuel to the New York Mets for Lenny Dykstra, Roger McDowell, and Tom Edens.  Dykstra, of course, became the centerpiece of the Phillies’ 1993 team, while Samuel was traded away to the Dodgers at the end of the season.

So what’s the point of all this?

Jose Reyes is either having a little trouble coming back from some injury issues, and needs some time to get his mojo back, or, he is at the beginning of the end of the productive part of his career and the Mets need to try to get some return for him while they can.  Whichever it is, the Mets need to figure it out before any of the other teams in the league do. 

Who knows?  Maybe Jose Reyes could be traded away for the cornerstone of the next Mets World Series run.

Let’s just hope that as the Mets look to Phillies history to figure out what to do with the 2010 version of Juan Samuel, the Phillies are also mindful of their own history and avoid sending the Mets the 2010 version of Lenny Dykstra.

 

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Why Ryan Howard’s New Contract Will Prove to Be a Disaster

Wanna see something strange?  Take a look at the homerun, RBI, hits, runs scored, and total bases numbers for two Philadelphia Phillies outfielders, Shane Victorino and Jayson Werth:

 

 – Werth currently has 8 homeruns, 31 RBI, 46 hits, 28 runs, and 90 total bases.

 

 – Victorino currently has 8 homeruns, 32 RBI, 45 hits, 28 runs, and 84 total bases.

 

Holy cannoli, right?  Shane Victorino and Jayson Werth are having virtually identical seasons.

Man, throw in the fact that Victorino plays centerfield and has seven stolen bases to Werth’s two, and we might have to infer that Victorino is actually having a better season.

Emphasis on the “might”.

Let’s compare Werth and Victorino again, but this time let us look at their RSL (Rate Stat Line) and four other statistics: OPS+, adjusted batting runs, and wins above replacement (WAR):

 – Werth currently has a .324/.404/.634/1.037, along with  a 169 OPS+, 15.3 adjusted batting runs, and a 1.7 WAR.

 – Victorino currently has a .262/.308/.488/0.796, along with a 106 OPS+, -0.2 adjusted batting runs, and a 1.2 WAR.

Holy cannoli, again, right?  Shane Victorino and Jayson Werth are having two completely different seasons.

Man, throw in the fact that Werth has been providing absolutely essential protection in the lineup for Ryan Howard and Chase Utley while Victorino has been failing in his primary role – getting on base ahead of those guys – and you’d almost have to conclude that Victorino is having an even worse season than Werth.

So what’s the point of all this?

It is one thing for casual baseball fans to compare players purely on the basis of the traditional Triple Crown categories or, more relevantly, homeruns and RBI.

However, I suspect that major league baseball people are doing the same thing, and I simply find this baffling.

I am almost certain that Ryan Howard’s recent extension – making him one of the two or three highest paid baseball players in the world despite the fact that he isn’t one of the three or four best players in his own league at his own position – was based on homeruns and RBI.

Howard is an elite homerun hitter, but in terms of overall value, he is far from the cream of the crop.

Have a look:

Now, you tell me: which set of numbers do you think Phillies’ General Manager Ruben Amaro, Jr. was looking at when he decided to make Ryan Howard one of the three highest paid players in baseball?

In a few years, when we’re all complaining about how much money Howard is making, let’s all remember today’s lesson about how certain statistics can be deceiving, and let’s all remember that all the information Amaro needed to avoid making this mistake was available to him, shall we?

 

 

 

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is the co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

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