Now that the Phillies 2010 season is over, the focus in Philadelphia shifts to the big question of the winter – is Jayson Werth going to leave, and if so, how do they replace him? The prevailing assumption has been that the Phillies have no chance at re-signing him, given their $144 million in committed salaries for 2011, but Ruben Amaro recently stated that the Phillies had enough money to sign him “depending on what the ask is”. Of course, he then went on to say this:

“Jayson had a good year. It wasn’t an extraordinary year,” Amaro said. “He had a tough time with men in scoring position. It wasn’t as productive a year as he had in the past. If he is not with us, there are players that we can acquire and or we have in our own organization that can help us be as consistent.”

If that’s not setting your fan base up for Werth to leave, I don’t know what is. And, given that the Phillies probably need Werth more than any other team in baseball, losing him could present a serious problem, despite Amaro’s statements that he can be replaced.

If the Phillies replace Werth with Domonic Brown, which seems to be the expected scenario, they’ll have something like the following line-up.

Jimmy Rollins, SS, Switch
Placido Polanco, 3B, Right
Chase Utley, 2B, Left
Ryan Howard, 1B, Left
Shane Victorino, CF, Switch
Raul Ibanez, LF, Left
Carlos Ruiz, C, Right
Domonic Brown, RF, Left
Pitcher

Maybe they’d shuffle things around a bit, but it would be some version of a line-up that looked something like that. It doesn’t take much effort to see that the lack of right-handed thump would present a legitimate problem.

Managers already were able to bring in situational lefties to attack the middle of the Phillies line-up in high leverage situations, as we saw in the NLCS. Removing Werth from the equation exacerbates the problem, and the Phillies will run into a lot of situations where they are asking Ryan Howard or Raul Ibanez to get a big hit off of a left-handed reliever in a high leverage situation.

Werth provided necessary balance in the middle of the order, even if Amaro didn’t like his performance with men on base this year. If you replace him with Domonic Brown, it will be nearly impossible to find a spot for a quality right-handed bat on that roster. Each position comes with an incumbent that makes upgrading a challenge.

The Phillies best option would probably be to try to move Raul Ibanez in order to free up left field for a right-handed hitter, but with a $12 million salary, the Phillies would have to eat money in order to move him, and the right-handed outfielder market isn’t very good this winter. After Werth, you’re looking at guys like Austin Kearns, Marcus Thames, and Andruw Jones, none of whom are going to motivate Amaro to make that kind of change.

Essentially, the Phillies options seem to boil down to re-signing Jayson Werth or running out a line-up with a large, exploitable flaw next year. For all of the talk about having alternatives, I’m not sure I see a reasonable one. If the Phillies really do have enough money to keep Werth, they almost have to do it. Losing him would be a real problem, and one that would not have an easy solution.

We’ve already talked about Ron Washington’s curious decision to play Vladimir Guerrero over David Murphy in San Francisco, but now he’s made another surprising decision in his World Series rotation. In game 2, he’s decided to hand the ball to C.J. Wilson, and then turn to Tommy Hunter in Game 4. I’m not sure I would have made the same call in either case.

The main difference between starting Game 2 and Game 3 is the ballpark in which you pitch. Washington chose to throw Wilson in San Francisco and Colby Lewis in Texas, but based on their styles of pitching and the respective ways the parks play, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Let’s just start with the obvious: 44.5 percent of Colby Lewis’ balls in play this year were flyballs, compared to just 33.5 percent for C.J. Wilson. Wilson has the highest groundball rate of any pitcher on the Rangers’ roster, in fact, while Lewis has the lowest groundball rate of any of their starters. They are complete opposites on what kinds of balls in play they allow.

San Francisco, of course, is a pretty big park, and it knocks down a lot of fly balls that could be home runs in Texas. It is especially hard to hit home runs to right field, which makes it one of the best places in baseball for a right-handed pitcher to throw. The ideal pitcher for AT&T park is a right-handed flyball guy, to which Matt Cain can attest. His skillset is perfect for how the park plays.

Colby Lewis is similar to Cain, but Lewis is now going to pitch in Game 3 in Texas – a place where flyballs often clear the fences. Wilson, who will get less of a benefit from pitching in San Francisco due to his groundball ways and being left-handed, gets the Game 2 start instead. Why? I’m not sure, honestly.

The other curious decision is to give Tommy Hunter another start in Game 4. Derek Holland is simply a better pitcher than Hunter, and he’s been excellent in relief in the postseason. The decision was reportedly based on the Giants having a right-handed heavy line-up, but they actually hit RHP better than LHP this year, and as we discussed yesterday, their options for a DH against LHP are not good. By starting a righty, the Giants will be able to use a better alignment of players in Game 4.

The choices the Rangers have made might not end up mattering much, as I’m sure Holland will be warming up as soon as Hunter gets in any kind of trouble. If Hunter doesn’t pitch well, he won’t last more than an inning or two, and they’ll end up with the better pitcher on the mound anyway. But if Hunter digs them a hole they can’t climb out of, they might regret giving him the start when they have a superior option down in the bullpen.

The World Series always presents a couple of interesting strategic decisions for each team due to the rule differences between leagues. Most AL championship teams have an immobile DH who they have to hide somewhere in the field in NL parks, while the NL champs have to figure out which bench player they want to have hit for their pitcher in AL parks. The Rangers have announced that Vladimir Guerrero will only start one of the first two games in San Francisco, but the Giants have not yet said what they’re going to do at DH. Let’s try to figure out what their best option is.

The no-hassle option

If Bruce Bochy just wants to play it straight, he could use Pablo Sandoval as the DH. He’s the best hitter of their bench players, and despite his struggles, still has some value at the plate – his career line of .305/.356/.484 is certainly not embarrassing for the position.

But given the match-ups, that’s probably not a reasonable expectation. The Rangers could throw left-handed pitchers in all three games in Texas if they choose to use Derek Holland as the Game 4 starter, and Sandoval is a significantly worse hitter from the right side of the plate. Even if the Rangers use Tommy Hunter as the Game 4 starter, the Giants would still have to face C.J. Wilson in Game 3 and Cliff Lee in Game 5, so it seems unlikely that Sandoval will be the primary DH for the Giants in Texas.

The tell-him-to-man-up option

The Giants have a DH in their starting line-up, Pat Burrell. He’s the prototypical player for the position, as a slugger who doesn’t move well and is a defensive liability. There’s a problem, though – Burrell was awful as a DH in his time in Tampa Bay, and he’s a career .209/.306/.348 hitter when not playing the field.

There is an established trend of hitters performing worse when that is the only thing they are asked to do, and Burrell has publicly stated that he hated doing the job. His DH sample involves only 663 plate appearances, so it is certainly possible that his true-talent level is better than those numbers indicate, but asking a guy to do something he doesn’t want to do, and has struggled at the last few years, doesn’t seem like an attractive option.

If the Giants had a really good outfielder on the bench, perhaps it would be worth the risk. But I don’t know that you want to risk Burrell’s confidence just to get Aaron Rowand on the field. While he’s got a good glove and is right-handed, he was miserable offensively this year and has barely played in the postseason. Rowand probably wouldn’t provide much in the way of production, and you’d make Burrell unhappy in the process. I’m not sure that’s worth it.

The upgrade-the-first-base-defense option

If the Giants want to use the DH spot to upgrade their defense by shifting a regular to the position, maybe left field isn’t the place to look. Aubrey Huff has had some high-profile misplays in the field, and the Giants have a first baseman on the bench whose glove is his calling card in Travis Ishikawa.

There’s a few problems here as well, though. Ishikawa is left-handed and has been strictly platooned in his big league career, rarely getting to face lefty pitchers. He has only 67 career plate appearances against them, and he’s hit just .230/.288/.246, not exactly what you’re looking for out of a first baseman in the World Series. His defense is good, but Huff would have to be a butcher at first base to justify the swap, and history says that he’s actually not that bad.

In over 3,000 innings at the position, Huff’s career UZR is -6.5, putting him just below average. His UZR this year was +5.4, so its hard to make a case that he’s worse now than he was as a youngster. Despite the problems in the NLCS, Huff is a competent fielder, so moving him to DH doesn’t present the kind of upside for which the team is looking.

The Hail Mary option

There’s one other possibility the Giants could consider, though it would certainly qualify as a last resort – put Jose Guillen on the roster and start him at DH against lefties. As a right-handed bat with some power, this is the kind of role that the Giants acquired him for in the first place.

The problem is that Guillen isn’t any kind of lefty masher. He’s shown almost no platoon split throughout his career, posting just a .270/.327/.460 line against LHPs that is nearly identical to his performance against RHPs. And while a .787 OPS might seem like a decent option, Guillen’s career numbers don’t really represent what he is in 2010.

He hit .258/.314/.416 this season, only marginally better than what he did the last two seasons in Kansas City. He didn’t hit when he got to the National League, either, and in fact he hasn’t been a positive offensive performer since 2007.

There’s a reason Guillen was left off the postseason roster to begin with – he’s not a good player, and his weaknesses far outweigh his strengths. Even as a DH versus LHP, he’s only a marginally useful player, and removing someone with some potential value to get him into the line-up might not be a worthy trade off.

Given those four choices, I’m honestly not sure what Bruce Bochy’s best bet is. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t end up settling on one choice, but just kept shuffling through the options. Maybe you DH Burrell in Game 3, and if he has a big day, you run him back out there for Game 4, but if he doesn’t, you go with one of the other plans. No matter what way they go, it won’t be a great option, and the Giants will be at a disadvantage in the AL park.

Even before Ryan Howard struck out looking to end the NLCS on Saturday, he was already being fitted with goat horns, especially by broadcasters Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. If you watched any of the last few games of the series, you heard some version of the following phrase every time Howard stepped into the box:

“Here’s Ryan Howard, who does not yet have an RBI in the series.”

You could count on one hand the number of times the Fox crew said his name and failed to mention his series RBI total. So, when Howard took strike three on a nasty slider from Brian Wilson in the ninth inning, the narrative was confirmed, and Ryan Howard has now become the reason the Phillies lost the series.

There’s only one problem – besides Jayson Werth, he was the only guy who did anything offensively against the Giants. The Phillies lost in spite of Ryan Howard’s performance, not because of it. Here are the individual NLCS lines for each Philadelphia starter.

Shane Victorino: .208/.296/.250
Placido Polanco: .250/.360/.350
Chase Utley: .182/.333/.227
Ryan Howard: .318/.400/.500
Jayson Werth: .222/.375/.611
Jimmy Rollins: .261/.320/.304
Raul Ibanez: .211/.250/.263
Carlos Ruiz: .167/.318.333

Howard led the team in batting average, on base percentage, and extra base hits in the NLCS. And yet, because he didn’t knock in a run, Fox decided that he was struggling at the plate. Usage of the statistic like this is why the sabermetric community has spent so much time working to explain its faults – if it was put in context, it’s not the worst proxy for offensive prowess, but too often it is used to tell a story that is simply not true.

The Phillies lost not because Ryan Howard didn’t hit when it mattered, but because all of his teammates except for one failed to bring the offense when the season was on the line. Howard had some noticeable failures, but on the whole, he did his job. In this case, RBIs are more deceptive than descriptive.

Facing elimination tonight, the Yankees are pulling out all the stops by announcing that CC Sabathia will be available out of the bullpen tonight, even though he started Game 5 on Wednesday and threw 112 pitches. For his part, CC says that he “could throw 45 to 50 pitches” on one day’s rest. My question – should he throw any?

Yes, the Yankees have to win tonight or their season ends. But they also have to win tomorrow or their season ends. As often as the “take it one game at a time” cliche is run out there, the Yankees actually have to take it two games at a time, because winning just one doesn’t really do them any good. Winning tonight is critical, of course, but so is winning tomorrow – they are of equal importance. And I’m not sure that using Sabathia in relief tonight is the best use of resources in effort win both games.

The working assumption is that a pitcher’s quality of performance goes up with each off day they get between starts (to a point, anyway). If we accept that premise, then Sabathia should be more effective tomorrow than he would be tonight. We don’t have nearly enough data to quantify the difference between a starter throwing a few relief innings on one or two days rest, but we should be able to safely assume that there is some difference, even if we don’t know how much.

If they use Sabathia tonight, they would essentially be borrowing win probability from tomorrow night’s game in order to increase their chances of winning Game 6, but the potential quality difference could make that a bad trade-off. Using made-up numbers to illustrate the point, let’s say these were the respective probabilities of winning each game if Sabathia was used in relief tonight versus tomorrow.

Sabathia relieves tonight.

Game 6 – 55 percent
Game 7 – 40 percent

Chance of winning both: 22 percent

Sabathia relieves tomorrow night.

Game 6 – 50 percent
Game 7 – 50 percent

Chance of winning both: 25 percent

Under this scenario, the Yankees would increase their odds of winning tonight but decrease their odds of winning the series. Now, these numbers are not real, and in reality using Sabathia in relief for an inning or two is not going to make a difference of this magnitude in either game, so this isn’t some kind of colossal screwup if he pitches tonight. But I do think the win-Game-6-at-all-costs mindset misses the bigger picture.

You have to win Game 6 to force Game 7, absolutely. But you have to keep the overall goal in mind, and that is to win both games. My guess is that the Yankees best chance to win both would be to save Sabathia for tomorrow, when he may be more effective. I understand the temptation to use him tonight, but I think the Yankees may be better off if they resist that urge and try to win tonight’s game with the rest of their bullpen.

Pedro Martinez’s 1999/2000 seasons are probably the best stretch of pitching in baseball history. His numbers are just hilarious when you look back at them – in 1999, he put up a line of 1.56 BB/9, 13.20 K/9, and 0.38 HR/9, good for a 1.39 FIP. Don’t like the fact that he had a high BABIP that year? Then pick 2000, when his ratios fell all the way to 1.33 B/99, 11.78 K/9, and 0.78 HR/9, but his BABIP was .253, which helped push his ERA to just 1.74.

Regardless of which year you prefer, both are historically great. And if you didn’t get to see it happen, you’re seeing it again with Cliff Lee in the playoffs.

0.38 BB/9, 12.75 K/9, and 0.38 HR/9 through three starts, good for a 0.91 FIP. It’s not like he’s getting all that lucky on home runs either – his xFIP is 1.34. This is Pedro-in-his-prime stuff, but he’s doing it against the best teams in the best league in games that are basically do-or-die. If there have been better performances in playoff history, they aren’t that much better, and they probably didn’t come back to back to back. This is a legend in the making.

We will all tell our children about these three starts. If he does this again in Game 7 to win the ALCS for the Rangers, we’ll be wondering where this ranks in the history of sport.

On the biggest possible stage, Cliff Lee is pitching about as well as anyone has ever pitched. He deserves every accolade thrown his way. As Jerry Crasnick said, we are running out of adjectives to describe him.

All we can do is enjoy it. We may never see anything like this again.

Let’s just put this to a vote. Of the three historically awesome pitching performances we’ve seen so far, which was the best?