It’s looking like the Rays will trade Jason Bartlett to the Orioles for Nolan Reimold, and judging from RJ Anderson’s early tweets, the reception in Tampa will be positive.

The reasons for trading Bartlett are clear. This will be his last year of team control, his defense seems to be fading, and he’s coming off of his worst season since he became a regular. Even if one of those things weren’t true, the team also has Reid Brignac coming up behind him. Brignac’s defensive numbers get an incomplete, his plate discipline stats (6.1% walk rate, 25.6% strikeout rate) aren’t very impressive, and the knock is that he can’t hit lefties. Then again, his .214 wOBA against lefties has only come in 74 major league PAs, his defense seemed strong in 2010, and there’s a chance for more power with Brignac. All of this may be moot – Brignac is under team control for another five years and if his defense can be scratch or better, he’s a valuable piece.

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Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com broke the news late Tuesday afternoon that the Marlins had traded Dan Uggla to the Braves for lefty reliever Mike Dunn and Omar Infante. The reaction in the twittersphere was immediate and intense, mostly centering on the fact that the Marlins have seemingly cornered the market on relievers with their past few trades.

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Perhaps the story of the Phillies in ye old National League Championship Series of 2010 is the story of missed opportunities at the plate. We know how poor of a statistic batting average is, but Ryan Howard was the only regular to top .261, so the bats weren’t hot. The entire team put up a .216/.311/.321 line, which is somewhere between “that’s disappointing” and “OMGz, trade that bum Chase Utley (.182/.333/.227) like yesterday” depending on your current state of mind. A team that hit .260/.332/.413 during the season didn’t come close to equaling that production in a six-game stretch. It happens, and it seems there’s no reason to slice and dice that sample any smaller.

Or maybe there is. Because we’ve talked about this team’s struggles against lefthanders at times. Looking at the series as a whole, though, the Phillies managed “only” 10 runs, 18 hits (7 extra base) and 9 walks in 21 innings against lefties. Perhaps we only remember the high-profile strikeouts – and the Giants’ LHPs did strike out 23 in those 21 innings. Even if we think the overall line overstates the case and want to consider the leverage index of all those Javier Lopez outings, in particular, he only averaged a 1.4 LI while compiling that 2.08 ERA and getting those 13 outs. Impressive? Yes. Higher-than-average pressure in those situations? Yes. The reason the Phillies lost the series? Hardly. The Phillies had chances and we obviously can’t blame their lack of offense all on their overall performance against lefties.

The word going in was that even if the Phillies offense was going to have a little trouble with this staff, their own pitching staff would easily neutralize the poor Giants offense. After all, the Giants were the only playoff team with a below-average wOBA and the Phillies had Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels. That trio didn’t perform poorly – they pitched 33 innings and allowed 13 runs, striking out 34 against only six walks. Perhaps more was expected of Roy Halladay after his no-hitter in the first round, but he did strain that groin and you don’t point at three pitchers that pitched 65% of your innings to a 3.27 ERA and say, there, that’s your problem right there.

The bullpen? 13 innings, three runs. The defense? Four errors to the Giants’ three – and even if you want to say errors are a poor gauge of defense, you’d have to admit they played about even on the field in that regard. Timely hitting? Sure, but what can you really do about that, and how much of that is the short sample? Want to blame Ryan Howard just ’cause? Check Dave Cameron’s defense.

It was a tight series. Javier Lopez certainly helped the Giants, and the San Francisco staff deserves some credit for keeping a good offense down. Play this series a million times, though, and the Philadelphia squad probably wins close to half of ’em. The Phillies didn’t play terribly and don’t have an obvious scapegoat going into the offseason, so all they can do is find a way to replace Jayson Werth if he leaves (preferably with a right-handed bat), rework the bullpen as good teams do every offseason, and give it another shot next year.

I’m nothing if not predictable. Why change a horse in midstream, the saying goes.

Roy Halladay, October 6, 2010

Roy Halladay, October 21, 2010

Yup, more strike zone plots from Brooks Baseball. And Carson’s out here pushing the limits in his previews. But these two game plots are pretty different, eh? Then let me blow you away with yet another strike zone plot, eh?

Looks like Halladay was having a little trouble locating low-and-away to left-handers, no? Or, at least low-and-away in general. In any case, it’s a nice way to show, in pictures, what it looks like to win “without your best stuff,” as the game stories most likely went today. Halladay grit and grissioned his way through the start while Tim Lincecum was the valiant loser, mostly because of some poor defense behind him.

Lincecum is not left-handed, and that probably helped lefties Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and the recently unbenched Raul Ibanez to a stunning 3-for-12 in game five. That group, along with Domonic Brown, is now a combined 10-for-51 with 7 walks and 3 extra-base hits, which sounds bad except the whole team is now batting .208. Perhaps the struggles of the left-handed batter from Philadelphia were overstated.

Raul Ibanez, though, that guy shook off his benching in a strong way. One of his two hits led to the first run of the game and started that third inning that featured all the little league defense a big-league audience could handle. Placido Polanco was the WPA champ on the offensive side for singling in the third run in the third inning (+8.5%), but somehow Ibanez sticks out.

It was a nice respite. Now, because of the Roy Oswalt Decision, the Phillies still face an uphill climb in game six.

First off, given some of the howling on twitter, it’s time for the obligatory strike zone plot. Let’s get it out of the way, thanks to Brooks Baseball.

It’s pretty ugly, but consistent enough. It was four or five inches too wide, or a half a foot if you count both sides. But there are plenty of triangles and squares out there beyond the box, so let’s not blame it all on umpire Wally Bell.

For all the talk of how similar Madison Bumgarner and Joe Blanton were going into the game, it’s somewhat prescient that they both failed to get out of the fifth inning and that they both left having given up three earned runs. On the other hand, the journey was not necessarily so similar. Bumgarner does use his left hand, and he did strike out six and allow only one run to score while he was on the bump, while Blanton struck out three and was directly responsible for all of his runs. It wasn’t all bad for Blanton – all of his balls in play were counted as groundballs – but it since the starters played to a standstill on the scoreboard, the advantage goes to the hometown pitcher.

Phillies fans can’t even blame the randomness of coming through in high leverage moments in this one – there were eight moments with a leverage index over one last night. The Phillies batters came through in two of them, and the Giants batters came through in two of them. It may seem that the Giants were more ‘clutch,’ but that would probably just be because they came up last. To the home-fielders went the spoils.

At this point, some of the blame must rest squarely on the Phillies’ stars. In this game, Chase Utley put up a -10.8% in win probability by going one for five and not coming through in some key moments. That comes on the heels of a -12% in game three (0-for-4), +3.8% in game two (0-for-3 with two walks), and a -1.8% in game one (1-for-3 with a walk). It’s obviously just a poor four-game stretch for a great secondbaseman, but it’s also bad timing for that stretch. The same could be said for Jimmy Rollins (.267, 1 extra base hit) and Jayson Werth (.250, 1 extra base hit).

The larger pattern is one of struggles for all of the left-handers on the team. Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, the recently benched Raul Ibanez, and young Domonic Brown are a combined 7-for-39 with 7 walks and 3 extra-base hits, and most of that is Howard’s production. Maybe it’s not a surprise given the left arms of Jonathan Sanchez and Madison Bumgarner, but Javier Lopez looms as a large acquisition for the Giants in this series. He has three big holds and gave up his first run Wednesday night. His lefty sidearm release has been hard on the lefty batters, and that makes sense given the difference in release points vis-a-vis a regular right-hander.

All this said, it was a great game. The WPA graph does a good job showing the rollercoaster that was Wednesday night. Fans of baseball were satisfied, if not fans of Phillie baseball.

Cody Ross isn’t bald, he just emits Awesome from his head. – chatter Tony
Cody Ross is the answer to every question. – chatter TexasRanger

Ah, but this is the Philly review, so that will be enough of the Ross love here. Which is good, because we don’t have to cover the Great Bruce Bochy Lineup Disaster either, especially since it turned out okay for the Giants. Instead, we’ll reach back into the chat to find a couple quotes that offered real-time feedback on Ted Barrett’s strike zone:

Aren’t you noticing a completely different strike zone being called for both pitchers in this game. Matt Cain is getting inside, outside, and low. Have not seen those same pitches call for Cole Hamels – chatter T Barrett
Maybe the complaints are based on when Cole get squeezed rather than quantity. The non-strike 3 to Sanchez was a big call (like Halladay’s against Burrell in game 1). – chatter Andy

So we turn to the pictures – from Brooks Baseball – to try and get the full story:

At first glance, there’s reason to doubt Barret’s zone. There are five clear strikes on the outside the zone for the Giants, and only two that are as far outside the zone for the Phillies. If we count all of the “wrong” calls inside and out, we get eight called strikes that weren’t strikes and four strikes that were not called strikes for the Giants. Then there’s four called strikes that weren’t strikes and five strikes that weren’t called for the Phillies. It’s the sort of thing that seems both real and yet somehow not completely significant. But a lot of this is in the eye of the beholder, as these chat responses to the posted strike zone show:

looks pretty even to me – chatter Evan
Whole camels could fit inside Cain’s sz – chatter bowie
mostly shows me that cain did a better job of hitting that left side of the zone. he peppered a lot of pitches very close to the line – chatter Giants

Ah-hah. The truth is in the eye of the beholder often, but let’s try to say something true about this game: “Though the strike zone may have favored the Giants in a slight way and put pressure on Cole Hamels in key moments, the game was won by timely hitting by the Giants and the failure of the Phillies’ batters to come through in similarly tough situations.” You can quote me on that.

Let’s end this with a look at the highest leverage moments in the game, and the results of the at-bat.

The weekend took your faithful Phillie correspondents to places we didn’t expect, and none of those places featured wifi and a comfy moment to kick back and review the first two games of the NLCS. Better late than never. The Phillies and Giants split the weekend, which wasn’t great for the maroon marauders because the series tilted lightly in the Giants’ favor with those results – teams that win one of two games on the road in a seven-game MLB series win the series 56.2% of the time.

Game One was just one of those games, it seems. Seven innings, eight hits, seven strikeouts, no walks and more ground balls than fly balls doesn’t seem like a line that would normally produce four earned runs, but that’s what happened to Roy Halladay Saturday night. The difference between excellent and a -8.8% WPA night for the Doc could have been summed up in two fly balls from Cody Ross that ended up in the seats. This same Cody Ross had exactly average power this year (.145 ISO) and had gone -for-16 against Halladay in his career. The same Cody Ross that was Cody Ross the Marlin until Brian Sabean briefly made him Randy Myers by supposedly claiming him just to block the Padres. Then the Giants then realized that he was better than Jose Guillen, at least in the field, so that he could become the Cody Ross, Giant, that the Bay Area now knows and loves. Either way, you read that fateful name backward as Grant did on the McCovey Chronicles, and you get “ssoR y doC,” which is about all that can be said to Halladay, who pitched well enough to win.

It did seem like the Phillie offense could have put together a five spot – Tim Lincecum wasn’t at his best either. He walked more (three), and gave up equal numbers of fly balls and ground balls, but he also struck out eight – one of which was Ryan Howard with two batters on in a tie game in the third inning (worth 6.6% in WPA alone). Though the two teams had the same amount of baserunners, and the Phillies showed a better slugging percentage as a team, it was the Giants that strung together the hits in the big moments.

The following may seem random – and most likely was – but the big lineup change between games one and two may have had a little bit to do with the different outcomes. As Rob Neyer noted before the game Sunday, Charlie Manuel reversed Placido Polanco and Chase Utley in the batting order so that the heart of the order did not include two straight lefties in Utley and Howard.

It’s a little strange to see Polanco and his lack of power batting third, and it may feel like separating two lefties isn’t that big of a deal, but just look at what the Giants did in the two games for your pudding-based proof. In Game One, Javier Lopez brought his lefty sidearm release to the mound to get Utley to ground out and Howard to strike out before leaving in a double switch that would have made Dusty Baker proud. In Game Two, Bruce Bochy brought Ramon Ramirez out to pitch to the righty Shane Victorino, but after Victorino sacrificed, he was faced with the choice of walking the lefty Utley to keep Ramirez in the game and pitch to Polanco, or burning Lopez on Utley, bringing in Sergio Romo to pitch to Polanco, and then summoning Jeremy Affeldt to get Howard. That is a lot of relievers, but with the off-day coming today, the second move-heavy approach is probably what Bochy should have done. Instead, this is what happened:

Bottom 7th: Philadelphia
– R. Oswalt singled to shallow center
– R. Ramirez relieved J. Sanchez
– S. Victorino sacrificed to third, R. Oswalt to second
– C. Utley intentionally walked
– P. Polanco singled to shallow center, R. Oswalt scored, C. Utley to second
– J. Affeldt relieved R. Ramirez
– C. Utley stole third, P. Polanco stole second
– R. Howard struck out swinging
– J. Werth intentionally walked
– P. Sandoval at third
– S. Casilla relieved J. Affeldt
– J. Rollins doubled to deep center, C. Utley, P. Polanco and J. Werth scored
– R. Ibanez lined out to third

4 runs, 3 hits, 0 errors
San Francisco 1, Philadelphia 6

Don’t underestimate the difference the new lineup made, as it obviously made Bochy’s life difficult in the seventh inning Sunday night (and then he went and made some dubious decisions of his own). Now it’s clear that he’ll have to use both of his lefties to get through the heart of the order late in game three, provided his starter once again gets the job done against the new-look lineup.

Two quotes rattled around in my brain as I prepared to write this preview:

“Every pitcher is Roy Halladay to the Giants. You know what kind of pitchers do well against the Giants? The ones with noses.” – Grant, from the McCovey Chronicles in his post called “Sizing up the Phillies’ starting rotation“

“I’ve been calling for a long time to see metrics about how hitters and pitchers fare against different types and/or quality of opponents. In the postseason, this is really all that matters.” – Commenter B N, on the review of Game Three of the NLDS

If this were the mainstream media, it would be so easy to say something semi-resolute and catchy about this matchup. Tim Lincecum has a 3.17 ERA and a 0.99 WHIP in seven career games against the Phillies. Roy Halladay has a 7.23 ERA and 1.61 WHIP in three games. OMGz! Don’t count the Giants out! They have Halladay’s number!

Hardly. Of course. Those numbers are career splits, and what do starts against other iterations of these lineups even mean? Diddly. And then, if we try to boil it down to splits in this season, we get one poor game for Halladay against the Giants (seven innings, ten hits, five runs, five strikeouts and no walks) and one excellent game for Lincecum (eight and a third innings, three hits, two runs, 11 strikeouts and one walk).

But somehow we want to find something we can say with some amount of certainty this year. And since head-to-head matchups won’t give us a sample worth discussing, we’ll have to see how these teams do against certain types of pitchers in our (probably fruitless) aim to say something about this one, single game on Saturday.

Maybe we can say something like: in 2010, the Giants had an X OPS against pitchers like Halladay. Dangit, who’s like Halladay? Or rather, what kind of a pitcher is he? He throws 93, doesn’t walk anyone (1.08 BB/9), and gets groundballs (51.2% this year). Is he a groundballer? A finesse pitcher? A power pitcher? Lincecum throws only 91 this year, but gets more strikeouts (9.79 this year) and fewer groundballs (48.9%). Can we call him a power pitcher? A guy who walks 3.22 per nine doesn’t seem to be a finesse pitcher.

The inspiration for this line of reasoning is the team splits pages on Baseball-Reference.com. Thankfully, they have a definition there:

Power pitchers are in the top third of the league in strikeouts plus walks. Finesse are in the bottom third of the league in strikeouts plus walks.

Ah-hah. So Tim Lincecum = ‘power’ pitcher, Roy Halladay = ? Let’s just not bother with how the Giants do against finesse pitchers – we already ‘know’ that every pitcher looks like Roy Halladay to them from the quote at the top. However, Lincecum seems to fit the definition for a power pitcher, so how do the Phils do against power pitchers? Answer: not as well as they do against finesse pitchers. Their 99 sOPS+ against power pitchers is well below their 110 sOPS+ against finesse pitchers.

Otherwise, the Phillies lead the Giants in batting RAR (27.9 to -14.6) and starters’ RAR (144.5 to 141.4; and more once Roy Oswalt is considered). The Giants lead in bullpen RAR (59.1 to 25.8) and defense (8.5 to 0.8 UZR/150). If there wasn’t the hint that the Phillies’ offense might not be as good against power pitchers, it would be tempting to take the team with the better lineup and starter in game one and in the series.

Here’s one thing we can actually say with certainty: It will be interesting to see Lincecum face off against Halladay. Phew. How’s that for resolute?

I’ll admit it: I lost this debate to the inimitable Carson Cistulli. What can I say, I was no master debater back in the day, nor had I ever tried the Lincoln-Douglas format. Excuses, excuses, excuses. I know.

What was so flustering was that the Phillies felt like the right pick. But when the numbers were parsed, there were few numbers that were definitively in favor of the team from Philadelphia. Carson was right – overall WAR, UZR, wOBA, they all pointed towards Dusty Baker’s team. I was forced to tickle the numbers until they laughed the right name, and was called out on it. The strange thing? Perhaps the actual, you know, real-life games proved me correct.

Let’s review my seemingly untenable positions:

1) The Phillies’ starting rotation is too strong for the Reds.
Well, like, duh. Not only did all the numbers show it before they played, but their performances did as well. Three games and the new Big Three produced 23 innings, 4 runs allowed (3 earned), 22 strikeouts, 2 walks, and 30/18 groundballs to flyballs. That’s “pretty good,” and it minimized the edge the Reds had in the pen. This edge probably was enough to ignore many of the other edges that went Red, but it’s unclear why that would be, given the pie chart that goes into every game. More on that later.

2) The Phillies’ lineup is deeper.
Defining something like ‘deeper’ is tough, but it does seem that the Phillies lineup was more balanced. Facing Raul Ibanez and Carlos Ruiz as the seventh and eighth hitters is far less exciting than facing Orlando Cabrera and either of the Reds’ catchers, right? Philadelphia hit .212 for the series, and the Reds .124. Batting average isn’t a great indicator of course, but in this case it does a quick-and-dirty job of portraying the differences between the teams’ lineups and how they fared in this short series. But again, bullet point one is probably at fault here.

3) The Phillies’ bullpen is better, specifically at closer.
Well, this one didn’t necessarily go my way, but only because the Phillies’ starters didn’t give em much of a chance to show their mettle. They pitched 4 innings total in the three games, and allowed no runs and 1 hit, with 2 strikeouts and 2 walks. The Reds? 10 innings with 4 runs, (1 earned), 8 hits, 7 strikeouts and 4 walks. Advantage; some shade red, but mostly made irrelevant by bullet point one.

The last idea, and it probably doesn’t deserve a bullet point because it’s not something rooted in fancy baubles like “theory” or “proof,” held that perhaps the Phillies owned the star power over the Reds. (Another possibly un-definable term in my favor? Awesome.) But we’ve now seen Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels shine bright while Roy Oswalt, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard got the job done – and on the other side of the ledger, the Reds failed to receive a singular, extraordinary performance from any of their main players. It’s not very ‘Sabre’ to say this, but is it possible that in the slimmed-down post-season things like a deep roster, good defensive pieces and nice middle relief become a little less impressive or important?

Oh, the game? Well, the game was all Hamels. There’s not much else to say when he’s got the changeup dancing like that. That, some good defensive play from Shane Victorino, and a solo home run from Utley, and you’ve basically got enough to say “ballgame” and “series.”

Dusty Baker got seven innings with one earned run (two total) by using Johnny Cueto and Homer Bailey just about perfectly, and made the most of his bullpen the rest of the way – and still lost. Though the Reds lineup may have showed better regular-season wOBAs, in this small sample, only Brandon Phillips and Jay Bruce were able to bat above the Mendoza line. Baker may have made some bad tactical moves over the series, and Dave may yet come with some heat in that area, but it seems the players played out this best-of-five and the Reds came up short. It was still a great year for them and they should be proud of the larger sample size.