On ESPN2’s Phillies-Cardinals broadcast, Michael Kay and Alex Rodriguez — like everyone has at some point this postseason — explained why baseball has become a Three True Outcome-driven sport. You know the gist: Pitchers have become so good it’s hard to string together sequential offense. Better to wait for a mistake and swing like hell when it comes.

For the first time since 2010, the Philadelphia Phillies have won a playoff series, and Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina have taken part in a meaningful professional game for the last time. These things are so because of mistakes: Who made them, which ones went unpunished, and which ones decided a tense 2-0 game. Read the rest of this entry »

Playoff baseball is a game of rapid reversals and slow-motion disasters. When heartbreak comes, it will either slap you in the face or gradually immure you in slime.

We saw both at Busch Stadium on Friday afternoon, as the Cardinals struck a lightning blow against the Phillies, then — just two outs from a commanding series lead — turned around to find out that the world was ending at a walking pace. A 2-0 ninth-inning lead turned into a 6-3 loss over the course of one bizarre half-inning. The Phillies are now, improbably, merely one win from advancing to the NLDS. Behold the fallout, a win probability chart that looks like a slide whistle sounds:

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2022 season was the year to break long-standing playoff droughts. The Mariners ending their two-decade stretch of futility got the bigger headlines, but the Phillies closed out their own decade of suffering by clinching the NL’s final Wild Card berth on Monday. It didn’t come easy — under the previous playoff structure, they would have missed out on the postseason by two games — but the expanded field gives them an opportunity to make some noise in October. Their opponent will be a familiar one: the Cardinals, who eliminated the Phillies in a hard-fought Division Series the last time they were in the playoffs.

St. Louis hasn’t had to weather a lengthy playoff drought since the 1970s, qualifying for the postseason for the fourth consecutive year and winning its second division title in that span. The Cardinals also posted their third 90-plus win season in that period, with the shortened 2020 season as the only outlier. More remarkably, they haven’t finished below .500 since 2007, with 10 postseason appearances in those 15 years. As far as consistent competitors go, the Cardinals are essentially an October staple.

The Phillies’ route to their Wild Card berth wasn’t a straight one. They wandered through the first two months of the season, posting a disappointing 21–29 record, which led to the dismissal of manager Joe Girardi on June 3. But after that, they went 64–46 under interim manager Rob Thompson, the fourth-best record in the NL over the rest of the season. All that success during the summer came despite losing Bryce Harper for a significant chunk of the year. He fractured his thumb on June 25 and returned on August 26 but never truly regained his MVP form, with an 84 wRC+ over the final month and change of play.

With its superstar on the shelf, a number of Philadelphia’s veteran sluggers stepped up to lead the offense. The biggest contributor was J.T. Realmuto. As Michael Baumann covered a week ago, the veteran catcher carried the load with a 162 wRC+ in the second half, accumulating the third most WAR in that time behind Aaron Judge and Adley Rutschman. Despite his slow-ish start, Realmuto wound up posting career bests in wRC+ and WAR. Then there was Kyle Schwarber, who led the NL in home runs with 46, a surprise given his similar slow start to the season; he hit just 11 homers in the first two months of the season but exploded in June with 12 and added 23 more over the next three months.

The other big free-agent deal the Phillies handed out over the offseason hasn’t worked out as well. After posting a 122 wRC+ over the last five seasons, Nick Castellanos couldn’t find his footing in Philadelphia, slumping to a 95 wRC+, his worst year at the plate since 2015. His biggest problem was a bad case of chasing breaking balls off the plate, leading to big issues making authoritative contact. His barrel rate and hard-hit rate fell to career lows, resulting in a dismal .392 slugging percentage.

But we can’t talk about the Phillies without talking about their defense. Put simply, it’s bad. It’s not a surprise either, considering that Schwarber and Castellanos occupy the corner outfield spots. The only positive contributor in their starting lineup is second baseman Jean Segura, who graded out as a +4 in Outs Above Average this year. The Phillies’ biggest issue, though, isn’t making mistakes; they actually committed the fourth-fewest errors in the majors this year. Instead, they simply let too many batted balls find the grass, which significantly hurt their ability to prevent runs from scoring. It’s a big reason why their pitching staff posted a top-10 FIP in baseball but a team ERA that was just 18th.

Leading said pitching staff is Aaron Nola, a quiet contender for the NL Cy Young award this year. One major reason why is that the righty was able to cut his home run rate to just 9.8% this year, a huge improvement over his career rate of 13.2%. He also posted a career-low walk rate this year while still maintaining his big strikeout totals. He’ll be on the mound for Game 2 of this series. To open, the Phillies will turn to Zack Wheeler. He followed up a career year in 2021 with a season nearly as good, though he pitched 60 fewer innings. The health of his forearm was a big question mark through the end of the summer, but he managed to make it back to the mound in late September and posted three good starts to finish the regular season. If the series goes to a Game 3, Philadelphia will likely turn to Ranger Suárez, a quality starter in his own right but not up to the level of Nola or Wheeler.

Where the Phillies will lead off with their two aces, the Cardinals enter this series with less established options up top.

Ordinarily, it would be hard to imagine a Cardinals playoff series without Wainwright, but given how the final month of the season went, manager Oli Marmol may opt for hiding his veteran righty.

Wainwright allowed a whopping 23 runs in his six September starts, and his strikeout and walk rates both took a turn for the worse. That performance has likely pushed him out of the picture for a Wild Card start; at best, the Cardinals could hand him the ball on an extremely short leash and have Montgomery or Flaherty ready on standby if things go south quickly.

Luckily, Mikolas and Quintana finished the regular season on strong notes; the latter, per Marmol on Thursday, will take the ball for Game 1, and the former will start Game 2, with Game 3’s starter TBD. Quintana hasn’t pitched this well since he was a member of the White Sox back in 2017 and has been even better since coming over from the Pirates at the trade deadline. Chris Gilligan looked at Quintana’s rejuvenation earlier this week and noted his transition from a pitcher who relied on strikeouts to one who induces tons of weak contact:

He has deployed his arsenal by throwing mostly outside the strike zone, elevating his fastball more and making hitters reach for curveballs and changeups. His 35.4% zone rate is the lowest in a full season of his career, around 10 percentage points lower than his typical early-career season, and the second-lowest among qualifying pitchers this year. And it’s working – he’s enticing swings on a career-high 36.2% of his pitches outside of the zone, the 10th-highest rate among qualifiers. … By drawing hitters outside the strike zone, he has significantly diminished the quality of their contact without conceding bases on balls with any sort of damaging frequency.

That leaves Montgomery, Flaherty, and Wainwright to start in a potential Game 3. Like Quintana, Montgomery holds the platoon advantage over some of Philadelphia’s more potent bats, and Flaherty’s stuff could play up in shorter outings if he were pushed to the bullpen. So the decision comes back around to what to do with Wainwright, and that’s not an easy one given how much history he has with the franchise, particularly in the playoffs.

Offensively, St. Louis has far less to worry about. Led by superstars Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado, the Cardinals had the third-best offense in the NL, scoring 4.77 runs per game. After looking like an MVP candidate for most of the season, Goldschmidt slumped a bit in September, posting a 108 wRC+ over the last month of the season, which cost him a shot at the Triple Crown after he made a run at it through the summer. Arenado, meanwhile, bounced back from a disappointing first year in St. Louis to post the best season of his career. Those two provide a fantastic one-two punch in the heart of the lineup.

The biggest story in St. Louis, though, has to be the rejuvenation of Albert Pujols. He returned to the Cardinals for one last reunion tour after a slow and painful decline in Los Angeles but has defied time and age by becoming a key contributor as the team’s semi-regular designated hitter. He hit just six dingers during the first half of the season, but chasing his milestone 700th home run sparked a miraculous second half. He blasted 18 bombs after the All-Star break — only Judge hit more during that span — with all of his power peripherals taking a sudden turn for the better. I’m sure the Cardinals couldn’t have imagined their franchise icon leading them to the postseason again when they signed him back in the winter, but here we are.

As far as roster construction goes, these two teams found their success through very different means. St. Louis’s position group put together a cumulative 33.1 WAR, second in the NL and a testament to their quality production at the plate and phenomenal defense in the field. Philadelphia’s lineup can score runs in bunches, but the defense is atrocious. The team’s strength lies instead in a top-heavy rotation led by two of the best pitchers in the league. Also worth noting is that the Cardinals went 53–28 at home during the regular season, giving them the advantage at the outset. But these teams are more evenly matched than they appear on paper, which should make for some excellent baseball this weekend.

Baseball is unique among major American sports for its lengthy schedule. For six months a year, there’s a game nearly every day. Every. Dang. Day. Working for the weekend? There’s no such thing; Saturdays and Sundays are for games. Want to have a lazy one and “work from home” with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and an eye on your emails? Yeah, uh, that’s not going to work, though you can at least wear pajamas in the dugout.

We marvel at the physical prowess of players all the time, but I’m interested in their mental fortitude. It’s hard to keep grinding day in and day out for half a year. It’s harder still when there’s no postseason carrot dangled in front of you. I’ve never personally been in a pennant race, but I imagine a chance at a hunk of metal is a great motivator. Without that powerful incentive, spending a few months with no mental breaks is beyond my ken.

Earlier this year, I observed that down-and-out teams perform worse than expected late in the season. That seems entirely reasonable. I’ve always wondered where that effect comes from, though. Every time I try to look for hitting or pitching performance relative to expectations late in the season, I find a whole lot of nothing. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t have any reason to suspect that Sandy Alcantara is a sadist or a misanthrope, but if he is, the next week will be quite entertaining.

Certainly the Marlins right-hander has caused no end of pain or suffering, inflicting failure and frustration upon National League hitters to a level unmatched this season. Alcantara’s strikeout and walk numbers haven’t been exceptional this year. Nevertheless he’s done the most important thing a pitcher can do — prevent runs — at a conspicuously high level; his 2.32 ERA is second among qualified NL starters. Combined with the staggering volume of his work (he leads the league with 220 2/3 innings pitched in a season when no one else has broken 200 yet), Alcantara is among the favorites for NL Cy Young.

That individual hardware would obviously be the biggest prize for a pitcher who’s done great work for a fourth-place club. But with two series left in the regular season, Alcantara could — if he so chooses — have a greater impact on the remaining pennant race than any other player. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2018, a Philadelphia Phillies team made up mostly of homegrown players ran out of gas down the stretch. Rookie manager Gabe Kapler’s club held first place into the second week of August, then (to use the scientific term) crapped the bed. After an 8-20 September, Philadelphia ended the season in third place, two games under .500 and 10 games adrift of the first-place Braves.

So they went out that offseason and got some reinforcements: Bryce Harper, obviously, but also one Jacob Tyler “J.T.” Realmuto, one of the best catchers in baseball. The same thing happened in 2019, so the Phillies cashiered Kapler and replaced him with Joe Girardi, and lavished a nine-figure contract on Zack Wheeler. In 2020, they once again fumbled an easy path to the playoffs, so ownership cleared out the front office. In 2021 it happened once more: Hot start, followed by months of stepping on banana peels, and wobbling to a record in the neighborhood of .500.

The Phillies, despite not having made the playoffs in a decade, have been in win-now mode for four or five years, and with each brigade of reinforcements (most recently Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos), Realmuto gets taken more and more for granted. He’s now one of six Phillies on a contract worth $70 million or more, and just another foot soldier in a lineup that features the reigning National League MVP, this year’s NL home run leader, and two recent first-round picks.

But Realmuto is the primary reason the great annual bed-encrappening has not befallen Philadelphia this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, the things you find when perusing the leaderboards. While collecting data to discuss the decline in Jeremy Peña’s plate discipline, I went down a rabbit hole of player performances since May. As tends to happen, one thing led to another, and I ended up running my Cy Young predictor using only data since the start of May. Near the top of each league were pitchers whose presence surprised me even though I already knew both to be excellent. Each of them is on a borderline contender that is now very likely to make the playoffs, and each survives in the majors by relying on command rather than throwing 100-mph smoke. That’s right, I’m talking about Aaron Nola and Shane Bieber. Let’s examine each, starting with Nola, the top National League pitcher in my Cy Young predictor since May.

The Phillies look nearly certain to play postseason baseball. With a probability that is now over 90% by both FanGraphs’ and ZiPS’ reckoning, the Phils are on target to make the playoffs for the first time since 2011. While there have been runs that teased contention in past years, the Phillies have always seemed to end up floating somewhere around .500. But despite Zack Wheeler and Bryce Harper missing parts of the season, Nick Castellanos disappointing, and a defense that just begs for a Yackety Sax soundtrack, the team stands at 79-61. And while he’s obviously not the only player to have contributed to the club’s record, Nola’s impressive run makes him one of the key figures of the 2022 campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I took a look at a few starters who have changed their pitch mix after being traded halfway through this season. Today, I’m finishing the set. Here are the relievers who have changed their pitch selection the most in the month after joining new teams. One note: since relievers throw fewer pitches, the variability in their mix is greater; a few extra sliders to get the feel for them in a random game can tip the percentages meaningfully. I’m focusing on five relievers who made interesting changes, but you could add others to the list.

Lou Trivino, New York Yankees

The Change: -12% Four-Seamer, -6% Changeup, +8% Cutter, +14% Slider
Trivino is a rarity, a legitimate five-pitch reliever. He’s thrown his changeup, slider, sinker, cutter, and four-seamer each at least 10% of the time this year, and mixed in an occasional curveball for good measure. The Yankees are working to change that.

Since donning pinstripes, Trivino is down to three pitches he uses at least 10% of the time: sinker, slider, cutter. His slider is new this year, one of the sweeping types that are all the rage these days, and he’d already taken to the pitch in Oakland, using it nearly 20% of the time. He’s using it even more in New York; a third of the pitches he’s thrown as a Yankee have been sliders. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, a huge throng of pitchers changes teams at the trade deadline. It happens for obvious reasons: teams with postseason aspirations and second-division pitching staffs try to augment their squad, juggernauts shore up their bullpen, or any of several variations on those themes. For the most part, it’s a simple re-allocation of good pitching: teams that don’t need it this year trade pitchers to teams that do, and reap prospects or otherwise interesting players in return.

Sometimes, though, teams make trades for a slightly different reason. Pitchers aren’t static; you can’t call someone up on the phone and trade for a 3.40 ERA, or 2.4 WAR per 200 innings pitched, or anything of the sort. You trade for a pitcher, and as we detail frequently in the electronic pages of FanGraphs, pitchers change the way they approach their craft all the time. They might take a new approach, or learn a new pitch, or switch roles. Learning a new pitch isn’t practical in the heat of a playoff chase, but changing the allocation of existing pitches is far easier. Let’s take a look at two starting pitchers who have changed their pitch mix significantly since being traded at the deadline, as well as two others who have made smaller changes. Read the rest of this entry »

Quantitative Analyst Associate (Spring/Summer 2023)

Location: Philadelphia Phillies Baseball Operations Department, Philadelphia, PA

Title: Quantitative Analyst Associate
Department: Baseball Research & Development
Reports to: Assistant Director, Baseball Research & Development
Status: Hourly Part-Time Seasonal

Position Overview:
As a Quantitative Analyst (QA) Associate, you help shape The Phillies Baseball Operations strategies by processing, analyzing, and interpreting large and complex data. You do more than just crunch the numbers; you carefully plan the design of your own studies by asking and answering the right questions, while also working collaboratively with other analysts and software engineers on larger projects.

Using analytical rigor, you work with your team as you mine through data and see opportunities for The Phillies to improve. After communicating the results of your studies and experiments to the GM and executive staff, you collaborate with front office executives, scouts, coaches, and trainers to incorporate your findings into Phillies practices. Identifying the challenge is only half the job; you also work to figure out and implement the solution.

Responsibilities:

• Conduct statistical research projects and manage the integration of their outputs into our proprietary tools and applications (e.g., performance projections, player valuations, draft assessments, injury analyses, etc.)
• Communicate with front office executives, scouts, coaches, and medical staff to design and interpret statistical studies
• Assist the rest of the QA team with their projects by providing guidance and feedback on your areas of expertise within baseball, statistics, data visualization, and programming
• Continually enhance your knowledge of baseball and data science through reading, research, and discussion with your teammates and the rest of the front office
• Provide input in architecting the storage of baseball data

Required Qualifications:

• Deep understanding of statistics, including supervised and unsupervised learning, regularization, model assessment and selection, model inference and averaging, ensemble methods, etc.
• Meaningful work experience with statistical software (R, S-Plus, SAS, or similar), databases, and scripting languages such as Python
• Proven willingness to both teach others and learn new techniques
• Willingness to work as part of a team on complex projects
• Proven leadership and self-direction

Preferred Qualifications:

• Possess or are pursuing a BS, MS or PhD in Statistics or related (e.g., mathematics, physics, or ops research) or equivalent practical experience
• 0-5+ years of relevant work experience
• Experience drawing conclusions from data, communicating those conclusions to decision makers, and recommending actions

Interested applicants should submit both their resume and an answer to the following question:

Suppose you could trade your top pitching prospect (currently in a lower minor league level) for a young, all-star position player currently in the Major Leagues. How would you decide whether to make the trade? (250 word limit)

Tip: There’s no defined right or wrong answer. Responses are used to get some insight into how you approach problem solving and baseball in general.

Applications should be submitted no later than Sunday, September 18, 2022. Applications not submitted through this online application will not be considered.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

Software Engineer Associate (Spring/Summer 2023)

Location: Philadelphia Phillies Baseball Operations Department, Philadelphia, PA

Title: Software Engineer Associate
Department: Baseball Research & Development
Reports to: Director, Baseball Research & Development
Status: Hourly Part-Time Seasonal

Position Overview:
The work of a Software Engineer (SWE) Associate at The Phillies extends well beyond merely coding. As a SWE you contribute fresh ideas in a variety of areas, including information retrieval, networking and data storage, security, machine learning, natural language processing, UI design and mobile to shape the evolution of The Phillies baseball analytics systems.

Our ideal engineers will have a versatile skill set, be enthusiastic to handle new challenges and demonstrate leadership qualities. You will work closely with end-users across Scouting, Player Development and the Major League Coaching Staff while building software tools from the ground up. By identifying appropriate design specifications through collaboration with those end-users, you will build applications that conform to user needs.

Specific areas of focus may include, but are not limited to, the draft, free-agency, player valuation, player development, in-game strategy, and injury prevention. As a SWE you will have the opportunity to use your technical expertise to create software solutions that impact decision-making at The Phillies.

Responsibilities:

• Improve existing platforms and design new proprietary applications to be used directly by the GM and executive staff
• Collaborate with front office executives, scouts, coaches, and medical staff regarding the design and technical specifications of software solutions for Baseball Operations
• Work together with Baseball R&D department to help optimize the Phillies baseball analytics systems, including crafting solutions to efficiently and effectively synthesize, organize and present data from multiple third-party sources
• Help to augment the technical knowledge of the entire Baseball Operations department by providing training, mentorship and support on the use of all applications and tools built by the team

Required Qualifications:

• Possess or are pursuing a BS degree in Computer Science, similar technical field of study or equivalent practical experience
• Software development experience in one or more general purpose programming languages (including but not limited to: Java, C/C++, C#, Go, Objective C, Python or JavaScript)
• Interest and ability to learn new technologies as needed
• Experience working with two or more from the following: web application development, Unix/Linux environments, mobile application development, design thinking, machine learning, natural language processing, and data architecture
• Proven willingness to both teach others and learn new techniques
• Proven leadership and self-direction

Preferred Qualifications:

• Possess or are pursuing a Master’s, PhD degree, further education or 4+ years experience in engineering, computer science or other technical related field
• Prior experience managing/leading a technical team

Interested applicants should submit both their resume and an answer to the following question:

What is your favorite programming language to use and why do you like it? (250 word limit).

Tip: There’s no defined right or wrong answer. Responses are used to get some insight into your thoughts on what is important in software engineering.

Please submit your resume and question response no later than Sunday September 18, 2022. Applications without a question response will not be considered.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Philadelphia Phillies.