Yesterday, it took Los Angeles Dodgers manager Clint Hurdle Don Mattingly* approximately 40 seconds — depending on where you start and stop your timer — to argue The Worst Call of the Season. Meanwhile, in St. Louis, it took the umpiring crew about 2 minutes and 50 seconds to gather in the infield, discuss Carlos Beltran’s hit, reconvene in their underground video review chamber, and then return to announce a home run.

* All white guys look the same to me.

Getting the calls wrong in baseball takes time. Managers — depending on their personality, the game situation, and the offense — take different amounts of time arguing both bad and good calls. The arguing, for the most part, exists because of uncertainty. My lip-reading skills inform me most arguments follow this general pattern:

Manager: “Did you really see X event?”

Umpire: “Most certainly did I see X event.”

Manager: “That statement you just made right there is tantamount to the excrement of bovines.”

Umpire: “You are ejected.”

Recent evidence suggests, however, that despite these conflicts resulting from close calls, instant replays still take more time than good ol’ fashioned shout-spittin’ matches.

Evidence furthermore suggests that in the time it takes to get in a healthy workout, a normal person could empty approximately ten Squeeze Cheese cans directly into his or her porcine gullet.

Which is to say: Quicker is not always better.

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Given his excellence over the last decade, it’s become difficult to discuss Roy Halladay without merely descending into a list of superlative adjectives.

Indeed, Roy Halladay posted the league’s best WAR (8.2) among pitchers last season. By WAR, he’s been the best pitcher over the last two years, as well. And last three years. And four years. And five. And six. And seven. Really, to find a recent analog to Halladay’s achievement as a pitcher, you have to go back to 1998; over the final 12 years and ca. 2,400 innings of his career, Randy Johnson posted a 73.3 WAR. (Halladay debuted in 1998 himself, and has recorded 70.5 wins in 2554.0 innings since then.)

Given Halladay’s dominance, it’s unusual to find him in a jam of any sort while pitching; however, during last night’s contest against the Giants, something like a jam unfolded for the right-hander.

With Philadelphia leading San Francisco by a score of 5-1 heading into the bottom of the fourth, Halladay allowed consecutive hits to Brandon Belt (single) and Brandon Crawford (double) to start the inning (box). That situation (runners on second and third base with no outs) created a generic run expectancy of 1.79 for the Giants. That accounted not only for Halladay’s highest-allowed run expectancy of the young season, but would have actually been his fifth-highest mark during all of 2011. Over the span of two batters, San Francisco’s win expectancy had risen from 8.4% (at the conclusion of Philly’s half of the fourth) to 20.5%. Even two outs, provided they were of the batted variety, could shrink Philly’s lead by two runs.

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I have been toying around with an idea for pitcher-hitter match-ups based not on prior head-to-head performance or platoon splits, but rather pitch type linear weights.

For those that are unfamiliar, pitch type linear weights basically takes a batter or pitcher’s performance on each type of pitch they throw or face during the year (e.g. four-seam fastball, slider, etc.) and converts that performance into runs created or runs saved relative to average. At FanGraphs, we show both the total runs created or saved for each pitch (e.g. wFB) and a normalized version for the value per 100 pitches thrown (e.g. wFB/C).

I thought it would be interesting to compare the starting pitcher’s pitch type linear weight performance against the lineup he is facing. To do this, I calculated the difference in run value between each pitch type for each starting pitcher and the hitters they might face. The difference is shown in the tables below. Green coding denotes an advantage to the pitcher, while red indicates an advantage for the hitter. I used the normalized version of each pitch type (i.e. run value per 100 pitches thrown/faced) to control for playing time, pitches seen, etc.

The tables below show the match-ups for tonight’s game between the Marlins and Phillies (7:05pm EST) for both Josh Johnson and Roy Halladay:

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It has become a war of attrition at second base in Philadelphia.

On Monday, we heard that Phillies second baseman Chase Utley has plateaued in his rehab. He is not expected to be healthy by Opening Day. To make matters worse, utility infielder Michael Martinez broke a bone in his foot after being struck by a pitch from Orioles’ reliever Jim Johnson on Tuesday afternoon. The 29-year-old Martinez is not projected to be available for Opening Day, either.

So who will handle the keystone duties opposite shortstop Jimmy Rollins to begin the season?

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Last season, Chase Utley opened the season on the disabled list due to knee tendinitis. He would miss 46 games. Now, reports are surfacing at CSN Philadelphia that the 33-year-old second baseman has left Phillies camp to see a specialist for his continually sore knees. It’s now considered “likely” Utley will begin the season on the disabled list, putting the Phillies’ entire infield situation into question.

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With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.

League Trends

To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.

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Shane Victorino has been pretty chatty about his contract lately. He’s said that he wants to stay in Philadelphia and will give the Phillies a “home town discount” in order to keep him, but then yesterday, he noted that his goal is to get a five year extension that would cover his age 32-36 seasons. Victorino’s been an underrated player for a while and has certainly been vital to the Phillies success, but can he really expect to land a five year contract next winter if he hits free agency, as his agents have suggested?

Here are the players that have signed contracts of five years or longer as free agents over the last five years.

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It sounds as if Roy Oswalt should sign sometime this very Thursday. Since you are reading this in the future — which, to you, will feel like the present, but trust me: it’s the future — you may already know of Oswalt’s new team. Don’t gloat.

Instead, let us turn our languid eyes to Oswalt’s future, more specifically, his 2012 projections.

Maybe it is because he has pitched 150 innings in every season since the beginning of the Bush administration — or maybe it is because he played such a prominent role in a successful Houston Astros that seems now so distant from reality — but Roy Oswalt somehow feels ancient. Despite that, he is only a year and change older than Mark Buehrle and a year and one day older than Cliff Lee.

So Oswalt, first of all, is really not old — especially for a pitcher. At the same time, though, he is not necessarily healthy. He hit the DL twice last year and his back problems and his full history of injuries leaves great cause for concern.

Still, the Wizard of Os also ranks among some the best active pitchers. Regard:

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Take the best available player.

That refrain continues to be the draft philosophy espoused by all thirty major league organizations throughout each summer. It does not matter if the player is 18-years-old and in high school or if the player is 21-years-old and in college. Simply evaluate the talent on the field and draft accordingly. As Mariners’ scouting director Tom McNamara stated last June in preparation for the 2011 Draft:

“If we think the high school player is the best player at No. 2, we’ll take the high school guy. If we think it’s a college guy, we’ll take the college guy.” (source)

Seattle eventually selected collegiate left-hander Danny Hultzen with the second pick in the draft. In 2010, Seattle selected prep right-hander Taijuan Walker in the supplemental first round, which happened to be their first and only first-round pick of the draft. The year before, they had three first-round picks and selected one collegiate player and two high school players.

Echoing the best player available approach, the Mariners have not shown preference toward high school or college. In fact, the organization has drafted seven prep players and six collegiate players since the 2000 Draft. Essentially an even split.

All organizations are not like this, though. I gathered all of the first-round draft picks (including the first supplemental round) since the turn of the century, and noticed a few trends that have developed.

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For much of the past decade, the Philadelphia Phillies had one of the best offenses in baseball. But that was not the case last season, and the biggest question facing the Phillies this season is whether the offense rebounds, or continues a regression that could threaten to leave them on the outside of the postseason for the first time in six seasons.

Philadelphia’s offense began to make some noise in 2002 and 2003, and in 2004, the core of their playoff teams began to take shape. Jimmy Rollins, Placido Polanco and Pat Burrell were already on hand to start the season, and then Chase Utley came along in May and Ryan Howard in September. The group would finish in the top six in wOBA in 2004, 2005 and 2006 before punching up to second-best in the game in 2007. By 2007, Shane Victorino was on hand, and ’07 was the season that Jayson Werth stormed onto the scene as well, with a nifty .385 wOBA. That season, their wRC+ of 107 as a team was fourth-highest in the game. It would also be their pinnacle as an offense, as would be their .354 wOBA.

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