You can understand the excitement around the Phillies at the moment; this is the defending National League champion, on the verge of clinching a home playoff series, with tons of nationally recognizable players.
But no amount of juice can replace the excitement of the new, because the most interesting player on this team is a relief pitcher who made his MLB debut on Sunday. In case you weren’t aware of him already, here’s Orion Kerkering.
If you follow either the Phillies or the minor leagues in the northeastern U.S., you’ve been waiting for this moment for months. If not, you’re probably wondering why anyone should care about a pitcher who’s clearly named after a spacefaring outlaw whose rakish charm and rough exterior belie the fact that deep down he has a heart of gold.
The Phillies are still paying a reputational penalty for running out some of the worst bullpens in MLB history in the late 2010s, but this current crop of relievers is perfectly serviceable — perhaps even more than that once Rob Thomson figures out how he wants to use his various swingmen in the playoffs. Kerkering has the potential to be the best of the bunch. After 12 pitches at the major league level, he might be that now. Read the rest of this entry »
If you enjoyed last week’sBuntpalooza, you’re going to love this, because I’m making up new stats again.
Let’s start with Rickey Henderson. You probably know that in 1982, Rickey set a still-unchallenged single-season record of 130 stolen bases. Which is a lot. Of course it’s a lot; this was the highest-volume season by the best basestealer who ever lived. I just referred to him as “Rickey,” because he was so great he can go by his first name on first reference, like “LeBron” or “Tiger” or “Weird Al.”
Nevertheless, I worry that we don’t appreciate how extremely a lot 130 stolen bases is in one season. One way to look at it is in distance; 172 stolen base attempts (Rickey also got caught a league-high 42 times that year), at 90 feet each, constitutes almost three miles of ground covered. The man ran the best part of a 5K in stolen base attempts alone. Read the rest of this entry »
When the Phillies signed Trea Turner to an 11-year, $300 million contract over the winter, the second-largest contract in franchise history, they were probably prepared for Year 11 to be a bit underwhelming, not so much Year One. Turner got off to an excellent start in Philadelphia, beginning the season with 12 hits in the first seven games with two triples. Once his seven-game hitting streak was snapped, the next four months turned into an unbelievable slog: .225/.282/.354 with 10 homers. On the morning of August 5, his OPS hit a season-low .656. But over the last month, Turner has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball.
During the hottest months of the summer, one of the most common questions I got was some variant of “is Trea Turner broken?” My usual answer was that he’d probably be fine, even if expectations had to be lowered a bit, but it felt a little less convincing. The zStats I ran for hitters in early August as part of the “full-fat” ZiPS saw Turner as having a better season than was reflected in his overall numbers, with a .728 zOPS compared to that .656 mark. That wasn’t enough to make the leaderboard, headed by Spencer Torkelson (with a .975 OPS since then), but it was still a significant gap. And I doubt the Phillies or the fans would have felt much relief even with the .264/.309/.419 line that zStats gave him.
Back then, I re-ran Turner’s long-term projections to see what kind of bounceback ZiPS was expecting. While the computer saw a pretty good recovery in 2024, it was well off his preseason numbers. There was also a lot more risk in the mix, significantly pushing his numbers in future years down. Read the rest of this entry »
In Tuesday’s missive on league-wide bunt tendencies, I ran out of time and space before I could single out some of this season’s standout individual bunters for special attention. As in every collection of ballplayers, there are a few outliers who skew the sample. To continue the metaphor that a bunt is baseball’s mid-range jump shot, these are your LaMarcus Aldridges. Read the rest of this entry »
While Bryce Harper made the quickest return from Tommy John surgery of any position player on record, it came with a cost. Not surprisingly, he didn’t hit the ball as hard as usual in the early months of his return, or do as much damage because he wasn’t elevating it with consistency. At one point, he went 166 plate appearances without a home run, the longest drought of his career, but even then, he remained a reasonably productive hitter. Lately he’s been heating up, crushing the ball while helping the Phillies climb to the top of the NL Wild Card race.
In the fourth inning of Monday night’s game against the Angels in Philadelphia, Harper demolished a Lucas Giolito fastball that was playing in the middle of the road:
The homer — a 111.9-mph scorcher with a projected distance of 429 feet — was Harper’s fourth in a seven-game rampage, during which he’s hit .500/.613/1.037. It was his eighth homer of the month, his highest total since he hit nine in September/October 2021 (and 10 in August of the same season) en route to his second MVP award. He maxed out at seven homers in May of last season, the month he was diagnosed with a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. Read the rest of this entry »
Reports to: Assistant Director, Foundational Research Additional reporting responsibilities to: Director, Integrative Baseball Performance Location: Philadelphia, PA or Remote
Position Overview:
Analysts with the Phillies are tasked with maximizing organizational impact, in pursuit of building a consistent World Series contender. As a Performance Analyst in the Foundational Research department, you tackle baseball’s most difficult problems in biomechanics, strength and conditioning, and athletic training, leveraging proprietary data sources to systematically improve player evaluation, development, performance, and health at scale.
You work closely with technical staff and performance specialists in Baseball Operations to outline a strategic vision for the future of performance research at the Phillies. You internalize cutting-edge insights from the Phillies’ Research & Development department in player evaluation and development, leveraging those insights in performance research that is effortlessly additive to our existing player acquisition and development paradigms.
Success in this role would involve improving our existing player evaluation tools, identifying novel and high-value avenues of high performance research, building systems to improve the efficiency and value of player assessment data collection, and seeing an integrative, best-in-class baseball performance process incorporated in organizational decision-making, spanning player acquisition and player development.
Responsibilities:
Conduct and oversee performance research projects and manage the integration of their outputs into our proprietary tools and applications, in direct support of player evaluation, acquisition, development, and performance maximization
Ensure projects conform to best practices for implementing, maintaining, and improving predictive models throughout their life cycles
Communicate with front office executives, scouts, coaches, and medical staff to design and interpret statistical studies
Assist the rest of the Foundational Research and Integrative Baseball Performance teams with their projects by providing guidance and feedback on your areas of expertise
Continually enhance your and your colleagues’ 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, ingestion, display, and analysis of baseball assessment data
Rigorously identify and vet novel data sources, collection methodologies, or technologies that could be additive to our processes, supporting the organization in implementing them in a scientifically and statistically robust manner
Required Qualifications
Deep understanding of statistics, including supervised and unsupervised learning, regularization, model assessment and selection, model inference and averaging, ensemble methods, etc.
Demonstrated experience in handling, analyzing, and interpreting high-performance data in sports
Proficiency with scripting languages such as Python, statistical software (R, S-Plus, SAS, or similar), and databases (SQL)
Demonstrated experience designing, constructing, implementing, and leading technical research projects for use by non-technical stakeholders
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
BS, MS or PhD in a related quantitative (Math, Statistics, Operations Research, etc.) or scientific field (Biology, Physics, Bioengineering, etc.), or equivalent practical experience
Familiarity with best practices in machine learning operations (Git, Docker, MLFlow or the equivalent)
Experience designing and running experiments
Experience managing or overseeing the work of other data scientists or analysts
0-5+ years of relevant work experience
Interested applicants should submit both their resume and an answer to the following question:
Our R&D Department informs us that a recently drafted pitcher would have a big league arsenal if they gained 2mph in the off-season. What models would you build or metrics would you look at to determine whether the player can achieve the proposed gain in velocity? (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.
Wednesday night in Philadelphia didn’t start off as a celebration of Michael Lorenzen. Making his first home start after joining the team at the trade deadline, he struggled to get comfortable on the mound. The first batter of the game, CJ Abrams, smashed a pitch to the warning track in the deepest part of the field. The next three batters worked full counts, with one walking. Keibert Ruiz worked another walk to lead off the second inning. Lorenzen threw 53 pitches in the first three frames. Through four, he had three strikeouts and three walks.
Luckily, he didn’t need to be the focus, because a celebration in Philly was happening one way or another. Weston Wilson smashed a home run in his first major league at-bat. Nick Castellanos popped a two-run shot in the first and followed up with a solo shot in the third. The Phillies were romping over the Nationals on a glorious summer evening. And that’s leaving the best part for last: Ryan Howard was in the booth to celebrate opening a new chicken and waffles stand in the stadium.
I won’t lie to you; those waffles looked good. John Kruk was nearly rapturous as he contemplated them. At one point, he openly begged Alex Call to finish an at-bat quickly so the booth could go to commercial and he could eat. Howard seemed happy, too, and the Phillies continued to pile up runs while he recapped the genesis of his foodie vision. After four innings, the Phillies led 6-0, and the celebration was in full swing.
Obviously, though, you aren’t here to read about Howard’s chicken and waffles, or to learn, as I did, that Kruk avoids spicy food. You’re here because a funny thing happened in the back half of this game. Lorenzen, staked to an enormous lead, started attacking the strike zone. He dared the Nationals to swing – four-seamers middle-middle and belt-high sinkers, calling out to be swung at. When he fell behind in the count, he fired one down the pipe and said “hit it.”
This being the Nationals, they mostly didn’t hit it. Calling their offense punchless might be going too far, but they’re towards the bottom of the league in every offensive category, and that doesn’t account for the fact that they traded their best hitter at the deadline. Abrams is coming on, and Lane Thomas has been good all year, but we’re not quite talking about Murderers’ Row here.
Suddenly it was the seventh inning, and the Nationals were still hitless. Lorenzen pulled his secondary pitches back out; he buried Jake Alu under a pile of changeups for his fourth strikeout and then mixed four-seamers high with changeups low to coax a groundout (smashed, great play by Rodolfo Castro) out of Ildemaro Vargas. Seven innings, 100 pitches, no hits – was this happening?
That last out of the seventh inning awoke the Philadelphia crowd from its post-homer lethargy. They’d been enjoying a casual demolishing of the little brothers of the NL East. Now, they might be witnessing history. A roar broke out, and the crowd rose to its feet to collectively cheer Lorenzen as he strode off the field. Six outs, six measly outs – surely he could do it.
Lorenzen came out sharp in the eighth – by which I mean, he threw some good pitches when the count made that possible and otherwise made the Nationals beat him by putting the ball in play. It was a brilliant plan all night; the Phillies recorded 15 outs in the air, few of them threatening to be anything more than cans of corn. Most importantly for Lorenzen, that eighth inning took only 11 pitches, which gave him enough runway to come back out for the ninth.
I’ve spent a lot of this writeup talking about Lorenzen’s ability to adapt his pitching to the situation, and that was on display in his last inning of work. The strike zone widens when no-hitters near the finish line. Hitters’ pulses rise – you don’t want to be on that highlight reel, you know? Lorenzen aimed for the corners to get ahead, then snapped off ridiculous breaking balls whenever he had the chance, hoping for a miserable flail from a desperate opponent.
That plan dealt with Thomas and Joey Meneses, the latter a victim of a called strike three that was both clearly outside and clearly a pitch you have to swing at in the ninth inning of a no-hitter. That left only Dominic Smith, but he wasn’t going down easily. After falling behind 1-2, he took and fouled his way back to a 3-2 count. Lorenzen looked gassed. “One more pitch,” Kruk breathed on the broadcast, almost a mantra. And Lorenzen left it up to the gods of contact one more time. He threw a slider right down main street at 85 and dared Smith to do his worst:
After the momentous end to the seventh inning, Citizen’s Bank Park had turned raucous. That energy carried right through to the end of the game. The place positively shook when Meneses struck out, and erupted even more when Johan Rojas squeezed Smith’s fly ball for the final out. Sorry Weston, and sorry Ryan; it was Lorenzen’s night now, and the crowd bathed him in applause as he exulted in his achievement.
If you didn’t know he hadn’t allowed any hits, Lorenzen’s line wouldn’t turn any heads. Five strikeouts, four walks; it’s not exactly the stuff of aces. But Lorenzen has never been an ace, and he wouldn’t tell you otherwise. He’s never been a high octane strikeout pitcher, and now that he’s transitioned from the bullpen to the rotation, he’s leaning more than ever on his savvy. Tonight was the crowning achievement of that style.
As the stadium roared and Lorenzen’s mom beamed from the crowd, the team mobbed him. What a glorious feeling it must be to combine the pinnacle of individual achievement with your first real taste at team success. Lorenzen has played for a winning team exactly twice in his major league career – the 2020 Reds went 31-29 and the 2021 edition finished 83-79.
This year’s Phillies are a cut above that – the defending National League champions, near-locks to make the playoffs and another run at the title. And he’s one of them now, indelibly linked with this team, this city. You won’t be able to tell the story of the 2023 Phillies without mentioning this night, which means you won’t be able to tell it without mentioning Lorenzen. How wonderful that must feel after nearly a decade in the wilderness, hoping to start, then getting your wish only to toil in obscurity.
Baseball is about a lot of things. It’s about the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd, the beauty of close plays and the shocking speed and strength of grown men wearing ridiculous pajamas. Increasingly, it’s about numbers too – teams are getting smarter and smarter about separating what seems important from what is important. But regardless of the numbers, tonight was important. Baseball isn’t just about who wins the trophy at the end of the year. It’s about nights like these, and players like these. What a glorious night for Lorenzen, and what a wonderful celebration of baseball.
Cole Hamels retired from baseball on Friday, causing significant consternation to people who read that headline and thought they’d been transported back in time to the winter of 2019. (Buy a house now, while you still can, and be sure to stock up on hand sanitizer.)
It’s been four years since Hamels pitched effectively in the major leagues; before the 2020 season, he signed a one-year deal with the Atlanta Braves, and was limited to just 3 1/3 innings by injuries to his triceps and shoulder. Two further comeback attempts, with the Dodgers and his hometown Padres, came to nothing. Hamels never quite recovered from a 2021 surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff, and was still unable to throw without pain when he decided, at age 39, that he’d finally had enough.
Hamels, the 2008 NLCS and World Series MVP, will probably appear on just one Hall of Fame ballot. But few players’ reputations suffered more by comparison to their immediate surroundings than Hamels’ did; he was one or two breaks from giving a speech in Cooperstown someday, even if nobody realized it at the time. Read the rest of this entry »
While some of the biggest names available did not find new homes on Tuesday, a whole lot of relievers are wearing new duds. So let’s get down to business.
With all the relief trades made by the White Sox, Middleton must have felt a bit like the last kid taken in gym class this weekend. This has been the year he’s put it all together, thanks to a much-improved changeup that has become his money pitch, resulting in hitters no longer simply waiting around to crush his fairly ordinary fastball. He’s a free agent after the season and certainly not meriting a qualifying offer, so the Sox were right to get what they could.
I’m mostly confused about this from the Yankees’ standpoint. He does upgrade the bullpen, which ranks below average in our depth charts for the first time I can recall. But unless they really like him and hope to lock him up to a contract before he hits free agency, I’m not sure what the Bombers get out of tinkering with their bullpen a little when the far more pressing problems in the lineup and rotation went unaddressed. As for Carela, he’s been solid in High-A ball this year, but he really ought to be as a repeater. Just how much of a lottery ticket he is won’t be better known until we see if he can continue his improvement against a better quality of hitter. Read the rest of this entry »
The Phillies and Tigers are at it again. After a five-player swap back in January, Dave Dombrowski is making another trade with his former club. With the top five teams in the NL wild card race currently separated by a grand total of one game in the loss column, the Phillies, currently in command of the second wild card spot by a whopping half a game, decided to grab a reinforcement for the rotation and bullpen, trading prospect Hao-Yu Lee to the Tigers in exchange for right-hander Michael Lorenzen. They also designated veteran utility man Josh Harrison for assignment to make room for Lorenzen on the 40-man roster. And at least one Phillies player is very excited about this trade:
Brandon Marsh, who played with Michael Lorenzen in 2022 with the Angels, says he is a “great pitcher, an incredible teammate, and has big biceps.”
“He’s gonna be a great fit here. I’m super excited to see him again and give him a hug. I hope he picks me up. He’s strong.”
The 31-year-old Lorenzen, who will be a free agent this winter, is in the midst of his best season since 2020, running a 3.58 ERA and a 3.88 FIP. That improvement has largely come via limiting walks: after averaging a 9.9% walk rate from 2017 to ’19, he’s at 6.5% this season. He’s done that not by increasing his chase rate, but simply by throwing more pitches in the zone, with his zone rate rising from 39.8% in 2022 to 45.7% this year. Lorenzen throws four pitches more than 10% of the time — four-seamer, slider, changeup, and sinker — and is throwing all of them in the zone more often this season than last. In doing so, he traded some whiffs for some called strikes, a swap that has so far paid off. He’s also improved dramatically against lefties, with a .279 wOBA against them this year, down from a career mark of .323.
There’s a troubling trend worth noting, though. Lorenzen’s 4.80 DRA is higher than his 2022 mark of 4.32. His average exit velocity and barrel rate are at career highs, and while his .323 wOBAcon is right in line with last year’s .329 mark, his .362 xwOBAcon is the highest since his rookie season in 2015. Lorenzen might be getting a little lucky on balls in play or getting a little extra help from his defense. Both of those tricks will be harder to pull off at Citizens Bank Park than they were at Comerica Park. Still, it might help your wOBAcon just a bit when the center fielder is willing to run through a brick wall for you. Read the rest of this entry »
