Please note, this posting contains multiple positions.

Position: Quantitative Analyst (full-time and summer), Baseball Research & Development

Description:
As a Quantitative Analyst (QA) or QA intern, 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:

• 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

Position: Software Engineer (full-time and summer), Baseball Research & Development

The work of a Software Engineer (SWE) or SWE intern 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:

• 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:

• 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

To Apply:

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

How would you decide whether a minor league position player prospect is ready to be promoted to the major leagues? (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.

Please note, the summer intern positions are paid.

Please submit your resume and question response to analytics@phillies.com no later than Wednesday, October 31, 2018. Applications not sent to analytics@phillies.com will not be considered.

Officially, the Braves have sewn up the NL East, after having completed a four-game weekend sweep of the Phillies. The division was already more or less decided, but an unlikely Phillies sweep could’ve at least brought it down to the wire. Instead, the Phillies will play out the string, while the Braves get themselves set for the playoffs. On the one hand, the Phillies can’t be too disappointed — they would’ve been arriving a year or so ahead of time. On the other hand, the Braves arrived a year or so ahead of time. And this is a plot of the 2018 Phillies’ playoff odds:

As recently as August 7, the Phillies were in first place and 15 games over .500. Since then, they’ve gone an NL-worst 14-28, while the Braves have gone 27-19. Very obviously, when a team collapses, several components have to be involved. One thing I’ll highlight, though: dating back to August 8, according to Baseball Savant, Phillies pitchers have ranked seventh in baseball in expected wOBA allowed, while Braves pitchers have ranked 16th. And yet, Phillies pitchers have ranked 26th in baseball in actual wOBA allowed, while Braves pitchers have ranked third. Call it noise if you want. I’m certain that’s a part of it. The other part is defense. The Phillies’ team defense has let them down, and as the headline suggests, they’re on the verge of establishing a new record.

Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s National League Cy Young race invites multiple interesting questions about how best to evaluate pitching performance. Jacob deGrom, for example, is the league’s leader in ERA by a healthy amount; however, he’s also recorded only as many wins as reliever Jeremy Jeffress. Max Scherzer is having another great season, but his .255 BABIP compels one to consider whether his 2.31 ERA is the product of luck or defense (although the Nationals have recorded below-average defensive numbers both by UZR and DRS). Aaron Nola, meanwhile, has recorded a similarly low BABIP even as Philadelphia has produced NL-worst figures both by UZR and DRS. Finally, while the race has been viewed as a three-person contest for some time, it’s also possible Patrick Corbin has inserted himself into the conversation with a fantastic second half.

Sorting through the candidates is difficult. Ultimately, one’s choice for Cy Young will depend on how one weighs what a pitcher can and cannot control — and how best to quantify those effects. To start, here are some general metrics that should be familiar to FanGraphs readers.

Based on these numbers, Jacob deGrom is the pretty clear favorite for Cy honors, with Max Scherzer an equally clear runner-up. What’s less clear, however, is that the results of a vote would produce a similar outcome, as both pitcher wins and other versions of WAR are likely to influence writers — and arrive at different conclusions than the figures here. Below, I’ve included some different versions of WAR, each of which paint the field in a different light.

Here we see a version of reality that suggests greater parity in the race. Averaging the numbers above, we’d still put deGrom first, Scherzer second, and Nola third, but Scherzer actually places ahead of deGrom in two of the four metrics, while Nola and Scherzer are more closely situated. Examining how each of WAR metrics arrives at its destination can help inform how to use them. Last week, Eno Sarris took a look at some of these same issues in a discussion of how large a role luck ought to play in Cy Young voting. There is also the question of what defines “luck” in the context of pitching, what sort of control a pitcher exerts over certain outcomes, and what role a a pitcher’s park ought to play in our evaluations of him.

The metrics above all feature different inputs which, naturally, lead to different results. In the version of WAR used at FanGraphs, those inputs are innings, strikeouts, infield flies, walks, and home runs — along with factors for league and park. DeGrom leads by this particular measure because his strikeout, walk, and homer numbers are all great. Scherzer has good walk and strikeout numbers but a closer-to-average home-run rate. Nola features slightly inferior (although still excellent) strikeout and walk numbers — plus a good home-run rate — but he falls behind Corbin, who has good numbers in all three.

The next metric, RA9, is another version of WAR carried at FanGraphs — one which, in this case, simply considers the number of runs a pitcher allows while also factoring for league and park. That’s how Nola, with the very good ERA, jumps up near Scherzer, though still short of deGrom. RA9 includes runs that were scored or not scored due to defense and sequencing, but does not try to make any adjustments for those factors.

Baseball-Reference begins with something like FanGraphs’ RA9 calculation but makes further adjustments for opponent and team defense, which is a significant factor in this year’s race. Nola tops the Baseball-Reference WAR leaderboard because of how well he’s prevented runs despite Philadelphia’s poor defense. Generally the effects of these defensive adjustments are muted, but because Nola appears to be headed for one of the 10 best bWAR seasons of the last 50 years, this case invites some scrutiny. Patrick Corbin suffers from the opposite scenario: Arizona has recorded strong defensive numbers, meaning he receives a “penalty” of sorts for his contribution to run-prevention.

Here are the overall team defense numbers by DRS, which Baseball-Reference uses, and UZR, which is included in WAR for position players but not pitchers here at FanGraphs.

There is obviously a much larger spread with the DRS figures, as defensive adjustments alone mean a difference of 24 runs between Nola and Corbin, which is about four times as much as the difference by UZR.

Over at Baseball Prospectus, their Deserved Run Average (DRA) metric accounts for as many aspects of a pitcher’s game as possible and attempts to factor for everything including park, opponent, catcher, umpire, and pitch effectiveness to determine how many runs a pitcher should have allowed with all those variables rendered neutral. By their methods, Scherzer leads over deGrom, with Nola and Corbin a ways behind.

There’s certainly an argument to be made for considering the strength of a defense behind a pitcher, and reason dictates that a defense can help or hurt a pitcher’s run-prevention numbers. Defense alone, however, isn’t going to fully explain the difference between a pitcher’s FIP and ERA. Luck is involved, as well. We can use Statcast information to determine just how much defense and luck might be involved, though it won’t do a good job separating those two factors. For starters, here are the xwOBA and wOBA figures for each of the pitchers above.

In terms of what a pitcher has deserved to concede based on quality of contact, strikeouts, and walks, Scherzer has gotten just about what we might expect, while deGrom and Nola aren’t far off expectations. Corbin is the outlier here, and there is a case to be made that Arizona’s defense is partially responsible for his good fortune. What’s interesting, though, is that Corbin’s ERA is actually much higher than his FIP. This could mean that Corbin has been rather fortunate this year on home runs or that the contact he’s conceded on balls in play has been of higher quality than the sort conceded by other pitchers.

We can remove the most skill-based aspects from above by taking out strikeouts and walks and looking at xwOBA on just batted balls.

Here we see almost no effect on Scherzer’s outcomes, with a slight benefit for deGrom and Nola, and then a big help for Corbin. You’ll note that the league-wide numbers are off by 15 points from each other, likely due to a potentially dead baseball, as the estimates on launch angle and exit velocity are based on previous seasons, when the ball was perhaps a bit more lively. As we are looking at numbers between pitchers in this season alone, the comparisons still provide value. What happens when we remove home runs and look solely at batted balls? See below.

In theory, these numbers factor in both defense and luck on batted balls this season. As we can see, it appears that, whatever poor defense has victimized Nola has likely been evened out by good fortune. The same is true for deGrom. Scherzer, meanwhile, appears to have received a slight benefit, with Corbin being the recipient of some good defense in Arizona. This probably doesn’t leave the reader with any definite conclusions. We have a better idea about the quality of contact and how defense might have affected run totals — which is to say not much — but the extent to which a pitcher exerts control over that contact is also a matter of debate.

If you believe that a pitcher controls very little of opponent contact — or, alternatively, are unsure of the level of control — the version of WAR hosted here at FanGraphs is your main resource. If you believe that a pitcher is wholly responsible for the quality of contact he concedes and also that defensive quality doesn’t move the needle much in one direction or another, RA9/WAR makes some sense for you. If you believe further adjustment needs to be made for defense, bWAR can provide some help. If you want a more granular look at individual pitches, DRA provides guidance. If you just want something based entirely on xwOBA, a crude attempt is made below.

While the question of value is somewhat objective, there is some subjectivity involved, but if making a decision on the Cy Young, it’s important to have as much information as possible to determine why one pitcher might be better than the other. It isn’t enough to simply prefer one stat over another and blindly rely on it because you generally agree with the methodology. Look at how the results are reached to make the best possible decision.

*****

As promised in the final paragraph above, here’s a rough approximation of WAR based on xwOBA:

A while back, I wrote about Angel Hernandez and his lawsuit against Major League Baseball. In said piece, I noted that “[p]layers in both the American and National League voted Hernandez one of the game’s three worst umpires. (In case you’re wondering, Joe West was worse in both leagues.)”

It’s time to talk about Country Joe West. West hasn’t sued anybody lately, but he did manage to get himself in a kerfuffle involving the Phillies, Austin Davis, and a piece of paper.

So as to prolong the suspense, it’s worth noting why West is considered a bad umpire. Unlike Angel Hernandez, his reputation isn’t necessarily for creative calls. In fact, back in 2007, The Hardball Times named him baseball’s most consistent umpire (though he called this balk on Tony Cingrani).

No, West is more known for his colorful personality. He was suspended for calling Adrian Beltre the “biggest complainer” in baseball. And he also likes staring matches. Like this staring match with Madison Bumgarner.

And this staring match with Jimmy Rollins.

Read the rest of this entry »

Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Note from Eric: Hey you, this is the last one of these for the year, as the minor-league regular season comes to a close. Thanks for reading. I’ll be taking some time off next week, charging the batteries for the offseason duties that lie ahead for Kiley and me.

D.J. Peters, CF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 7   FV: 45+
Line: 4-for-7, 2 HR, 2B (double header)

Notes
A comparison of DJ Peters‘ 2017 season in the Cal League and his 2018 season at Double-A gives us a good idea of what happens to on-paper production when a hitter is facing better pitching and defenses in a more stable offensive environment.

Reports of Peters’ physical abilities haven’t changed, nor is his batted-ball profile different in such a way that one would expect a downtick in production. The 2018 line is, I think, a more accurate distillation of Peters’ abilities. He belongs in a talent bucket with swing-and-miss outfielders like Franchy Cordero, Randal Grichuk, Michael A. Taylor, Bradley Zimmer, etc. These are slugging center fielders whose contact skills aren’t particularly great. Players like this are historically volatile from one season to the next but dominant if/when things click. They’re often ~1.5 WAR players who have some years in the three-win range. Sometimes they also turn into George Springer.

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A little less than four weeks ago, I wrote about Phillies rookie Victor Arano. Originally expected to play only a minimal role (if any role at all) with the club this season, Arano has paired with Seranthony Dominguez to lead a Philadelphia bullpen that has aided the club’s surprising pursuit of a division title. Arano’s opportunity to provide meaningful innings would not have been possible had certain other relievers for the Phillies not fallen by the wayside. Tommy Hunter (0.5 WAR) and Pat Neshek (0.6 WAR) have certainly been serviceable, but they’ve fallen a little short of expectations. As for projected closer Hector Neris, he’s fallen well short of them, putting up a 6.90 ERA, 6.39 FIP, and -0.7 WAR through the end of June before earning a demotion to Triple-A.

Neris was recalled to Philadelphia on August 14th and has looked like an entirely different pitcher since his return. In the smallest of samples, Neris has struck out 16 batters, walked one, and allowed three hits in 26 batters faced. This performance — one of the best two-week stretches by a reliever this season — would have been entirely unexpected given his first half. His return comes at a time when the rest of the Phillies’ bullpen performance has been flagging, and his continued excellence will be a necessity if the team wants to emerge from a crowded Wild Card field.

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Jose Bautista is on the move again. On Tuesday afternoon, minutes before their window to complete a waiver-period trade expired, the Mets and Phillies agreed to a deal that will send Joey Bats from the NL East’s fourth-place team to it’s second-place one. In exchange, the Mets, who signed the 37-year-old outfielder on May 22 after he was released by the Braves, will receive either a player to be named later or cash, preferably in unmarked bills.

After nine-plus seasons with the Blue Jays — highlighted by six All-Star appearances, two home run titles, the team’s first two trips to the postseason since their 1992 and ’93 World Series wins, and the franchise’s most iconic hit since Joe Carter’s — Bautista found himself out of work this past winter. Not until April did he sign a minor league deal with the Braves, for whom he played just 12 games, hitting .143/.250/.343 with two homers in 40 plate appearances before being released. Two days later, and less than a week after losing both Yoenis Cespedes and Juan Lagares to injuries, the Mets picked him up. Between the absences of those two players — now out for the season due to foot surgeries — plus injuries to Jay Bruce and Todd Frazier and a dearth of better ideas, the team gave Bautista 302 plate appearances, in which he hit a modest .204/.351/.367 with nine homers, a 104 wRC+, and 0.4 WAR. He was very hot in June (.250/.434/.536, 161 wRC+), but otherwise, not so much:

Between his Atlanta and New York stints, Bautista is walking in 16.4% of his plate appearances, a rate in line with his heyday, but both his 11.1% swinging strike rate and 28.7% strikeout rate represent career highs. His Statcast numbers look considerably better than last year and suggest he’s been a bit unlucky:

On the other hand, Bautista is pulling the ball on 50.8% of his balls in play, a bit above his career rate (47.2%), and a frequency that’s easily countered by infield shifts. Both his 47 wRC+ against those shifts and his .253 BABIP overall are in the general vicinity of his recent body of work, and are contributing to a batting average that’s flirting with the Mendoza Line.

Losers of 19 out of 36 games since the All-Star break, the Phillies (70-61 overall) are 3.5 games behind the Braves in the NL East and 2.5 back in the wild card race. Their playoff odds have fallen from 46.8% to 40.3% in that span. Their second-half struggles have more to do with deteriorating run prevention than sagging offense; their 94 wRC+ since the break is actually three points better than it was prior. The production they’ve been receiving from the three positions where Bautista has taken 63 of his 66 starts this year (right field, left field, and third base) has improved from the first half to the second: right fielder Nick Williams‘ wRC+ has risen from 102 to 119, left fielder Rhys Hoskins‘ from 122 to 159, and third baseman Maikel Franco’s from 102 to 123. Their clearest need for an upgrade in a role that Bautista can fill is as a pinch-hitter, as theirs have batted just .202/.266/.331 for a 59 wRC+, the league’s second-lowest mark.

In all, the addition of Bautista is a minor move, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth making. On a team with few position players who have tasted the postseason (Asdrubal Cabrera, Wilson Ramos, Carlos Santana), they’ve added another, a guy who might have a few big hits left in that bat.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, Bautista — who as a rookie in 2004 played for four different major league teams — is now the third player to play for three teams within the same division in the same season, after Bob Reynolds (Orioles, Tigers, and Indians, oh my!) in 1975 and Kelly Johnson (Yankees, Red Sox, and Orioles) in 2014.

No team plays a completely balanced scheduled over the course of a season. Some divisions, naturally, are better than others. Because intradivisional games account for roughly 40% of the league schedule, there is necessarily some irregularity in the strength of competition from club to club. Interleague play, which represents another 10% of games, also contributes to this imbalance. Given the sheer numbers of games in a major-league campaign, the effect of scheduling ultimately isn’t a major difference-maker. Talent and luck have much more influence over a club’s win-loss record. In any given month, however, scheduling imbalances can become much more pronounced.

Consider this: at the beginning of the season, just one team featured a projected gain or loss as large as three wins due to scheduling. The Texas Rangers were expected to lose three more games than their talent would otherwise dictate. Right now, however, there are eight teams with bigger prorated schedule swings than the one the Rangers saw at the beginning of the season — and those swings could have a big impact on the remaining pennant races.

To provide some backdrop, the chart below ranks the league’s schedules, toughest to easiest, compared to an even .500 schedule.

The Diamondbacks have a pretty rough go of it. Outside of five games against the Padres, the other “worst” team they play is the San Francisco Giants. They have one series each against the division-leading Astros, Braves, and Cubs along with a pair of series against both the Dodgers and Rockies. If Arizona were chasing these teams for the division or Wild Card, their schedule would present them with a good opportunity for making up ground. Given their current status, however, it just means a lot of tough games down the stretch.

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the twenty-first installment of this series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Patrick Corbin, Zach Eflin, and Sonny Gray — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

———

Patrick Corbin (D-backs) on His Slider

“My slider. When I was really young, I asked my father how to throw a breaking ball, and he showed me this grip. It’s something I’ve stuck with throughout the minor leagues and the big leagues. It’s been my best pitch, and it’s kind of neat that my father showed me the grip.

“I can’t remember exactly when it was, but probably around 10 years old, maybe the first couple of times I played catch with my father. He always used to say he loved throwing it at the left-handed batter’s hip and having him freeze, only to have the ball break over the plate. That’s something I’ve always remembered and taken with me.

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Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Bryse Wilson, RHP, Atlanta Braves
Level: Triple-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 12   FV: 45+
Line: 8 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 13 K

Notes
Bryse Wilson touched 97 several times last night and sat 93-95 late in the outing. He pounded the zone with his fastball (72 of 98 pitches were for strikes) and blew it past several hitters up above the strike zone. His slider (mostly 83-85, though he lollipops some slower ones into the zone for first-pitch strikes) flashes plus but is mostly average and is only capable of missing bats when it’s out of the zone. Wilson’s changeup is fringey and firm, without much bat-missing movement, but the velocity separation off of the fastball is enough to keep hitters from squaring it up, and it’s going to be an effective pitch. The entire package (Wilson’s physicality and stuff) looks very similar to Michael Fulmer and Wilson’s delivery is much more graceful and fluid than it was when he was in high school, when scouts thought it would impact his ability to command the fastball and possibly move him to the bullpen.

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