Archive for Phillies

As promised, there’s only a few instructs reports left but it’s lasted me the (most warm in Florida) winter as junior colleges started this week and I was in the Dominican last week to see the top July 2 players. Along those lines, this wrap-up from Phillies camp will lead off with a high profile American but finish with three recent international signees that caught my eye.

Larry Greene signed with the Phillies for $1 million as the 39th overall pick in the supplemental round of the 2011 draft. Greene is from the South Georgia, the same area that has recently produced Buster Posey, Kaleb Cowart and Byron Buxton. Unfortunately, Greene isn’t the same kind of prospect but, as the signing bonus suggests, he has the tools to be a successful big leaguer. The first thing you notice about Greene physically also stands out on the roster—the Phillies updated his height and weight to 6’1, 259. That should create a certain mental image, but Greene isn’t fat and runs better than you’d expect; think NFL fullback. And don’t think Ryan Howard because that’s really lazy.

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It has been a rough week for the population of former Montreal Expos in the major leagues. On the heels of Nick Johnson’s retirement, former Expos, Nationals, Mets, and Phillies catcher Brian Schneider announced that his baseball playing career was over. Schneider started his professional career after being drafted by the Expos back in 1995, when they still may have seemed to have a viable future in Montreal (remember that 1994 team?). Schneider was never a star or even a “what if” guy like Johnson, but he he did manage to play 13 seasons in the majors. Schneider was hardly a career backup, either, as he started at least 95 games at catcher every season from 2003 to 2008. He was not ever an average bat (other than in his 48 plate appearance stint in 2001), but he was not terrible, especially considering his position. Schneider was good defensively. He threw out more base runners than average, and the limited records we have show Schneider to have been good at framing pitches.

Schneider was on two teams (the 2010 and 2011 Phillies) that made the postseason, but never got a plate appearance in the playoffs. Schneider may not have been much more, at least by the numbers, than an adequate catcher with a diverse combination of skills, but even players like that can have some pretty exciting hits. As we often do on these occasions, let’s take a look at Schneider’s three biggest hits according to the “story stat,” Win Probability Added (WPA).

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I recently wrote about my attempt to design an indicator that would predict when players were at a higher risk for having a collapse-type year. I named the metric CLIFFORD, referring to the fact that players identified by it were at risk of falling off a cliff offensively. My inspiration was Adam Dunn and his disastrous 2011, in which his wOBA declined by .113.

My initial research showed that 58% of collapse candidates identified by Marcel actually experience a wOBA decline of at least .03 (or 30 points)–2.43 times the likelihood of non-collapse candidates. Collapse candidates identified by CLIFFORD actually decreased by at least 30 points of wOBA 53% of the time–2.14 times the likelihood of non-collapse candidates.

Marcel initially appeared to do a better job identifying these candidates. If we knew nothing else outside of just the Marcel projection, our chances were better at identifying collapse candidates than if we used CLIFFORD (and, yes, the difference between the relative risk for both measures is statistically significant).

However, and here’s the bright spot, there was not much overlap between the two metrics.

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This is a post with two potential introductions. We will deploy both one of them. By our numbers, a year ago, Michael Young was worth -1.4 WAR. He’s going to be a starter for the Phillies. A year ago, Ryan Howard was worth -1.0 WAR. He’s going to be a starter for the Phillies. A year ago, Delmon Young was worth -0.7 WAR. He’s supposedly going to be a starter for the Phillies. A year ago, Chone Figgins was worth -1.0 WAR. By reports, the Phillies are the last team to have expressed some interest. A year ago, Joe Mather was worth -1.5 WAR. He’ll be in Phillies camp on a minor-league deal. A year ago, Yuniesky Betancourt was worth -0.8 WAR. He’ll be in Phillies camp on a minor-league deal.

It’s misleading to present the numbers like that, but it’s also powerful. The Phillies are going to have a lot of talent on their roster, but they could also have a lot of players coming off really bad seasons. For now, it doesn’t mean much that Mather and Betancourt will be in camp, because they’re on minor-league contracts, and minor-league contracts are effectively harmless. But the risk is that a bad player on a minor-league contract can end up on the major-league roster, and as you’ve figured out, I’m using this as the latest opportunity to write about Yuniesky Betancourt, the extraordinary underachiever.

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I swear I’ve posted almost all of my instructs reports. From Phillies camp, I’ve got two of the top three picks from the most recent draft, both multi-sport athletes as the Phillies are notorious for drafting.

Mitch Gueller was the 54th overall pick (sandwich round) in June from a Washington state high school that signed for slot, nearly $950,000. Gueller was a high school quarterback and also played basketball, so his solid-average speed and athleticism stood out, along with his 6’3, 215 pound frame and fastball that peaked at 95 mph. Unfortunately, it appeared Gueller was fatigued the two times I saw him in instructs as his velo was down and he had more command issues and trouble repeating his delivery than he should.

The first time I saw him, he was facing Gerrit Cole (report) and while Cole was busy hitting 101 mph, Gueller was a more workmanlike 87-89 mph. He spotted his fastball well early, wasn’t afraid to come inside and he kept the ball down. Gueller was throwing a four-seamer that didn’t move much and as he lost his release point, tried throwing a cutter, sinker and slider, all of which weren’t working. The second time I saw Gueller he was much more crisp, sitting 89-90 mph and showing a usable cutter and slider. Gueller’s slider was 81-83 mph and showed average potential and 12-to-6 tilt with late, short bite. His changeup was a solid pitch, also showing average potential in both outing at 79-82 mph with more sink than fade but good deception and arm speed.

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Of course they did.

Last week, Jeff wrote about “What Delmon Young Was“, and he closed with these two paragraphs:

I haven’t yet figured out how Delmon Young hit that pitch for a home run. If you watch Young’s highlight videos, you’ll see similar batted balls that come off the bat faster than it seems like they should. That raw talent of Young’s hasn’t deteriorated with time, so it lingers on, a living sign of what Young was, and of what Young was supposed to be. Watch that home run, and only that home run, and you might think “this guy is amazing, he can hit anything out.”

Young, it seems, always believed that to be true, and while it’s never too late to try to make changes, it can get too late to actually make them. Talent alone got Delmon Young to the majors. Young either hasn’t worked hard, or he hasn’t worked smart. Young at 26 was the same as he was at 21. The same, but bigger, and a whole hell of a lot less promising.

When trying to figure out what team would give Young a contract this winter, it basically boiled down to figuring out what organizations didn’t place a high value on the base on balls, favored traditional offensive metrics over the kinds of things we write about here on FanGraphs, and would see Young as still having the potential to be a good player. The Phillies check every box on the list, and were in search of a right-handed corner outfielder. This should have been an obvious match for a while.

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FanGraphs keeps track of pitcher Pace, which you already knew. Here’s a definition of what pitcher Pace is, in case you need to brush up. The data comes from PITCHf/x timestamps, and while Pace doesn’t have any meaningful correlation with wins and losses — that is, it doesn’t make you better to speed up or slow down — it does have a meaningful correlation with what we might call “watchability”. While we’re all ultimately in it for the baseball, it’s a lot more fun to watch a game with a fast tempo than a game with a slower tempo. A game with a fast tempo makes the baseball more concentrated. Somebody just signed Miguel Batista the other day, and I’m not interested in looking up who, but that was a bad move as far as watchability is concerned. Batista, like other slow pitchers, can be dreadful to watch.

Pace is interesting, because it describes part of the viewing experience. So Pace can be fun to play around with. In late September, I decided to look at opposite extremes. What Pace tell us is that Mark Buehrle is the fastest-working pitcher, and Carlos Pena is the slowest-working hitter, because Pena has a whole routine he gets into. I was curious to see what the Pace would be in their head-to-head matchups. The results basically split the middle between Buehrle’s Pace and Pena’s Pace. Buehrle made Pena speed up, but Pena also made Buehrle slow down. Science!

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There are a bunch of things we know to be true about Aaron Cook, or at least things we have no reason to question. Aaron Cook played for the Rockies, and he recently played for the Red Sox. More recently he was signed by the Phillies. He is a man, and he is a man of more than 30 years, and he is a man who grows reddish facial hair when he wants to, and even when he doesn’t. Aaron Cook knows many things about the game of baseball. Last season, Cook posted one of the lowest strikeout rates ever.

Strikeouts, of course, have never been a big part of Aaron Cook’s game — when he’s right, he gets a bunch of grounders. When he’s wrong, he also gets a bunch of grounders, but the overall results of everything are worse. Cook, in 2012, didn’t post the lowest strikeout rate in baseball history. He did post the lowest strikeout rate since the strike, at 4.9% of all batters. There were 411 batters, and 20 of those batters struck out. When Cook was in triple-A in 2012, there were 153 batters, and 16 of those batters struck out, so this was predictable to some extent.

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In a foot race, I’d place my money on Roman Quinn over any prospect not named Billy Hamilton. Heads up, it would be close — very close. 2012 was a historic year for minor league base stealers as Hamilton attempted 192 steals and was successful 155 times — breaking the record held by Vince Coleman. This feat overshadowed Astros prospect Delino Deshields Jr. as his paltry total of 101 stolen bases paled in comparison. In 2013, a new prospect will push triple digit steals if given the green light — Phillies shortstop prospect Roman Quinn.

Video after the jump

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Brad Lidge is 36 years old. In December, when he was still 35, he announced his retirement from professional baseball. He hadn’t been much of a factor since 2010, so in that sense it felt inevitable that Lidge would hang them up. In discussing Lidge’s career, Mike Axisa wrote up the memorable moment that was Albert Pujols taking Lidge deep. Below, in the comments section of that post, some Phillies fans chimed in to say they most remember Lidge for completing the 2008 World Series. Me, I find both of those to be memorable moments, and when it comes to most memorable, that’s entirely subjective. But when I think of Brad Lidge, I don’t think first of Albert Pujols, nor do I think first of Eric Hinske. I don’t think of any one particular moment. I think of the whole sequence of moments that was Lidge’s 2004 season with the Astros.

Craig Kimbrel is coming off an impossible season with the Braves, in which he struck out more than half of the batters he faced. Opposing batters made some sort of contact 61% of the time that they swung. Aroldis Chapman, too, was incredible with the Reds, collecting 122 strikeouts. Opposing batters made some sort of contact 62% of the time that they swung. Going further back now, Eric Gagne was downright unfair as a Dodger in 2003. He won the National League Cy Young, and opposing batters made some sort of contact 56% of the time that they swung.

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