NLCS Game One/Series Preview: Philadelphia Phillies

Two quotes rattled around in my brain as I prepared to write this preview:

“Every pitcher is Roy Halladay to the Giants. You know what kind of pitchers do well against the Giants? The ones with noses.” – Grant, from the McCovey Chronicles in his post called “Sizing up the Phillies’ starting rotation“

“I’ve been calling for a long time to see metrics about how hitters and pitchers fare against different types and/or quality of opponents. In the postseason, this is really all that matters.” – Commenter B N, on the review of Game Three of the NLDS

If this were the mainstream media, it would be so easy to say something semi-resolute and catchy about this matchup. Tim Lincecum has a 3.17 ERA and a 0.99 WHIP in seven career games against the Phillies. Roy Halladay has a 7.23 ERA and 1.61 WHIP in three games. OMGz! Don’t count the Giants out! They have Halladay’s number!

Hardly. Of course. Those numbers are career splits, and what do starts against other iterations of these lineups even mean? Diddly. And then, if we try to boil it down to splits in this season, we get one poor game for Halladay against the Giants (seven innings, ten hits, five runs, five strikeouts and no walks) and one excellent game for Lincecum (eight and a third innings, three hits, two runs, 11 strikeouts and one walk).

But somehow we want to find something we can say with some amount of certainty this year. And since head-to-head matchups won’t give us a sample worth discussing, we’ll have to see how these teams do against certain types of pitchers in our (probably fruitless) aim to say something about this one, single game on Saturday.

Maybe we can say something like: in 2010, the Giants had an X OPS against pitchers like Halladay. Dangit, who’s like Halladay? Or rather, what kind of a pitcher is he? He throws 93, doesn’t walk anyone (1.08 BB/9), and gets groundballs (51.2% this year). Is he a groundballer? A finesse pitcher? A power pitcher? Lincecum throws only 91 this year, but gets more strikeouts (9.79 this year) and fewer groundballs (48.9%). Can we call him a power pitcher? A guy who walks 3.22 per nine doesn’t seem to be a finesse pitcher.

The inspiration for this line of reasoning is the team splits pages on Baseball-Reference.com. Thankfully, they have a definition there:

Power pitchers are in the top third of the league in strikeouts plus walks. Finesse are in the bottom third of the league in strikeouts plus walks.

Ah-hah. So Tim Lincecum = ‘power’ pitcher, Roy Halladay = ? Let’s just not bother with how the Giants do against finesse pitchers – we already ‘know’ that every pitcher looks like Roy Halladay to them from the quote at the top. However, Lincecum seems to fit the definition for a power pitcher, so how do the Phils do against power pitchers? Answer: not as well as they do against finesse pitchers. Their 99 sOPS+ against power pitchers is well below their 110 sOPS+ against finesse pitchers.

Otherwise, the Phillies lead the Giants in batting RAR (27.9 to -14.6) and starters’ RAR (144.5 to 141.4; and more once Roy Oswalt is considered). The Giants lead in bullpen RAR (59.1 to 25.8) and defense (8.5 to 0.8 UZR/150). If there wasn’t the hint that the Phillies’ offense might not be as good against power pitchers, it would be tempting to take the team with the better lineup and starter in game one and in the series.

Here’s one thing we can actually say with certainty: It will be interesting to see Lincecum face off against Halladay. Phew. How’s that for resolute?