Now It’s the Phillies Offense That’s Laughably Bad

We have an understanding, right? Neither the Phillies nor Braves were supposed to be good, and neither the Phillies nor Braves are actually good. Winning now was never part of the plan, so in a sense it kind of doesn’t matter what happens on the field. Not on the team level, because the teams were always going to lose. So there’s no point in being too critical, or in laughing too much. Criticism should be reserved for failures. Failing requires the intent to succeed.

I don’t want to sit around and talk about the Phillies and Braves every day. It’s not particularly interesting that they’re bad. That being said, I do at least want to take the chance to even things out. Toward the end of April, I wrote about how the Braves offense was a total disaster. And it was a total disaster, as you remember. They hit two homers on opening day, then they hit one homer over their next 19 games. They didn’t get their team slugging percentage into the .300s until the middle of May. It was inconceivable how poorly the Braves were hitting, and it’s not like they’ve since turned into an offensive juggernaut. But as you look at the numbers today, there has been a shift. The Braves offense ranks low. The Phillies offense is worse.

The Phillies were hitting poorly all along. It’s not that nobody noticed, but they didn’t stand out, because the Braves stood out, and because the Phillies were still somehow winning for a stretch. The run prevention cooled off, so now the Phillies have been revealed more for what they are. The fun, at least, lasted a couple months. But, Monday afternoon, the Phillies were held to a single run by Shelby Miller and the Diamondbacks. To Miller’s credit, he showed his best stuff of the season. He also had been one of the worst pitchers of the season. So, you know, not good. Teams want multiple runs.

To stick just with the Phillies and Braves for a moment, here are their offensive seasons, presented in cumulative wOBA. This includes the Phillies’ Monday loss.

Ever so briefly, there was early overlap. You can see the lines cross for a day, there at the early red trough. Then the Phillies pulled back ahead, and the gap widened, and then the gap shrunk, and now the gap has disappeared. By wOBA, the Phillies have dipped below the Braves. By wOBA, the teams were always supposed to struggle, but when you remember what the Braves already went through, this is pretty amazing.

Here’s the rest of the league context, switching to wRC+ to try to even out the park effects. Used to be, the Braves looked historically bad, and the Phillies tried to hide in their shadow. Now it’s the Phillies who’re out in the open.

You can see the difference between the Braves and the Reds. There’s a healthy gap between 28th and 29th. Compared to the Braves, the Phillies actually have almost twice the home runs. But they have baseball’s lowest team BABIP, and they’re deep in the cellar in team on-base percentage. The Phillies check in with a total OBP of .278. The Padres and Reds are tied at .296. The opposite of on-base percentage is not-on-base percentage. The Phillies are the league leaders in not being on bases.

I know I’ve already switched from wOBA to wRC+, but now I also want to introduce something else. I went all the way back to 1920 and I calculated something I’ll refer to as R/G+. This is team runs per game, divided by league runs per game, times 100. I looked at AL and NL teams individually, and then I put them back together for purposes of comparing within a spreadsheet. Here are the worst 10 offensive teams, in terms of relative run generation:

For one thing, this season has a long way to go. For another thing, looking at runs doesn’t account for potential park effects. But the Phillies don’t play in a run-suppressing ballpark, and just because they aren’t officially one of the worst ever doesn’t mean they haven’t resembled one of the worst ever. If this were to keep up, the Phillies would definitely be one of the worst offensive teams of all time. And while you always have to regress just about any extreme data point, it’s not like the Phillies can figure a great deal of help is on the way.

This year, 25 Phillies have batted. Two players have at least average wRC+ marks: Odubel Herrera and Andres Blanco. Blanco is an o’fer from dropping below 100. Herrera is the one shining star, and the only options, to be honest, were Herrera and Maikel Franco. With Franco not hitting, the rest of the lineup is exposed. Cameron Rupp has come on some, and those familiar with Statcast know he can hit the ball hard, but these straws aren’t worth even grasping for. The developments within the pitching ranks were important, because they showed how this rebuild could work out. When the pitchers are struggling, the whole landscape is bleak.

The rest of the way, the Phillies project for baseball’s lowest position-player WAR. The Braves are projected for a .297 wOBA, and the Phillies are, too, pitchers being excepted. The projections expect Franco to deliver the most, and he clearly has it within him — he was productive as recently as last season. Yet his contact is down, so there are concerns. And J.P. Crawford has been dreadful in his first exposure to Triple-A. Maybe Nick Williams will come up and save the offense, or maybe he won’t. Maybe the organization figures there’s nothing to save, and they’ll take their sweet time.

It doesn’t matter too much how bad the Phillies are. And we knew they’d be bad, so there isn’t any shock value, here. Rebuilding teams lose, and losing teams have bad statistics. The rebuilding Phillies have bad offensive statistics. What’s incredible to me is they’ve dug their way past the Braves. A month and a half ago, there were people pushing the narrative that the Phillies had figured it out, and the Braves got their rebuild all wrong. That could even be true, but you don’t want to let yourself be too influenced by the short-term wins and losses. The Braves have a ways yet to go. They’re not alone in that regard.