Pedro and the Phils
With the Phillies struggling in third place this yer after back-to-back National League Championships, GM Ruben Amaro has been toying around with an old idea:
Pedro Martinez appears to have his sights set on a repeat of 2009, when he joined the Phillies midseason and wound up starting two games for them in the World Series.
…”Pitching is always the issue. Everybody is always looking for the same thing,” Amaro said. “Again, a lot of it depends on how Happ progresses. And we’ve got to get (setup reliever Ryan) Madson back. I like our chances when both of those guys are back.”
…”I don’t know how much he’s been throwing, but what he did here last year, he was great for this team and helped (the Phillies) out a lot,” said Phils catcher Brian Schneider, who caught the righty with the Mets. “I loved working with Petey. But we have enough stuff going on right now that we’re just concentrating on the pitchers that are already here.”
While the Phillies may say they are happy with the pitchers they’ve got on board, I don’t see why they would be. Here are the members of the Phils rotation with their current and rest of season FIPs courtesy of ZiPS:
Roy Halladay: 2.67/2.93
Cole Hamels: 4.55/3.78
Joe Blanton: 5.83/4.30
Jamie Moyer: 4.98/4.83
Kyle Kendrick: 4.81/4.74
J.A. Happ: 4.48 (10 innings)/4.71
There is currently not one starter on the Phillies not named Roy Halladay who has a better FIP than any Mets starting pitcher. Joe Blanton’s projection for the rest of the year seems generous given his awful pitching, and Cole Hamels has suffered from a nasty combination of homeritis and a career low K/BB.
But what can Pedro Martinez offer the Phillies? Not much, really. He put up a 4.28 FIP last year, but is another year older and hasn’t pitched yet this entire season. Keeping that in mind, here’s what the prognosticators said before the start of the 2010 campaign:
Bill James: 3.67 FIP
CHONE: 4.75 FIP
Marcel: 4.65 FIP
ZiPS: 4.17 FIP
The algorithm at Bill James’ site must be messed up, because it has Pedro with a 8.90 K/9, even though his last two years were 7.46 and 7.18 (and, again, he’s 38 years old and bound to be rusty). Pedro would most likely sit around the ~4.50 FIP area, which would basically give the Phillies someone a tick better than Kyle Kendrick. Martinez’s ceiling isn’t that high, but his rock bottom can be pretty bad.
Pedro Martinez may give the Phillies an extra 0.5 WAR at best, but he’s unlikely to be the tipping point in the Phillies’ race to make the playoffs. Right now Philadelphia needs Ryan Howard and Chase Utley to right themselves, as the offense has been putrid of late. If the Phillies are going to trade for any starting pitcher, Cliff Lee may be the one guy who can put them above and beyond every team in the National League. They’d be so good I couldn’t imagine anyone ever passing up the opportunity to go Halladay-Lee-Hamels in the starting rotation. Oh, wait…
Pat Andriola is an Analyst at Bloomberg Sports who formerly worked in Major League Baseball's Labor Relations Department. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola@tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat
That last line was brilliant!
Total agreement, love the last line.
Thanks for rubbing it in with that last statement.
My perception is that Hamels has pitched a lot better than what his FIP indicates – and sure enough, his xFIP is 3.72. He’s been pretty unlucky on HR/FB, even though some of his inflated rate is deserved because of that silly cutter.
I agree with the conclusion nonetheless: the Phillies don’t need starting pitching, and certainly not another fifth starter; they need Utley/Howard/Werth to come out of their month long slump.
Zach,
Look over Hamels HR/FB numbers each year. It looks more like a repeatable trait (a bad one for him) than a fluke.
12.5, 12.8, 11.5, 10.7, 16.5
It’s a full third above his career average of 12.1.
Interestingly (to me anyways) Brett Myers was always the posterchild for inflated HR/FB and this year he’s at 7.8.
re: Myers – pitch f/x has him throwing a 2-seamer ~24% of the time (more than the 4-seamer, and obviously a career high), which might explain his suppression of the longball.
A couple years too late, maybe? Hehe.
I hear what others say about a 2-seamer and the large discrepancy between this year and his career rate, but I also think you point out something truly interesting: hr/fb does, quite often, suggest ability more than most take it as when it’s seen the same luck measure as is babip, etc.
(I’m trying to work on a community article on that, or even more on LOB% and their connection to pitch values)
No, they need pitching. Some extra middle relief help maybe, but definitely a starter. And with a depleted farm, Pedro looks like one of the few avenues left.
Getting Oswalt or Lee would be kind of nice, but having somebody marginally better than Durbin in middle relief or marginally better than Grampa Moyer or KK as a starter doesn’t really add much to the team. The whole point is that the half win Pedro gives them over KK, or even less than that for a hypothetical middle reliever, is unlikely to be what puts them over the Braves. But if Utley goes from being a replacement level player (over the last month) to Chase Utley, that’s quite an upgrade and the Phillies don’t even have to do anything.
Yeah, Hamels is pitching well minus his elevated walk rate and unsustainable HR/FB %, a few of those balls not leaving the park and his FIP looks much better.
It’s been said ad nauseum that the Phils were very silly for not keeping Lee and going for the championship now.
their problem isn’t pitching, it’s that almost all of their prolific hitters have been in prolific slumps. Give it a month. The Braves and Phils will be jockeying for 1st place and the Wild Card.
The mets still have gotten very little from bay and will eventually have belt ran in for frenchy. I still don’t thinkw we will make the playoffs but it’s def possible.
Also, I apologize for mistakes I am On a touch screen.
Flags fly forever, but prospects bust. Ruben Amaro didn’t seem to understand that. That, and Lee would bring back some prospects in draft picks in a strong ’11 draft class to compensate for the huge Halladay loss.
Pat. You used to be on aa all the time then ya disappeared for a while. All of a sudden your back on aa a little ANC workin for fg. Were you finishing a degree or something?
Studying for the GMAT. LSAT coming up too, but still will be around regularly. Finish my undergrad next year (May ’11).
Nice article … and, this is kind of funny, I’m currently studying for the LSAT even though I would be the world’s worst tutor. Instead, I love what it tests and, if I can hit 99th %, I’ll get a chance at 50-100 and hour to tutor!
Good luck on those…
Will
If it wasn’t for the Braves the Phils could just wait for the Mets to collapse again down the stretch…
I disagree with the author though on one point, the Phils struggles this year are related to their offense, not their pitching. While having good starters is better than the opposite, the problem with the Phils this year has been their ability to score runs…
In the NL they are in the bottom 6 in Runs Scored. Last year they led the league.
Last year they were in the bottom 6 in Runs Allowed, this year they are right in the middle of the NL. So relative to last year, it is the Offense not carrying that team. Losing Rollins, and the poor years by Utley, Werth, Victorino and an aging Ibanez is more to blame then starting pitching.
Read the last paragraph. That’s exactly what pat said. .5 wins from Pedro over KK won’t make up the difference of having Howard werth and outlay slump.
We’ll he buried the comment a bit…either way, I still think the Phils don’t have to worry about the Mets, they’ll clearly go away again in September…remember up 7.5 with 18 to go!
http://www.Bashthephilliesgraphs.com
Fangraphs has seemed to take a negative tone towards the Phils mostly revolving around Amaro’s boneheaded decision to trade Lee for relatively uninspiring prospects and the equally boneheaded Howard extension that will lock up a lot of payroll for a long time. The fact that Howard has started off very slowly and Lee is having an unbe”lee”vable (yeah i went there) year isn’t making bad front off decisions easier to swallow.
I don’t think the 2010 outlook for the team is bad but I don’t think they look so good in the future. You have to expect some positive regression this year from Utley and Victorino, and a big boost in the offense from getting Rollins back. Ibanez might also pick it up, but you can’t be sure if his years have caught up with him or not.
Don’t forget Ibanez.
They’ve made other boneheaded moves too. Two years to Danys Baez, two years to Ross Gload.
Some people panned the Blanton extension though to me that didn’t look bad at the time.
Have people already forgotten the Howard extension?
Sure that’s TBD, but Raul Ibanez was probably kicking back swapping stories with Howard after that extension.
They heavily backloaded Blanton’s extension (including signing bonus, he makes 3MM this year, and 10MM the next two years). I assume it was to keep the team within payroll limits, which makes the Baez, Gload, and Schneider signings look a little bit ridiculous. And, guaranteeing two extra years of Blanton at above market value isn’t worth the short term savings unless its keeping a really good player in tow (e.g. Cliff Lee) for a playoff run.
They could’ve gotten a similar pitcher for less than 3/24 on the FA market if they didn’t have to excessively backload.
Go read some of the coverage back when Philly made the first Cliff Lee trade. Definitely wasn’t bashing the Phillies there.
Obviously the Phillies offense has struggled, but last year Pedro was their third best starter behind Lee and Happ. He’d be an upgrade over Blanton, Moyer and Kendrick.
Happ has had a slow recovery, and adding a former ace(also future hall of famer)couldn’t hurt any team. Pedro wouldn’t want to come back unless he knows he can still pitch. His K/9 ratio last season was actually good compared to 92 percent of all other pitchers.
I really think Pedro Martinez would be a better reliever or even a closer at this stage. I’m sure most of you won’t agree, however, that is my firm opinion.
I think most of US would agree, the issue is convincing the best starter of all time that he’d be better suited in a less prominent role.
How do the Phillies win year after year when they’re so bad at everything? It’s a real puzzle.
Pedro is the same thing to the Phillies that he was last year: insurance. With Happ’s effectiveness uncertain, the Phils are doing their due dilligence with Pedro. Seems harmless enough.
Right, the Phils have an aging core of no talent players, a bad GM, a poor revenue stream and are in a small market. If it wasn’t for winning the WS 2 years ago and making the WS last year they be equal to the KC royals certainly no better then #6Org that everyone creams about around here
Do you need a tissue?
Poor revenue stream? small market? How many teams in MLB would trade markets with the Phillies? 23 or 24 out of the 30.
They don’t have an aging core? All of their key players are on the wrong side of 30(besides Hamels who’s not the same pitcher and Victorino.) They gave Ryan Howard 25 million dollars a year(compare his stats with Dunn who gets 10 mill a year), and don’t actually fool yourselves that he wouldn’t have as many RBI in a lineup like that. They could have signed Valverde or Wagner to close, but chose to stick it out with Lidge who was grossly overpaid.
Here’s a fun fact: Cliff Lee, Dunn and Wagner all make less than Howard. Good call, Phillies.
When Halladay is getting outdueled by Carl Pavano, there’s a problem.