Earlier in the week, we focused on the top two spots in the Phillies order. Specifically, the revelation that using Jimmy Rollins in the leadoff spot over Placido Polanco would only cost the team about 1.18 baserunners over the course of a season. The commenters pointed out, rightly, that this analysis ignored the slugging aspect of the two batters’ repertoires. Questions were also raised about the lefty-lefty tandem at the heart of the order. So, let’s dive right in and try to get this right by the numbers: A little moron, the Phillies’ batting order.

Remembering back to the LOOGY wonder that was Javier Lopez in the playoffs last year, you might over-rate the “problem” of batting lefties Chase Utley and Ryan Howard back-to-back. Lopez only pitched 4 1/3 innings, but his four strikeouts were memorable, and it seemed that he shut the duo down. But this wasn’t really a year-long problem. Yes, Howard has a nasty platoon split (.424 wOBA vs righties, .324 vs lefties), but Utley doesn’t. His work versus righties (.382 wOBA) is basically indistinguishable from his work against southpaws (.390 wOBA). Opposing managers can bring out their LOOGY for both guys at their own peril.

Read the rest of this entry »

Judging from this ESPNinsider piece by Buster Olney, it’s about time for a yearly piece of rosterbation when it comes to the Phillies’ lineup. With such a veteran lineup, the question really boils down to the top two spots. The three veterans that could fill those two roles are all above-average, strong players, but that doesn’t mean that the team can’t get it wrong. In fact, it’s possible they’ve been getting it wrong for a while now.

Much of this discussion revolves around the decline of Jimmy Rollins, but not all. He’s been a negative with the bat the last two years, and his sub-par wOBAs came in about half a season last year. The rule of recency might make us over-rate how far his athleticism has fallen, but if we focus on his career rates, we see that he’s always been below average when it comes to getting on base (.328 career OBP, average is about .330 most years; 7.4% career walk rate, average is about 8.5% most years).

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m nothing if not predictable. Why change a horse in midstream, the saying goes.

Roy Halladay, October 6, 2010

Roy Halladay, October 21, 2010

Yup, more strike zone plots from Brooks Baseball. And Carson’s out here pushing the limits in his previews. But these two game plots are pretty different, eh? Then let me blow you away with yet another strike zone plot, eh?

Looks like Halladay was having a little trouble locating low-and-away to left-handers, no? Or, at least low-and-away in general. In any case, it’s a nice way to show, in pictures, what it looks like to win “without your best stuff,” as the game stories most likely went today. Halladay grit and grissioned his way through the start while Tim Lincecum was the valiant loser, mostly because of some poor defense behind him.

Lincecum is not left-handed, and that probably helped lefties Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and the recently unbenched Raul Ibanez to a stunning 3-for-12 in game five. That group, along with Domonic Brown, is now a combined 10-for-51 with 7 walks and 3 extra-base hits, which sounds bad except the whole team is now batting .208. Perhaps the struggles of the left-handed batter from Philadelphia were overstated.

Raul Ibanez, though, that guy shook off his benching in a strong way. One of his two hits led to the first run of the game and started that third inning that featured all the little league defense a big-league audience could handle. Placido Polanco was the WPA champ on the offensive side for singling in the third run in the third inning (+8.5%), but somehow Ibanez sticks out.

It was a nice respite. Now, because of the Roy Oswalt Decision, the Phillies still face an uphill climb in game six.

The weekend took your faithful Phillie correspondents to places we didn’t expect, and none of those places featured wifi and a comfy moment to kick back and review the first two games of the NLCS. Better late than never. The Phillies and Giants split the weekend, which wasn’t great for the maroon marauders because the series tilted lightly in the Giants’ favor with those results – teams that win one of two games on the road in a seven-game MLB series win the series 56.2% of the time.

Game One was just one of those games, it seems. Seven innings, eight hits, seven strikeouts, no walks and more ground balls than fly balls doesn’t seem like a line that would normally produce four earned runs, but that’s what happened to Roy Halladay Saturday night. The difference between excellent and a -8.8% WPA night for the Doc could have been summed up in two fly balls from Cody Ross that ended up in the seats. This same Cody Ross had exactly average power this year (.145 ISO) and had gone -for-16 against Halladay in his career. The same Cody Ross that was Cody Ross the Marlin until Brian Sabean briefly made him Randy Myers by supposedly claiming him just to block the Padres. Then the Giants then realized that he was better than Jose Guillen, at least in the field, so that he could become the Cody Ross, Giant, that the Bay Area now knows and loves. Either way, you read that fateful name backward as Grant did on the McCovey Chronicles, and you get “ssoR y doC,” which is about all that can be said to Halladay, who pitched well enough to win.

It did seem like the Phillie offense could have put together a five spot – Tim Lincecum wasn’t at his best either. He walked more (three), and gave up equal numbers of fly balls and ground balls, but he also struck out eight – one of which was Ryan Howard with two batters on in a tie game in the third inning (worth 6.6% in WPA alone). Though the two teams had the same amount of baserunners, and the Phillies showed a better slugging percentage as a team, it was the Giants that strung together the hits in the big moments.

The following may seem random – and most likely was – but the big lineup change between games one and two may have had a little bit to do with the different outcomes. As Rob Neyer noted before the game Sunday, Charlie Manuel reversed Placido Polanco and Chase Utley in the batting order so that the heart of the order did not include two straight lefties in Utley and Howard.

It’s a little strange to see Polanco and his lack of power batting third, and it may feel like separating two lefties isn’t that big of a deal, but just look at what the Giants did in the two games for your pudding-based proof. In Game One, Javier Lopez brought his lefty sidearm release to the mound to get Utley to ground out and Howard to strike out before leaving in a double switch that would have made Dusty Baker proud. In Game Two, Bruce Bochy brought Ramon Ramirez out to pitch to the righty Shane Victorino, but after Victorino sacrificed, he was faced with the choice of walking the lefty Utley to keep Ramirez in the game and pitch to Polanco, or burning Lopez on Utley, bringing in Sergio Romo to pitch to Polanco, and then summoning Jeremy Affeldt to get Howard. That is a lot of relievers, but with the off-day coming today, the second move-heavy approach is probably what Bochy should have done. Instead, this is what happened:

Bottom 7th: Philadelphia
– R. Oswalt singled to shallow center
– R. Ramirez relieved J. Sanchez
– S. Victorino sacrificed to third, R. Oswalt to second
– C. Utley intentionally walked
– P. Polanco singled to shallow center, R. Oswalt scored, C. Utley to second
– J. Affeldt relieved R. Ramirez
– C. Utley stole third, P. Polanco stole second
– R. Howard struck out swinging
– J. Werth intentionally walked
– P. Sandoval at third
– S. Casilla relieved J. Affeldt
– J. Rollins doubled to deep center, C. Utley, P. Polanco and J. Werth scored
– R. Ibanez lined out to third

4 runs, 3 hits, 0 errors
San Francisco 1, Philadelphia 6

Don’t underestimate the difference the new lineup made, as it obviously made Bochy’s life difficult in the seventh inning Sunday night (and then he went and made some dubious decisions of his own). Now it’s clear that he’ll have to use both of his lefties to get through the heart of the order late in game three, provided his starter once again gets the job done against the new-look lineup.