Are the Phillies as bad as they look?

Spring Training results are meaningless. The statistics mean nothing. There is nothing to see here. At least those are the things we are told. But what if miserable Spring Training results follow a miserable season and do not even look up to snuff to reach the miserable win projections the computers have in store for them in 2014? Maybe they are not so meaningless.

The Phillies of 2013 lost 89 games. The pitching, which just a couple of years ago looked dominant for years, finished fourteenth out of fifteen teams in earned run average. The offense, which was considered worse than the pitching, finished twelfth in OPS. That is hardly a recipe for good things to happen.

And what has the team done to bolster its 2014 chances? They brought in A.J. Burnett, Roberto Hernandez, Marlon Byrd and Bobby Abreu. I don't know about you, but that wouldn't make me slap my knee and say, "Hot dang!" if I was a fan.

Burnett had better years for the Pirates, but he is just a few years from being run out of New York. Roberto Hernandez could not be fixed by the always fixing Tampa Bay Rays last season and was awful. Abreu is old and a wing and a prayer and Marlon Byrd rose from the dead last year for a very good season. Can he repeat it?

Top it off with Cole Hamels still being out of action all spring and shut down again recently and things are not looking good. So when I see a Spring Training record of 2-9-2, I do not see meaningless.

Cliff Lee is still slinging them from the left side and has been very good, but as usual, he has gotten no run support. Roberto Hernandez has looked okay but Burnett and hold-over, Kyle Kendrick have gotten cuffed around. Yes, it is early. It is always early. But it sure is troubling. Without Hamels, there is no fifth starter.

And then you get to the infield. So far this spring, the second basemen, shortstops and third basemen are a combined 25 for 176, a .142 batting average. Chase Utley has three singles and a walk in twenty plate appearances. Jimmy Rollins has two hits so far, one of them a homer. Cody Asche has three extra-base hits. But those are his only hits and he has struck out over 30% of the time. Freddy Galvis is batting .136. Kevin Frandsen is batting .158 and on and on it goes.

And then everyone is looking at the big guy at first base. Will he be platooned this season since he has lost the ability to hit lefties? Ryan Howard is batting .182 with two doubles and no homers and has struck out 37.4% of the time this spring. Meanwhile Darin Ruf is killing the ball. Good luck with that situation, Mr. Ryne Sandberg.

The outfield has been a slightly better story. Well...at least for two thirds of the outfield. Marlon Byrd and John Mayberry, Jr. are hitting well. But Domonic Brown is batting .091 with just two singles and a 30% strikeout rate.

Bobby Abreu was a nice story when first heard, but he is not hitting and looks old. And old describes many parts of the team. Rollins and Utley can still play up the middle, but their best years are behind them. Ryan Howard has not earned his keep in years with injuries and a bat that swings and misses way too often. Byrd will have to prove that despite his age, last year was not a fluke.

The bullpen should be okay, though Jonathan Papelbon has the bad habit of opening his mouth too often. But the overall pitching staff does not look promising at this point.

The projections have the Phillies finishing the same as a year ago with 73 wins and 89 losses. This is now Ryne Sandberg's team, but how much will that make a difference? He doesn't pitch and he doesn't bat. And the team did not get a significant boost when he took over last season.

Spring Training doesn't mean anything. That is what everyone says. And so I often have to caution myself from making too much of what I see. But what I see currently is a team that will be very fortunate to win 73 games. The 2014 Philadelphia Phillies look dreadful and it might be a very long season.

Any last hurrahs for Utley and Howard?

Once upon a time in our not too distant past, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard were a two-man wrecking crew for the Philadelphia Phillies. In 2006, the two combined for 13.7 fWAR as Howard hit 58 homers and Chase Utley was in the second year of a five-year run that might be among the best runs ever for a second baseman. Howard has never matched the incredible numbers he put up in 2006, but he did hit 145 homers combined in 2007, 2008 and 2009. The two were part of a World Series Championship in Philadelphia in 2008 and were beaten by the Yankees in the 2009 World Series. Those were heady times.

Howard slipped in value in 2010 and 2011 and in his last playoff game of 2011, tore his Achilles tendon and only played in 71 games in 2012 finishing with a fWAR value of less than zero. Utley ran into a series of medical problems starting in 2010 and has played 115, 103 and 83 games respectively in the last three seasons. When he played, he still showed some value, but, as you can imagine, that value was about half of what it had been in that incredible five-year run.

So what will 2013 bring for the pair? Are their glory days gone for good? Can they (or should they) play a full season? The good news is that both are playing a lot in this Spring Training. Ryan Howard is killing the ball with four homers and four doubles accounting for half of his eight hits this spring. Utley has a homer and two doubles but is hitting about .200 in his spring games. Is the fact they are playing a full spring schedule a sign that they might just have some of that old magic left in them for the 2013 season? The projections are mixed.

First off, projection systems like PECOTA see the Phillies as a .500 team. And the projections for Utley and Howard do not seem to predict that they will make much of a difference to change the Phillies' chances of improving on that record. Let's look at both players and see if there is any hope for some sort of renaissance season for either or both of them.

Let's start with Ryan Howard. The five projection systems that Fangraphs.com list on Howard's player page do not have hope that Ryan Howard will be any better than he was in 2010 and 2011. The WAR range from the five systems project him anywhere from 0.9 WAR (ZiPS) to 1.8 (Fans34). PECOTA rates him much higher and checking in with Baseball Prospectus his projection there is a somewhat healthier 2.2 WAR projection. Despite the higher projection, PECOTA doesn't see Howard finishing higher than an OPS of .812.

While that is not that bad of an OPS, with Howard's diminished defense and base running, he still doesn't project anywhere close to where he was from 2007 to 2009.

You pretty much have to throw out Howard's 2012 season. The numbers simply do not fit in any category to his career numbers (or even his 2010 and 2011 numbers). His plate discipline went out the window and whereas he used to swing at only 25% of pitches out of the strike zone, that number ballooned to 37% in 2012. His strikeout rate also blew up from its already high 27.8% career percentage to 33.9%. Those numbers should be thrown out the window as a year adjusting to a bad wheel and not really being in any kind of shape to play.

But you cannot dismiss his 2010 and 2011 seasons when he lost some of his plate discipline and went from that aforementioned 25% to the low 30's percent range for swinging at pitches out of the strike zone. He did not strike out more than he had before, but his wOBA or TAv (pick your favorite) was thirty to forty points lower than where he had been as recently as 2009.

The spring he is having is encouraging and perhaps is a sign that he can produce somewhere near where he was in 2009. But the odds seem in better favor of him staying at his 2010 and 2011 levels. He will need to regain some of his plate discipline of the past and make pitchers pitch to him to return to some semblance of his old form.

Oddly, the feeling here is that there is more cause for optimism for Chase Utley than there is for Howard. One of the reasons is that Utley's game is still more complete than Howard's. Despite playing only 83 games in 2012, Utley still garnered eight runs above average in fielding from Baseball-reference.com and 5.5 above average at Fangraphs.com. Plus, Utley still scores high for his base running skills.

The other thing to look at is that Utley's BABIP has been ridiculously low for both 2011 and 2012 at .269 and .261 respectively. If you look at his line drives, for example, his BABIP on line drives in 2012 was .528. That may sound high, but the league average is a hundred points higher than that. His ISO was off about seventy points from his super hero days. But his home run to fly ball percentage rebounded a bit in 2012 from a career low in 2011.

Looking deeper at Utley's numbers, he still maintained his plate discipline and he swung and missed at pitches at a very low 4.7%, the lowest of his career.

Most of the projections for Utley are not encouraging. They have him in the 3.2 to 3.5 WAR(P) range. All of them see his wOBA and TAv off by twenty points from his career average. Until proven otherwise, it is hard to fault these projections. But then again, both B-R and Fangraphs had him at 2.9 and 3.4 respectively for 83 games in 2012. If he plays 135 to 140 games, there is no reason not to think he can represent about a five or six WAR season. 

The key is their continued health. It is encouraging to see them both playing so often this spring. That seems to indicate that they are both healthy...or at least healthier. If they can both obtain 550 to 600 plate appearances, there is a chance that both can rebound nicely to some semblance of what they were from 2009. Howard is 33 and Utley is 34. So neither is ancient by baseball standards. It would be fun to see them both rebound in 2013. It still might not be enough to overcome both the Braves and the Nationals. But it would be fun for baseball.

Five Years Ago

The latest news on Chase Utley is not good. The Philadelphia Phillies' second baseman has hit a "plateau" in his rehab for his chronic knee problem. Utley has already missed 102 games combined over the last two seasons and his once great career seems at a crossroads. 2010 wasn't quite as off for Utley statistically, but last year, his numbers really dipped. His power at the plate seemed sapped and it really cannot give anyone any optimism that Utley can again be the elite second baseman he once was. There is no joy in this for any baseball fan no matter what team you root for. When an elite player has his career and abilities cut short due to chronic injuries, we all suffer. 

It was this sort of mourning moment that prompted a look at Utley's career. Just five years ago, he was one of the best players in the game. Not only was he a hitting machine as a second baseman, he was the best at playing his position. It was noting his several top ten finishes for the MVP Award that prompted this post. The focus was put on 2007. That was just five seasons ago. Five years is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but so much has changed in baseball since then that perusing the MVP finishes for 2007 are astounding. Let's look first at the American League:

1. Alex Rodriguez (New York Yankees) - A-Rod hit 54 homers, drove in 154 and finished with an OPS of 1.067. A-Rod has become a shell of that just five years later.
2. Magglio Ordonez (Detroit Tigers) - Ordonez had 216 hits in 2007 batted .363 with 28 homers and 139 RBIs. Ordonez is now out of baseball.
3. Vladimir Guerrero (Angels) - Guerrero had 186 hits in 2007 and batted .324. He drove in 125 and even posted a .403 on-base percentage. Guerrero could not get a job this off season.
4. David Ortiz (Boston Red Sox) - Ortiz is still cranking.
5. Mike Lowell (Boston Red Sox) - Lowell batted .324 in 2007 with 191 hits. He drove in 120 runs with 21 homers. Lowell has been out of baseball for two seasons now.
6. Jorge Posada (New York Yankees) - 2007 might have been Posada's finest season (at least offensively). He retired this off season.
7. Victor Martinez (Cleveland Indians) - Had a terrific year in 2011 but busted up his knee and will miss 2012. He might not have a job when he returns.
8. Ichiro Suzuki (Seattle Mariners) - Cranked out 234 more hits in 2007. Didn't reach 200 last season for the first time.
9. Carlos Pena (Tampa Bay Devil Rays) - Had a 2007 slash line of .282/.411/.627. Hit 46 homers. He has flirted with the Mendoza Line the last couple of seasons.
10. Curtis Granderson (Detroit Tigers)
11. Derek Jeter (New York Yankees)
12. Grady Sizemore (Cleveland Indians) - Scored 118 runs and hit 24 homers as a lead off batter. Injuries has derailed his career.

And now the National League:

1. Jimmy Rollins (Philadelphia Phillies) - Rollins was the best shortstop in baseball in 2007. Had a two-digit season in doubles, homers and triples. Rollins is not the best shortstop anymore. 
2. Matt Holliday (Colorado Rockies) - Among the best sluggers in the game in 2007. OPS of 1.016. Now he is more known for moths in his ear and injuries at critical times.
3. Prince Fielder (Milwaukee Brewers) - Prince wasn't rich yet. But he was working on it. He is now.
4. David Wright (New York Mets) - Wright has become a tragic figure in New York and Citi Field put a stop to his prodigious numbers. Has not come close to having MVP-consideration numbers for years.
5. Ryan Howard (Philadelphia Phillies) - Bad contract, but lots of RBIs. Blew out his Achilles Ankle in last year's playoffs.
6. Chipper Jones (Atlanta Braves) - Now a part time player on his last gimpy legs.
7. Jake Peavy (San Diego Padres) - After several years of coming back for devastating injuries, there is now talk of making him a relief pitcher. Five years ago, he was one of the best pitchers in baseball.
8. Chase Utley (Philadelphia Phillies) - The player that prompted this exercise.
9. Albert Pujols (St. Louis Cardinals) - Still mashing and should have a big season for the Angels.
10. Hanley Ramirez (Miami Marlins) - Considered at the time the best player in the NL not named Pujols. Looking for a comeback season in 2012 after a couple of way off years.
11. Eric Byrnes (Arizona Diamondbacks) - Eric Byrnes!? Just five years ago...
12. Alfonso Soriano - (Chicago Cubs) - Not much talk of a bad contract just five years ago like there is now.

As you can see, a lot has changed in just five short seasons. Remember how brittle careers are and enjoy today's great players. Who knows what will happen to them five years from now.

Top Ten Position Players of the Past Ten Years

Putting lists together is sort of like trying to run across the highway. Somebody is bound to run you over for your efforts. But lists are fun even if, in the end, people end up poking holes in your logic. For this little exercise, this writer went to Fangraphs and used their handy and amazing leader board to find the top ten position players for the past ten years (2002 through 2011). The criteria used was fWAR. Again, you can poke holes in that logic. But so what? The amazing thing about the list is that all of the players on it are still playing. Yeah, a few of them are getting ancient now, but they are all still with us. Such long term performance signifies greatness in this writer's book. There are a few obvious players on the list and a few that may surprise you.

So here's the list in descending order with a few comments:

1. Albert Pujols: (80.1 fWAR): Ten of Albert's eleven year career are covered by these stats. And they are amazing. Everything about his ten seasons lead the world. In those seasons, he had the highest wOBA, the highest wRC+, the highest ISO, the highest slugging percentage, the highest batting average, the highest on base percentage. He scored the most runs, drove in the most runs, hit the most homers and struck out fewer than any player that follows him on this list. Incredible. But what about the next ten years?
2. Alex Rodriguez: (67.9 fWAR): This is the Pujols Era and everyone else is chicken fodder. But with all the negative press he's received, A-Rod has been an amazing player. And even with a few years of late that were below his standards (he is getting old), he's been just below Albert in most every category.
3. Carlos Beltran (51.2 fWAR): Surprised? You shouldn't be. Not if you have been a steady reader here in the FanDome. Beltran easily earned (as the Fan proved) his Mets contract with a decade of good defense, good base running and consistently good offensive numbers. He is the best centerfielder of his era.
4. Chase Utley (50.6 fWAR): Utley has the fewest games played over the ten years of all the players on this list. But when he has played, he's been amazing. Great fielding metrics, very good base running and good offensive numbers. He might not be the best second baseman in baseball right now, but over the last decade, he has been.
5. Lance Berkman (49.7 fWAR): Another surprise. Tucked away on the Astros for most of his career, few have really noticed how excellent he has been. It took a comeback year for a higher profile Cardinal team to show how really good Lance Berkman is and has been. Berkman has the second highest on base percentage on our list and third best slugging percentage and wOBA. If it wasn't for his positional adjustment (1B), his less than stellar fielding and his leaden base running, Berkman could easily have been third on our list. Even so, he's been far better than most realize.
6. Ichiro Suzuki (46.9 fWAR): Ichiro along with the next two players on our list built his high fWAR based just as much on defense as he has on offense. He's not a great on-base guy and he has shown no power, his ability to blow past 200 hits every season takes somewhat of a hit because of those facts. But according to Fangraphs, Ichiro has saved 104.6 runs with his defense over the past ten years and has been an above average base runner. This writer would put him in the Hall of Fame already.
7. Adrian Beltre (46.7 fWAR): Seattle Mariner fans might choke a bit on this one. But he was much better for them than people thought. And his overall defense for the past ten years make him the best defensive player on our list with 138+ runs saved at third base. His offense had some off seasons (hence the Seattle hate) but he's averaged 28 homers and 88 runs driven in over the ten year period. Hardly shabby. He's been a great, great player.
8. Scott Rolen (46.3 fWAR): Rolen is the third of four third baseman that will make our list. And he is a surprise of sorts to be here. But he has saved 114.5 runs with his defense and his ten year slash line of: .281/.360/.485 is not chopped liver either. It's a shame that injuries have kept him from building more WAR and being the household name that he should be. He's played the third least amount of games of our list of ten players.
9. Chipper Jones (46.2 fWAR): It's a shame that a lot of baseball fans will only remember the last couple of broken down memories of Chipper Jones. His offense might be the third best of our ten players with a ten year slash line of .302/.404/.521. Defense has chipped away a bit of his value and he hasn't been a great runner on the bases. But he's a first ballot HOF guy in this Fan's book.
10. Derek Jeter (45.6 fWAR): Yes, Jeter has given away 48.9 runs on defense over the ten year period. But he's also averaged 189 hits, 100 runs scored, 70 RBI and 20 stolen bases. His base running over the decade was excellent (though he's stumbled the last two years). His offense put him four wins above replacement above Jimmy Rollins over the same time period.

So that's the Fan's list. The compiler will now commence dodging speeding cars on that highway! Happy Boxing Day everyone!

Chase Utley's Alarming 2011

The 2009 World Series is still fresh in the mind of this Fan. The Yankees beat the Phillies, of course, in that series, but Chase Utley was on top of the world. He hit five homers that series and seemed unstoppable. The post season of 2009 was the icing on the cake for Chase Utley who might have been the best player in the majors in 2008 and 2009. He could field like few others at second. He hit for power. He walked a lot. He was a fantastic runner on the bases. He could do it all. Flash forward two years to 2011 and there are serious concerns about what kind of player Chase Utley is now and will be in the coming seasons.

Utley's situation after two injury plagued seasons is at a crossroads. Sure, he was still a valuable player in 2011. In only 103 games played, he still compiled a 3.9 fWAR (2.9 bWAR and 2.9 bWARP on the other two sites) and you could project that out over a full season and still have a terrific player. But you do have to figure durability into valuation equations and Utley has only played 115 games in 2010 and 103 in 2011. He was still very good in the field and on the base paths, which helped add value. But he was far from the hitter he was in 2008 and 2009.

The question that will need to be answered is how much his injuries contributed to his batting decline and if he will bounce back for more healthy campaigns moving forward. With Ryan Howard perhaps missing a large chunk of time in 2012 and the unsure status of free agent, Jimmy Rollins, Utley's return to form is a key to the Phillies this coming season. Sure, the Phillies have that golden rotation. But they do have to score once in a while. Utley in some ways symbolizes the Phillies' offense the past three years. In 2009, when Utley was flying, the Phillies finished second in the National League in OPS. In 2010 they fell to fifth. In 2011, they fell to seventh.

There really wasn't any part of Utley's offense in 2011 that provoked optimism. His ability to take a walk was still very good and led to a .344 OBP, but even that ability was down a bit from his career norms (8.6 percent in 2011 compared to the 9.7 of his career). His ISO of .169 and .166 the past two years respectively do not compare well to his .215 career average or to the .236 and .244 rates he put up in 2008 and 2009. His wOBA was down forty points last season from his career norm. Utley's offense has always shown some favorable home splits but he was still terrific on the road too. His home/road splits in 2011 were much more extreme with a slugging percentage of .508 at home and .343 on the road.

There is one fluky number that really jumps off Utley's Fangraphs page. And this statistic may be totally due to his thumb injury. The statistic is Utley's line drive percentage. Utley for his career has hovered between 18.5 percent and 24.3 percent. His career line drive percentage is excellent at 20.2 percent. So then look at his 2011 number of 12.7 percent and it just makes your jaw drop. For all 2011 players with more than 400 plate appearances, only Vernon Wells had a lower line drive percentage than Chase Utley. That simply has to show that something was vastly wrong with Utley in 2011.

The other glaring number was his home run to fly ball percentage. Utley's career norm in that category is 12.8 percent. That means that 12.8 percent of all the fly balls Utley has hit in his career have gone over the wall. That figure tumbled to 6.7 percent in 2011.

Chase Utley will be 33 years old in December. He's already beyond his peak years. Regression is to be expected, but injuries have sped up that regression in an alarming way. The Phillies are on the hook for $15.3 million for Utley the next two seasons. If Utley can be 90 percent of the player he was in 2008 and 2009, he can certainly earn those dollars. But after his last two seasons and particularly his 2011 season, it will be interesting to see if Utley can pull it together and again take his place as among the elite second basemen in baseball.

Three Stars Return - One Does Well

The Boston Red Sox, Philadelphia Phillies and Atlanta Braves all got a lift tonight as the three teams got star players back from the disabled list. All three teams still alive playoff aspirations and even though two of the players did not perform well (rust was evident), it had to be a big lift in the psyche of those teams.

Martin Prado returned for the Braves and he had a heck of a night. He went three for five with three runs scored and two runs batted in. He hit his 30th double of the year. In fairness to the other two players, Prado hasn't been out nearly as long and it doesn't look like he missed a beat.

Dustin Pedroia, on the other hand, has been out a long, long time. Tonight was his first night back after missing two months with a broken foot. Pedroia went hitless in five at bats and made an error in the field, both events being unusual for him. To the Fan's knowledge, he didn't play at all in the minors to get back or if he did, it wasn't very much. Rust has to be evident. But still, Pedroia is a winner and a force on the field and the Red Sox have to be glad he's back.

Chase Utley returned to the Phillies after an extended stay on the disabled list. He too went hitless on a night that the Phillies pounded the Giants. Utley is one of the brightest stars in the league and probably the best second baseman in baseball. The Phillies have to be glad to see him back. Now all they need his Mr. Howard to return and they will be back to full strength.

It's probably not a coincidence that all three teams won their games on Tuesday night. They probably would have even without the trio. But for three teams fighting like heck to get to the playoffs, three returning stars had to be a sight for sore eyes.

Another Writer Uses the "Throwback" Line

First, let's get out of the way immediately that this post isn't an anti-Chase Utley piece. Utley is one of the best in the game and there is no doubt when hearing from his manager and others that the guy has a great work ethic and focus. No, this piece is about cliches that writers fall into all the time. Check out this Mr. Bodley piece about Utley. One line in particular stands out:

"To me, Utley is a throwback, the type of gritty, no-nonsense player from a forgotten era."

How many times as a sports fan have you heard a line similar to that? It is so hackneyed and so trite and yet writers do that all the time. First, there was no forgotten era. Each era is unique and yet the same. Each era contains players and people that work hard and others that just slide by with as little exertion as possible. There are no such things as throwbacks. Every era has guys that work harder than others.

In his career, Jeff Kent was a "throwback." Before him there were others. There are always no-nonsense guys and nonsense guys. For every Jeff Kent, there is a Moe Drabowski. And Utley is not even alone in being the type of player he is. Let's see, there are Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis of the Red Sox. That's just two off the top of the head.

The truth is that ballplayers today probably work harder at their craft than in bygone eras. Players train year round whereas in the past, before the big money, players would drive milk trucks in the off season (among other jobs). There is more of an emphasis on conditioning than ever before. Doesn't seem like ole' Mickey Mantle spent much time in the weight room.

And yet, every so often, writers will dust off the old throwback line or phrases like "a forgotten era." As a writer, the Fan can sympathize with Mr. Bodley. Perhaps just a story about how hard Utley works or how he never smiles and always has his game face on didn't seem to have enough zip to it on its own. Or perhaps Bodley should have just trusted his readers to understand what he was trying to say without dusting off the old cliches from the Sportswriting 101 class.

The Fan doesn't mean to come down too hard on Mr. Bodley, who happens to be a very good and very respected writer. But let's put a ban on such cliches okay? The same can be said for, "grizzled lefthander," "scrappy shortstop," "fiery manager" and "runs like a gazelle." Sure as shooting though, the Fan's plucky readers will be searching themselves for when the Fan pulls out the old cliches. Well, you should.