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.

The Confusing Value of Ryan Howard

Ryan Howard has come to be a kind of crucible for player-value arguments. Simply look at the comment section of his player page on Fangraphs, for example, to see the wide variety of views on what Ryan Howard is worth to the Philadelphia Phillies. The most accepted view is that Ryan Howard isn't worth the money he is being paid by the Phillies. And Fangraphs' value system seems to favor that view. According to that site, Howard's play was worth $5.3 million last year and with a hundred games in the books this year, his value isn't that much better at $4.5 million.

Of course, the value-added calculations are based on the overall game of the player and includes batting, fielding and base running, the position the player plays, etc. Ryan Howard will never add value with his base running and his fielding has never been rated highly. But then you see a list on Baseball-reference.com and see that Howard leads the majors in go-ahead plate appearances this season. In other words, during Howard's plate appearances, his team went ahead 25 times or one more than Adrian Gonzalez, a player that is universally seen as having a great season.

So what do we make of Ryan Howard? Runs batted in is a statistic that has truly fallen out of fashion in the value-based community. And yet, it's the RBIs that non-numbers baseball people point to as Howard's great value to his team. This is Howard's eighth season and he's already driven in 823 runs and leads the NL with 75 RBIs this year. So who do we believe? Is Ryan Howard the greatest run producer since Lou Gehrig, or is he simply an overrated and overpaid player? Howard's current WAR of 1.0 is so far down the list of leaders that he's hard to find on the list. Yet, twenty-five times, his plate appearance put the Phillies in the lead, more than anyone else in baseball. Confusing, isn't it?

This author used Howard as an example of players who refuse to beat the defensive shift that is deployed against him. There was a statement made on ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball last night that hitting into the shift costs Howard and others some fifteen points on their batting averages. And indeed, Howard is only batting .246 this season and his OBP is off as well from previous seasons. Oh, he's walking just as much, but his batting average is dragging that statistic down.

But let's get back to Howard's ability to plate runs for his team. Over the years, 19 percent of all base runners on base when Ryan Howard had a plate appearance scored as a result of that plate appearance. That is the same percentage as Albert Pujols has in his career. The major league average over that time span has been 15 percent. But Howard's percentage of runners scored from second with no outs is below league average for his career.

What about leverage? Leverage is a calculation that rates plate appearances by how important they are to the game in progress. Close games in the late innings are examples of a high leverage situations. How does Howard fare there?  These are the slash lines for Howard's career in leverage situations:

• High leverage: .300/.393/.617
• Medium leverage: .275/.378/.564
• Low leverage: .262/.356/.525

That seems to show Howard's ability to get it done when his team needs him to do so. Ryan Howard's clutch rating by Fangraphs is fourth in the majors this season. And Howard is 13th in the majors in WPA (win probability added). That's important hitting.

After looking at these statistics and after doing a bunch of reading on what others say about Ryan Howard, this author is just as confused at how valuable a player Ryan Howard is. Depending on what you look at, he's either one of the most important cogs on a contending team or he is one of the most overpaid players in baseball based on his overall value in dollars compared to his contract. So let this post stand as an open ended question. The arguments are always interesting.

Beat the Shift!

Early in the game yesterday between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays in St. Pete, Derek Jeter had just walked in the first inning. The next batter facing James Shields was Mark Teixeira batting left-handed. As David Cone correctly pointed out in Thursday's telecast on YES, Teixeira is much more of a pull hitter as a left-hand batter as he is from the right side. Joe Maddon knows this, of course, and employed the shift against Teixeira. Obliviously or stubbornly, Teixeira hit right into the shift and the inning went nowhere. Why? Why don't hitters challenge the shift?

Is it a manly thing? Is it a pride thing where the batter says he isn't going to change his approach simply because of the way the defense is lined up? Later in the game, a man was again on base for the Yankees with Nick Swisher at the plate. A modified shift was employed this time with the shortstop playing just barely on his side of the diamond. The Rays were going to cut off anything right up the middle. Swisher hit it right at the shortstop who made the play. Swisher looked shocked and dismayed at the shortstop's placement. Didn't he see it before he swung at anything?

Defense has become an adjustment to the batter in just the same way a pitcher adjusts to the batter based on scouting reports and batted ball data. The object of the hitter is to adjust to the fielding alignment just as much as to the pitcher. Many experts have made the case that sophisticated fielding alignments have more to do with the decreased runs scored in the past two seasons than any other factor. But at some point, doesn't the batter have to adjust just like the batter has to adjust to the pitcher?

If you ask Joe Maddon, he would probably smile and say that he would be more than happy to have Teixeira hit a little ground ball to third instead of hitting a homer. And that is probably why Teixeira doesn't hit it that way. But that is disingenuous on both parts. Maddon knows that Teixeira would rather hit a homer than dink it down the third base line so there is no risk to the move at all. If there was risk, Maddon wouldn't take it!

But let's look at this logically. There is only a one in fourteen chance that Teixeira will hit a homer but there is a two in five chance he'll hit a ground ball. So what is going to happen more often?  And what of the game situation and win probability? In a game where James Shields and C.C. Sabathia are going to be putting up a lot of zeroes, doesn't it make more sense to push a little grounder to the open space to add base runners? Win probability would increase because of the extra base runner in a game where base runners are at a premium. Plus, Jeter would be at third in scoring position or more if the ball rolled all the way down the line.

Whatever happened to "hit 'em where they ain't"? Batters take batting practice every day. Don't they practice hitting the ball the other way? Isn't it part of the hitter's job to adjust? This isn't to just pick on Teixeira and Swisher. Shifts are employed on a lot of batters. They do it to Adam Dunn and David Ortiz and Ryan Howard and a lot of batters. They do it because it works more often than it doesn't.

If this writer was honest, an admission is necessary here that shifts are hated about as much as multiple pitching changes in an inning and intentional walks. All three would be outlawed if this Fan was in charge of the game. But that's pie in the sky thinking because it isn't going to happen. And since it isn't, then batters and their coaches and managers have to make it stop. They have to beat the shift.

If you were to ask Joe Girardi and managers of those other sluggers, they would probably tell you that they don't want to take their hitters out of their game. That's a bunch of baloney. Because ultimately it becomes why Teixeira and Howard have become .240 batters with OBP in the .350s instead of closer to .400 like they used to have. Pitchers and defenses have adjusted and the batters haven't.

Beat the shift, for crying out loud. Beat it enough times and teams will stop using it. Get those extra base runners and you will score more runs than hoping for that one in fourteen chance a homer will be hit. And the funny thing is, when you are looking to put the ball in play where the fielders aren't, just as many homers will be hit because pitchers still make mistakes. Adrian Gonzalez and Albert Pujols do it every day. They use all fields and their success shows that it is the right way to play.

Stubbornly hitting into the shift is stupid. Not only is it stupid, it detracts from a team's chances of scoring and winning. Make the adjustments and put the defense and the pitching on the defensive. That's the ticket.

Ryan Howard's Contract Absurdity Lingers

The Washington Nationals are certainly getting skewered on their seven year contract given Jayson Werth. Several general managers around baseball were said to be angered and shouting. The Mets' new GM, Sandy Alderson, tongue-and-cheeked about the deficit not coming down in Washington. The deal brought out the litany of other crazy contracts over the years. The A-Rod, Zito, Wells and Park contracts were brought up like they always are. Joe Posnanski coined a new word called, "Texpensive," named in honor of the Mark Teixeira contract. But this writer still finds it absurd that Ryan Howard's contract with Philadelphia is never mentioned. Can someone tell this Fan why that is?

Howard's contract, which keeps him on the Phillies payroll until 2016 (or when he will be 36) pays Howard $18 million in 2011 and $25 million a year from 2012 to 2016. The contract includes an option for 2017 which will cost the Phillies another $10 even if they decide to buy him out. How come this contract is never mentioned? This contract alone will affect future negotiations with anyone who wants Prince Fielder and it certainly will impact any Albert Pujols negotiation. It is among the top five in overly excessive contracts among all active players.

Ryan Howard has been a wonderful slugger for the Phillies. This Fan is not quibbling about that. His four year run from 2006 through 2009 was amazing. But even they did not come near being worth the kind of money that Howard will be making. His numbers fell off a bit in 2010. He hit less homers (31). His RBIs came down to All Star quality (108). His walk rate was down. And according to Fangraphs, his year was worth roughly $8 million. Thats a full $10 million below what he was paid. His high leverage stats were still very good, but not nearly as good as in previous seasons. If 2010 is his new norm, then this contract looks even worse.

Ryan Howard will be paid $143 million from 2011 through 2016. Baseball Prospectus estimates that Howard will be worth $65.14 million during that period. And keep in mind that BP over estimated his 2010 season by nearly 200%. All that money will be tied up with an aging, strikeout-prone, poor fielding first baseman that the Phillies will not be able to move anywhere else.

So, yeah, Jayson Werth's contract may be a bit of a stretch. And a lot of those other deals casually mentioned as a result are costly. But Howard's deal probably cost the Phillies their right fielder and almost certainly will not live up to the performance of the great slugger over the next six years. Pretty soon Cliff Lee will join Howard in the top five of excessive and regrettable contracts. Fans of the Rangers and Yankees should each be hoping the other team wins the sweepstakes. And when Lee gets his deal, this Fan would like to see Howard's contract named among the foolish. Howard will hit a lot of homers for the next six years, but not nearly enough to pay his freight.

Are the Phillies Nuts?

You've probably heard the story today that Ryan Howard signed a five year extension that guarantees him A-Rod kind of money starting in 2012. If you haven't, the story is here. Simply put, the Phillies vastly overpaid a very skilled and accomplished slugger. Now that sounds sort of oxymoronic. Maybe. But more likely, the move was simply moronic.

Perhaps Ruben Amaro Jr., and his cohorts don't do their homework. Perhaps they don't value the valuation people out there. Perhaps they don't understand history, or perhaps they think they can beat history. The odds are that they will lose money on this deal. Or maybe they know something we don't and figure the National League will have the designated hitter by the time Howard gets too old to play the field effectively.

Just about every valuation site around puts Howard's value at about $20 million last year. He was terrific last year. And so if he is worth $20 million in the prime of his career, how is he going to be worth $25 million when he is 37 years old? He won't. It's not like he's at a skill position on the field and can move to first when he is older. He's already there. And though he has improved, he isn't a great first baseman and he won't be when he's 34, 35, 36 and 37.

Plus his size and body structure will work against him. It's happened to every player of his type before. There is about an eight year window of peak performance and then that body starts to get too slow to get itself around on a fastball or around the bases. It happened to Cecil Fielder. It happened to Richie Sexton. It's happening to David Ortiz. It will happen to Ryan Howard too.

Here are the dirty projections. According to Baseball Prospectus, Howard should be worth in total over the extension period (2012 - 2017) about $54.5 million. That means that the Phillies overpaid Howard by a staggering $200 million over the life of the extension. Wow. And they will pay Howard no less than $10 million in 2018 even if they buy him out.

The Fan understands that the Phillies are drawing really well and are making a lot of money. The Fan also understands the need for the Phillies to keep a good thing going and keep their core players. But they already had Howard tied up through the end of next year. By then he'll be 32 and you could get a gauge on what kind of player he was going to continue to be. Or you let him walk and sign another big slugger to take his place, preferably a younger one.

This move flies in the face of all logic. Howard's agent said it really well in the linked article from Yahoo Sports: "This is a very good contract for him..." Well yeah, more power to him. If they offered him that much money, good for him for signing. But geez Louise, this is a bad deal for the Phillies, if not for the next three years, for sure in the years after that.

Bashing Buster Olney?

The other day, Buster Olney over at ESPN.com (and their television station) "broke" a story that the St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies were having "internal discussions" concerning swapping the two players in a trade. Since then, Mr. Olney has been under fire for reporting a supposed "non-story." His blog on Tuesday continued to defend the story and its commenters were particularly vicious in response. If you are an "Insider" at ESPN.com* then click this link to read the blog entry.

*Doing the Posnanski asterisk thing: The "Insider" moniker is killer marketing-speak. Everyone wants to be an insider right? The marketing is brilliant because it speaks to the desire many of us have to be part of the "in" crowd. Brilliant.

Anyway, here is the Fan's take on the whole thing. The Fan would bet that many of the comments were from bloggers who really envy the job Mr. Olney (or any of his cohorts) have. Imagine getting paid to write about baseball and be given the carte blanche to talk to people in the game that we love s much! Of course we all want that job. But Mr. Olney has it. So when any crack appears in his writing, the wannabe crowd goes wild with abandon.

Not that this Fan is immune to envy, and not that this space hasn't devoted any time to Mr. Olney's writing in the past, but a blogger should put any kind of pride off to the side when evaluating such things. Otherwise, we come off as unprofessional when it is our goal to be professional alternatives to pay sites that report the news.

It has been noted in this space that Mr. Olney can be a bit sanctimonious. His dictums on steroid users are notorious. He is a black and white guy from Vermont who has a bit of Norman Rockwell in his psyche. The Fan gets that. Unfortunately, there is little in this world that is black and white. Gray abounds everywhere. Judge for example, when many folks in this country are struggling like crazy, the former Cheers actress is getting paid for yet another reality program because she again put on a bunch of weight. That's pretty gray right there.

And the steroids issue will never be a black and white subject. It will be debated until the cows come home (Egads! A cliche!). The only black and white seems to be that many journalists like Mr. Olney will preach against the people known to have used and the fans will continue to not care a whit or at most, will give the known users a pass because so many used that will never get caught.

But this issue at hand is a tricky one. What exactly is news? Is a bunch of golfers speculating on when Tiger Woods will return to the PGA Tour news or is it only news when an official announcement is made that he is returning at the Masters? Depends on your interest threshold, the Fan imagines.

So is it news that internally, the Cardinals and the Phillies "thinktanked" such a deal? Or is it news only when the trade actually happens? Mr. Olney explained that it is news because it was indeed talked about and that the internal talks included such big stars. That would not be the case on the thousands of other internal discussions such as would Ceasar Izturis be a better fit for a team than Macir Izturis. Fair enough. Though some would seem interested in the smallest detail of such internal workings. The Fan would be interested in how those things worked.

So the bashing of Mr. Olney seems a bit unfair as his argument is fair enough. The discussions did take place and they involved two of the biggest names in the sport. Some of the more polite comments also have a point that needless pain and indigestion can occur when speculation becomes the news. Got that point too.

Mr. Olney's blog is entertaining and useful for the links he includes (maybe someday the Fan might see his name in there) and he is an earnest and thoughtful scribe. That is appreciated almost as much as him actually giving us something to read on the weekends when all other writers take them off (why exactly? - it's not like it's overly taxing work, no?). This Fan is glad Mr. Olney is around, warts and all.

Ryan Howard Versus Prince Fielder Revisited

Heading into Friday night's games, Ryan Howard and Prince Fielder have posted the following statistics:

Player A: 32 homers, .599 Slugging Percentage, 1.019 OPS. .995 Fielding Percentage, 9.37 RF/9.
Player B: 32 homers, .553 Slugging Percentage, .903 OPS, .991 Fielding Percentage, 8.98 RF/9.

Which player is Howard and which one is Fielder? You may be surprised that Player A is Prince Fielder. The Fan wrote about these two way back in February and it was fun comparing the two. The comparison covered the previous three years and Howard beat Fielder in almost every category over those three years.

But the Fan also pointed out that Howard was 29 and Fielder 24 and showed that PECOTA predicted that Howard would have Fielder beat for one more year then Fielder would eclipse the Phillies' slugger. It appears that the prediction was off by a year.

Don't get the Fan wrong. Ryan Howard is a force and a tremendous slugger in the middle of the Phillies' line up. His batting average is up from a year ago (.268 from .251) as is his On Base Percentage. But his walk ratio is down from 11.5% of his Plate Appearances to 10% this year. On the positive side, his strikeout to At Bat ratio is down from almost 33% to 28%.

But Fielder is having the far better year. His average is up 31 points (.307). His On Base Percentage is way up (.416) and his Slugging Percentage you already know. His walk to Plate Appearance average is 14.7% which is up from 12.1% from last year. And at the moment, he's much cheaper than Howard.

It looks like the lumbering first base award goes to Fielder who has eclipsed the big man in Philadelphia.