***The Official Philadelphia Phillies 2012 Thread***

The Juggler wrote:

The 81 wrote:

NY fans are quickly getting on my most annoying sports fan list. :P

cliff lee agrees with you.

haha

you cats finally won 1 ..yes 1 ws and your heads blew up


win a few more then you can talk shit

Johnny Abruzzo wrote:

Worst Defense in Baseball??? Damn.

In the piece I wrote last week about Cliff Lee's struggles, I pointed out that a lot of his problems had to do with the Phillies' poor defense. This led one commenter to write:

"This article seems to forget that the Phillies are the team with the second least amount of errors in baseball. Poor defense? No. Defensive runs saved is a very flawed statistic."

The commenter is correct about the errors. The Philadelphia Phillies have made the third-fewest errors and have the highest fielding percentage in the baseball this season. By this logic, you might be fooled into thinking they're a great defensive team behind their superb pitching staff. But there is so much more to good defense than not making errors.

Errors provide useful information. When the official scorer assigns an error, we know that the fielder has gotten to the ball and either bobbled it, made a bad throw or committed some other miscue on a play that would normally be made successfully. The fielder screwed up, and he should be penalized for it; hence, he is charged with an error.

However, there are well-documented issues with using errors to evaluate fielders. For starters, there is often room for disagreement in the official scorer's ruling. Additionally, errors don't appropriately account for a fielder's range; if a shortstop is a step slow and doesn't reach a ground ball through the hole, he's not likely to be charged with an error, although other shortstops might have made the play.

Many analysts have attempted to accommodate these concerns. For example, Bill James decided to focus on the plays a fielder does make, rather than the plays he does not. Along these lines, he proposed the original range factor formula, which simply counts the number of assists and putouts per nine innings. Players with great range tend to reach more balls and have a higher range factor than others at their position.

While an improvement over Fielding Percentage, range factor still has a few complicating factors. For instance, a shortstop behind a ground-ball pitcher would have more opportunities than a fly-ball pitcher.

Phillies pitchers have induced a ton of ground balls this year. The league batting average on ground balls is .227. The Phillies have allowed a .248 average on grounders, the third-worst in baseball behind the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Chicago Cubs. This is a strong indication that Philadelphia infielders are not getting to that many ground balls, and you can't make an error on a ball you don't get to.

Additionally, ground balls are not all equal. Obviously, a hard-hit ball in the hole is a much tougher play than a routine three-hopper right at the shortstop. Additionally, as discussed recently in an article about batting average on balls in play, ground-ball specialists like Trevor Cahill tend to allow a lower batting average than other pitchers on their ground balls. This unevenness is not guaranteed to even out over the course of the season.

That's why Baseball Info Solutions' video scouts plot the location and velocity (hard, medium or soft) of each ground ball over the course of the season. With this information, we can approximate the difficulty of each ball in play (not just ground balls) for each fielder. That's exactly what John Dewan did with the plus/minus system.

Given the location and velocity of the ground balls allowed by the Phillies' pitching staff year, a lineup of average infielders would have made about 627 plays. The Phillies' infield actually made 587 plays, a 40-play difference. Converting 40 outs into hits makes a difference of about 30 runs. Despite their low error total, the Phillies' infield has cost the pitching staff about 40 outs and 30 runs this year. Check out the chart below, which shows the teams with the biggest gap between their infield's ranking in fielding percentage and plus/minus.

Major differences
The following five teams have the largest discrepancy between their infield rankings for fielding percentage and defensive runs saved. The Phillies come up first in one and last in the other.

Team Fielding Pct Rank Plus/Minus Rank
Phillies 0.988 1 -40 30
Rangers 0.980 27 12 3
Athletics 0.980 28 -14 12
Dodgers 0.987 6 -24 21
Mets 0.986 8 -22 19

The Phillies are an excellent team that will very likely win the National League East again. But that doesn't mean they have a good infield defense. In fact, despite what fielding percentage might tell you, they have a poor one.

oh boy. defensive statistics puh-leeeze. absolute hogwash. way too many factors not taken into play for defensive statistics to have any relevance. 30 runs....jeez we'd be about 65-5 with 30 less runs given up. remember half of analysis is anal.

neilybabes86 wrote:

last time i checked the florida marlins have more titles in recent times doh

good one. they've got the same number of championships as the phils and yankees in the last ten years.

all that matters is now though. hopefully colon gets back on the mound for you guys soon.

The Juggler wrote:

neilybabes86 wrote:

last time i checked the florida marlins have more titles in recent times doh

good one. they've got the same number of championships as the phils and yankees in the last ten years.

all that matters is now though. hopefully colon gets back on the mound for you guys soon.

This whole argument is so dumb. Yes, hopefully Colon does get back on the mound because he has better numbers than Cliff Lee this year and is getting paid $1 million. I wanted Lee on the Yankees as much as the next guy but maybe not paying a 37 year old guy $25 million isn't the worst thing in the world.

You can say all you want about Colon and Lee and all that but the fact is, the Yankees have more resources than anyone in the game and the expectation every year is to win the world series, an expectation you are now seeing for the first time in your life. The Yankees will make moves that no other team in baseball can make and will be just fine, so talk all your shit now because in the long run I am pretty certain that the Yanks will be celebrating many more championships than the Phillies will.

The 81 wrote:

the yankee's aren't as smart as they once were...

should have let Jeter, Arod & the catcher walk

Can't let Jeter walk, bad contract but it won't hurt them and how do you let someone in the third year of their contract walk? Jorge has been worth his contract and has been hitting pretty damn well of late. The Arod contract blows.

The Juggler wrote:

neilybabes86 wrote:

last time i checked the florida marlins have more titles in recent times doh

good one. they've got the same number of championships as the phils and yankees in the last ten years.

all that matters is now though. hopefully colon gets back on the mound for you guys soon.

and both teams have more than the phils in the last 14 years ...


you need to win a few more to talk the talk

Johnny Abruzzo wrote:

neilybabes86 wrote:

haha

you cats finally won 1 ..yes 1 ws and your heads blew up

win a few more then you can talk shit

I love this from the guy who still drones on about one Stanley Cup from 17 years ago.

and yet the flyers haven't won 35 years....go figure

Johnny Abruzzo wrote:

neilybabes86 wrote:

haha

you cats finally won 1 ..yes 1 ws and your heads blew up

win a few more then you can talk shit

I love this from the guy who still drones on about one Stanley Cup from 17 years ago.

well played...

The 81 wrote:

Johnny Abruzzo wrote:

neilybabes86 wrote:

haha

you cats finally won 1 ..yes 1 ws and your heads blew up

win a few more then you can talk shit

I love this from the guy who still drones on about one Stanley Cup from 17 years ago.

well played...

35 years bud...fact

and to answer your jeter question that disappered...... ticket sales and merchandise alone are a few hundred million....people come to see jeter ....and they spend money

so the yanks have no problem overpaying him becasue he alone quadruples the money

The Juggler wrote:

wow...the yanks fans are a lil' chipper this morning eh? 15 million to a 42 year old derek jeter is much smarter.



look---even cliff lee's laughing at you guys this morning

Jesus, the Jeter contract is not a good contract but it isn't going to hurt the team either. He isn't going to finish his career hitting leadoff or playing shortstop and he isn't going to hinder the team from winning. There is no alternate shortstop for the Yankees right now and when there is, he will move off short. The Jeter contract is irrelevant. If we want to talk about bad Yankees contracts, talk to me about Arod and Soriano, not Jeter, it's pointless.