Comments on: Digging Deeper: Breaking down the Phillies offense with unique (and simple) metrics

By: For the birds: Phils fall flat against Blue Jays, welcome Orioles

For the birds: Phils fall flat against Blue Jays, welcome Orioles — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:22:04 +0000

[...] much as I enjoyed uncovered those cool stats about the Phillies, it is now going to drive me absolutely crazy watching the miss curve ball after curve ball. Maybe [...]

By: Drew

Drew — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:44:49 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhWsxqd_bis

I just found the video for it.

By: Drew

Drew — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:41:29 +0000

Pete,
I saw an interview with George W Bush who was asked if he was starting a baseball team which hitter and batter he would take. He said he would choose Utley as the hitter to and Halladay as the pitcher. I didn’t agree with almost anything Bush did in office but I have to agree with those two players. I would probably choose the same.

Anyone else want to give their opinions on that question?

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:24:52 +0000

Just realized I posted that in the wrong place. Meant to put it in the series preview of the Jays.

By: bski

bski — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:40:30 +0000

It’s not you, Adam. Once in a while we will hammer someone the first time we face him. Most of the time, however, we are flummoxed by the unfamiliar.

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:04:28 +0000

Ugh, that was ugly. The Sportscenter replay last night showed all the strike outs and just about all were on curve balls. Those were some ugly swings. Unreal.

I know Bastardo had a good start, but is it just me or do the Phillies suck at hitting unfamiliar pitching, but when they throw out an unfamiliar pitchers, they often get rocked?

By: bski

bski — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:47:22 +0000

“As a team, we can’t hit curve balls. In fact, we are the worst team in baseball against the curve. Could this be the secret as to why some so-so pitchers can dominate us?”—-Pete.

Uh………maybe. How about last night against Richmond, for example.
From the Daily News:

“Richmond did throw well, utilizing a curveball that routinely kept hitters off balance, including one early in the game that dropped out of the zone and caused Raul Ibanez to huff in frustration as he held on for dear life to a swing that already had gone around.”

“He did a pretty good job of slowing his breaking ball,” said second baseman Chase Utley, who went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. “He threw strikes. He was making it look just good enough to swing at.”

The numbers are what they are for a reason. Last night simply exemplified them and corroborated Pete’s observation.

By: bski

bski — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:55:29 +0000

Drolz.……“it’s amazing to see how things have changed since the days when drunk execs would scribble lineups on cocktail napkins.”

Yeah, now we have drunk sabermetricians spitting spreadsheets of detailed info out of their laptops and e-mailing lineups from their Blackberries.

By: bski

bski — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:52:03 +0000

Thanks for all the hard work, Pete. Great stuff. The Phils had better be using all the data that is available in order to keep up with the rest of the league, if not trying to create new metrics themselves to try and get ahead.

By: Pete

Pete — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:15:46 +0000

they have all these stats by team – I can do a chart with the league average and the Phillies rank… except for VORP, RC/27 and EqBRR