Top-heavy lineup a little better than average

An overview of team offense.

In preparing tonight’s pregame post for the Phillies matchup with Arizona, I wanted to find out why the Phillies have had so much trouble against sinkerball pitchers like Brandon Webb, tonight’s starter for the D-Backs.

The search took me to ESPN.com sortable stats page to research an area I haven’t discussed much this season: Team batting.

The Phillies lineup has a reputation for dysfunction, believe to be a group that strikes out too much, delivers poor situational hitting and impatient at bats, does not have a proper leadoff presence and is generally too slow on the bases. Their strengths are believed to include on-base percentage and power.

Here are a few numbers compiled from ESPN’s team batting page, as applied to groundball pitchers. Some will prove conventional wisdom correct, others will debunk a few myths.

Why do the Phillies seem to struggle against sinkerball pitchers?
The two noteworthy examples this season are Aaron Cook for Colorado and Derek Lowe of the Dodgers. These are terrific pitchers, and in the case of both, specifically Colorado, they are backed by good defenders. (In hindsight, the Phillies should have done everything in their power to sign Lowe instead of Jon Lieber from last season's FA crop.)

Cook and Lowe have managed to make easy work of the Phillies this season because the Phillies, frankly, hit a lot of ground balls anyway. They have the fourth-highest groundball to flyball ratio in the National League, about 1.34 ground balls to every flyball. David Bell and Bobby Abreu are hitting about half of their balls on the ground. Abraham Nunez is hitting grounders at a rate of 65 percent.

Are the Phillies too impatient at the plate?
ESPN says the Phillies are the fifth-most patient team in the NL with an average of 3.89 pitches per plate appearance, but I would argue that it is entirely do to three hitters: Bobby Abreu, Pat Burrell and Chase Utley. The rest are impatient to varying degrees.

Against sinkerball pitchers, it generally pays to be a little more patient, but the Phillies have a number of first-pitch, fastball hitters, including Mike Lieberthal and Aaron Rowand. Lieberthal sees the fewest pitches, only 3.02 per plate appearance, while Rowand, in his brief time with the Phils, sees 3.23. Jimmy Rollins sees 3.45 pitches per at bat, far fewer than most leadoff hitters.

Why does the Phillies offense tend to get in a funk?
Two reasons.

First reason: Reading quotes from players and the manager, left-hand pitching is a major boogyman for the Phillies, and has thrown even good hitters like Bobby Abreu out of rhythm this season. The Phillies have played in 45 games where a left-hander was used, tied for second in the National League. They create far fewer runs against left-handers, about 4.56 runs for every 27 outs, fourth worst in the NL.

From a team standpoint, there couldn’t have been a more frustrating stretch than that series loss to the left-handers of lowly Pittsburgh. After that, they faced a nice stretch of mostly right-handed pitching, including Atlanta and San Francisco, scored more runs and went on a winning streak.

The second reason is immeasurable, but has no doubt effected the offense: They always play from behind because starting pitching is so poor. They have outscored only one team this season: Washington. That's desperation baseball. The 2006 Phillies pull more hitters and pitchers out of ballgames more than any team I can remember.

Chase Utley in yesterday’s paper: "When you're always trying to come back, it makes it more difficult. But when you're in those situations, you have to do whatever it takes to get on base, just to put some runs across the board."

Does the black hole still exist?
More than ever. Measuring runs created by the 7-8-9 hitters of the Phillies:

7-hitter: 25.2 RC (10th in NL)
8-hitter: 14.0 RC (Last in NL)
9-hitter: 0.5 RC (Last in NL)

To make matters worse, the black hole has sucked an additional entity into the darkness:

1-hitter: 29.6 RC (11th in NL)

In general, how does the Phillies offense rank?
The solid five-man show of Utley, Abreu, Burrell, Howard and Rowand makes them a little better than average, a reflection of their overall record. They are one of the best teams in the league in terms of isolated power (SLG - AVG), rank 6th in OPS, and will create 5.05 runs a game, which is 7th in the NL.

However, they are the most top-heavy lineup in baseball, and opposing pitchers are getting through hitters 7-through-1 with steady ease.

Comments

[Carson Book]

Well written Weitzel. I believed most of that to be true already, especially the infamous Black Hole. David Bell really isn't good, our catchers have been bad (the worst actually), and our pitchers can't pitch or hit...damn! This is a serious problem!

[dajafi]

Great work Jason. Two thoughts:

1) Given how much the team struggles already against lefties, that anyone would seriously consider trading Burrell, who hits them consistently well, is just nuts.

2) As yesterday's win showed again, this team desperately needs Jimmy Rollins to hit. Putting aside the whole question or whether or not he should be hitting leadoff, the offense just looks so much better when he's reaching base.

[pawnking]

Lieby was actually hitting pretty well until his injury. Hopefully his return will help things a little bit, as the other two weren't ready for prime time. Also, the departure of Alex Gonzolez should help. But it's absolutely true that Jimmy has been the one most under performing his abilities this year. If he has a second half like last year's, the Phils will be able to produce runs in buckets.

JRoll, not the most valuable member of the offense, but the most volatile, and therefore the biggest difference maker. It seems he always is either great or awful.

[Adam]

Agreed with dajafi. Rollins is the most important piece of the puzzle. With the way Utley especially is hitting, and with Rollins speed, every time Rollins gets on base the Phillies have a great scoring opportunity. When the people doing the getting on base part of the equation are lower in the lineup, the Black Hole is left to do its best to drive runs in and create something.

I wonder how long Rollins will keep pulling the wool over our eyes--every year, he finished amazingly and makes us believe, and then april and may come round and he hits .250 and doesn't get on base. I don't think we can live with that cycle for however long we have him locked up for, and I think we'll need to sign a real leadoff hitter and move him down in the lineup eventually.

(Also, sorry if I repeat things people have said recently. I've been away for the last 3 weeks.)

[The other Adam]

Adam, its good to have you back - I was about to start posting under your name.

This was an interesting post. I was sort of surprised to see the 7 & 8 holes still hitting so poorly. If felt like Bell and Liberthal were doing much better this year as compared to last year.

Assuming Abreu doesn't move to leadoff I think we're stuck with Jimmy. I can't believe he had that hitting streak, talk about lighting in a bottle. Even considering all this, I think the biggest issue remains the pitching, although uneven the offense is doing its part.

Tonight should be interesting. I doubt Lidle can duel like Martinez did during Webb's last outing, but you have to figure Webb is going to lay a stinker one of these days, don't you?

[Ed]

Well, I think Lieberthal HAS been doing better, but while he was out, Fasano and Ruiz really stunk it up.

I'm actually surprised that the Phils are a groundball hitting team... just anecdotally, I always get frustrated at their penchant at hitting lazy fly balls at inopportune times, even on pitches that seem hittable. I feel like if we had more line drive hitters like Utley and Abreu, we'd be more productive with men in scoring position.

But perhaps the numbers don't back me up on that.

[Willard Preacher]

This is one of those games where we have to rely on the Law of Averages, rather than momentum. Surely, after a sweep of the Braves and with Webb's scoreless inning streak, the D'backs have to be due for a letdown, right? Just trying to rationalize how we can have a chance when all the momentum is against us. At least we have Lidle pitching (joking).

I'm with everyone else, hoping J'Roll will come around. Even Vin Scully said that his current statistics are far below his potential. Again, Law of Averages says he's due to blow up soon. Although, I'm starting to wish we'd capitalized on that hitting streak in the off-season and shipped him out of town. Seeing Lofton over the weekend actually reminded me that it wasn't always this bad at the top of the lineup.

[jwatso]

When is everyone going to accept that Rollins is what he is. An average offensive player with above average defense skills. The Phillies will be much better when they stop hoping for this guy to turn it around.

[jheisler2]

The Phillies need to learn from the Mets to learn how to become a contender. King Dave didn't become a sales king over night and Lil Timmy didn't become a Timism overnight either, a championship team takes time to build.

[Carson Book]

J-Roll is so inconsistent that he becomes consistent in his inconsistency (hope you followed that). The man gets homerun happy sometimes, but lacks homerun power. He likes to hit the weak popups every now and then. Basically, the dude is streaky. People have being saying this, "he is what he is" for quite some time now, and it's the truth. He's never going to "figure it out" for an entire season, it's just not him. With that said, I like Rollins, just not as a leadoff hitter.

[jwatso]

Look jheisler2 a timism is as a timism does. The Mets can't be a contender until they actually contend. I'll be King Dave would agree with that.

[tpatrick]

what is today's date? does anyone know why msn isn't working. i will be back later, time to cold call mullica hill.

-epiphany fly

[RickSchuBlues]

Man, I love that old-style 'P'. I have a hat with that insignia on it, which I'll be wearing tonight to the game. I wish I hadn't picked the one in which Webb was due to pitch; against Cory Lidle, it seems like a mismatch and my two-year winning streak at B.O.B./Chase Field seems destined to end tonight. Webb pitched eight innings of shutout ball against them there last year, at a time when they were pretty hot overall, and needless to say he's been the best pitcher in the league to date this year. Hopefully the lefty-heavy lineup will produce just enough to keep them in the game. A full report from Phoenix (108 degrees, oy vey) is forthcoming.

[G. Mark]

Anyone uup for Woody's tonight? I'm buying.

[zach]

If you're buying, I'm in.

What's Woody's?

[yt]

Well Zach, imagine a strip club with no strippers. Then imagine all the guys are meticulously groomed and well dressed, and the sound track includes "YMCA" and "Raining Men."

Have fun.

[John Salmon]

Nice breakdown.

I do think, though, that their problem with left-handed pitching is a bit of a fluke. Utley and Howard have made great strides against them this year, and I'd be surprised to see the problem persist. Maybe the numbers are arefelction of the quality of the lefties in the NL, rather than the Phils' ability to hit them.

J-Roll, still, needs to be moved out of leadoff. If they decide there's no other place in the order to put him, they should trade him. There are internal options for leadoff, such as Victy (or anyone with a respectable OBP), so all they need is a decent-fielding SS in return. The only way for this team to do anything this year is to plug the leadoff hole.