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The Differences in the Rogers Centre and Citizens Bank Park Through the Eyes of Roy Halladay

Last night we took a look at how switching to Citizens Bank Park from Safeco Field might have helped Raul Ibanez [link].  This morning we'll take a look at how switching to Citizens Bank Park from the Rogers Centre might hurt Roy Halladay.

First, we'll overlay all of the fly ball outs Halladay induced at the Rogers Centre in 2009 at Citizens Bank Park:

By my count, four fly ball outs in the Rogers Centre would be homers at Citizens Bank Park. In my mind, not a big deal when you consider that Halladay will also be facing fellow pitchers several times a game this year rather than DH's last year.

How about doubles and triples?

Hard to say, but it seems to me that anywhere from two to five extra-base hits in the Rogers Centre might have left the park in Philly.

So, add 'em up and 6 to 11 balls in play at the Rogers Centre may have been home runs in Citzens Bank Park.  But again, as was the case when we discussed Raul Ibanez, the ballpark differences aren't the only variable.  Lineup strengths and road ballparks are obviously unknowns here too.

Same as yesterday though, fun exercise.

Because of Citizens Bank Park, You Got to Yell "RAAAAAAAAUUUULLL!!!" Three More Times than Mariners Fans Would Have

If you're like me, you've wondered how much switching to Citizens Bank Park from Safeco Field in Seattle helped increase Raul Ibanez' offensive totals in 2009 over those in 2008 with the Mariners.

It's hard to say, but courtesy of this wonderful website [have I ever mentioned how much I love the internet?] you can overlay the hits in any major league ball park on top of any other ballpark, and it makes for some interesting speculation.  Take the 12 home runs Raul Ibanez hit in Citizens Bank Park and place them in Safeco Field and Raul loses three dingers.

Now of course, this isn't to say that Citizens Bank Park inflated Ibanez' home run totals by 33%, because this fun little tool doesn't take into account the quality of the pitchers Ibanez faced in the AL versus the NL, nor the size of the ballparks Ibanez in which Ibanez hit homers on the road.

Still, it's a fun exercise.

Two Sides to the J.A. Happ Story

In this morning's Daily News, Phillies beat writer David Murphy does an excellent job of illustrating the good and bad parts of J.A. Happ's game using both advanced statistics and scouting reports.

If you consider yourself a fan of the Phillies and/or baseball, this needs to be the first thing you read this morning.

Great job David, great job.

Proud to Announce...

...The return of the Phillies Annual, published by Maple Street Press.

ORDER NOW!

Edited by Jason Weitzel, with several articles by numerous writers who follow the Phillies closely, including yours truly, I honestly believe this is the best preseason publication available. There's great images from Getty, historical pieces, statistical analysis, player profiles, an interview -- something for everybody.  I'm proud to play a part in it.

The 2010 MSP Phillies Annual is available in Delaware Valley newsstands and bookstores as well as the Maple Street Press website.

Proof that Even Facial Hair Growth Improves in a Contract Year

Via Todd Zolecki, Jayson Werth has arrived in camp:

We Need to Go Back There Again

No, that's not a quote from Jack on Lost...

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Love this story Charlie Manuel told reporters about Ryan Howard {link}:

I talked to Ryan Howard right after Christmas,” Manuel said, “and the first thing he said is, ‘Chuck, we need to go back there again. We let an opportunity slip away. We have to win again in the next couple of years. We have to do that every year.’”

As a baseball fan, that is what you want to hear from the players on the team you root for.

Polly Probably Going to be Busy at Third Base

According to news reports, Placido Polanco has been working out all winter with his neighbor in Florida, Raul "Raaaaaa-uuuuuuul!" Ibanez.  Besides hitting and lifting weights, Polanco has also been fielding grounders at third base.

That's good to hear, because Polly is going to be busy at the hot corner, since many of the Phillies pitchers are either low-strikeout types or high-groundball types, or both.  Couple that with the fact that he hasn't logged any time at third base since 2005 when he played 57 innings there in Philadelphia and Detroit and you have the makings of a possible problem for the Phillies.  

In 2009, Phillies third basemen [quick! name all four players who logged time there in '09! answer below in the comments section] ranked third in the National League in total chances [putouts plus assists plus errors] with 468 [see graphic].  Now, total chances does not include balls that were hit in that direction but were not fielded, so in actuality, there were even more batted balls in the direction of third base.  I couldn't come up with the exact number that were hit at third base, but I did find that of the 6,261 plate appearances by opposing batters, 1,085 were either pulled by a right-handed batter or hit the opposite way by a left-handed batter, or, 17% of all plate appearances.

Again, hard to know the exact number of batted balls were the third basemen's responsibility in 2009, but I think we can all agree, Polly's got his work cut out for him.

If This Baseball Thing Doesn't Work Out, There's Always Esquire and G.Q.

Wow, look at Charlie Manuel:

Apparently, in the offseason, Manuel kept up with the Nutrisystem diet he began during the 2009 season and it's paid off. He's supposedly gone from 286 pounds to 230 pounds [story and picture].

He looks like a new man.  Geez, I hope he still drinks whiskey and drawls.

On Danys Baez

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Yesterday the free-agent-reliever-to-be-named-later was finally announced... Danys Baez.  Talk about a poorly kept secret.

At any rate, while Baez is nothing to get excited about, he is at the same time, something the Phillies need.  With J.C. Romero's and Brad Lidge's health in question to start the season, Scott Eyre and Chan Ho Park presumably out of the picture, and Ryan Madson having more miles on his arm over the last few years than... I don't know what... having a guy like Baez is necessary.

He's not a world-beater by any means, but you can be reasonably certain he'll give you 4.3-or-so ERA, and given the other options at this point, the two-year, $5.25 million deal is probably, as much as I can't believe I'm saying this, worth it.  Antonio Bastardo and Sergio Escalona may make for great bullpen pieces, but right now, you just don't know.

One intersting trend and one troubling trend pop out when you look at Baez' record.  Troubling is that his strikeout rates decline pretty much every year from the year before, to the point where now, it is well below-league average.  On the other hand, what's nice is that for some reason, Baez ground ball rate increased significantly last season while his fly ball rate declined.

Playing with the Phillies his grounders -- if he can replicate that pattern in 2010 -- will work to his favor.  In 2009, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard were a collective +15.4 UZR/150, meaning, they were worth 15.4 runs saved per 150 games played, while the Orioles infielders were roughly +3.9 in UZR/150.

If Baez has truly become a ground ball specialist, maybe the Phillies found a little diamond in the rough.

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Programming note:  For well over a year now, I haven't been able to post with the frequency that I'd like.  The responsibilities of real-life are larger than they have ever been, and are only going to be getting larger as time goes by.  Therefore, I'm going to experiment with a Typepad.com/Delicious.com mashup that will make posting here a little more automated on a daily basis.

What you'll see will be a group of links from the days reading along with a few sentences regaring my take on the subject.  Let me know what you think.

Further Analysis of the of Halladay/Lee Mega-Deal

Two items to ponder.  First and foremost, the more I think about it, the more I like this deal for the Phillies due to one big factor:  the discount Roy Halladay gave to the Phillies.  Think about some of the albatross-like contracts that have been given out to starting pitchers in recent years.

C.C. Sabathia to the Yankees - 7 years, $161 million

Johan Santana extension from the Mets - 6 years, $137.5 million

John Lackey to the Red Sox - 5 years, $82 million

A.J. Burnett to the Yankees - 5 years, $82 million

Barry Zito to the Giants - 7 years, $126 million

Santana and Sabathia are the only two that even come close to being the pitcher Halladay is, yet he signed a 3 year extension worth $60 million and a fourth year vests only if Halladay reaches performance levels similar to what he's done his entire career.

Second, according to this interview between Todd Zolecki of Phillies.com/MLB.com and Benny Looper, current Phillies assistant general manager and former Seattle Mariners front-office official, there is a possibility that the Phillies could convert Phillipe Aumont back into a starter.

If that is the case, then it would take the sting out of losing Kyle Drabek just a little bit.  Should they decide to do so though, Aumont is going to have to come up with a third pitch to compliment the power sinker/power curve combination.  If he can't, the bullpen is his true calling.

Tyson Gillies Footage

The third player the Phillies received from the Mariners in return for Cliff Lee is Tyson Gillies.  Of the three, he's the one I like the most.  He batted .341/.430/.486 at age 20 for the High A High Desert team of the Mariners.  He can fly too, 44 of 63 in stolen base attempts.

High Desert is an extreme hitters park, but you could make the argument that if he was a .341/.430/.486 at High Desert, then maybe his "true" stats would be, oh, .300/.400/.420 in an average park.  I'll take that.

Take a look, he's got a line drive swing and watch how he flies around the bases and hustles to first on a grounder.

He could be the CF/lead-off hitter in the post-Jimmy and Shane-era, not that we are in any hurry for that era to end, by any means.

Juan Carlos Ramirez Footage

Phillipe Aumont is the name that garners the most attention amongst the three prospects the Phillies got from the Mariners in return for Cliff Lee.  Here's footage of J.C. Ramirez, one of the two lesser known players, pitching for the Mariners' High A team.

The beginning of his delivery seems a little lackadaisical to me, but he does seem to work fast. Hard to tell from this, but supposedly he has a big arm.

Phillipe Aumont Footage

From this year's World Baseball Classic, Phillipe Aumont induces a weak liner from David Wright and then strikes out Curtis Granderson and Kevin Youkillis.  Not too shabby.

The pitch that got Wright was a tailing fastball, and the two strikeout pitches were hard curves.

It's All Official

It's hard to get your head around the last 72 hours, no?  Initially, there was euphoria and the idea of picking up Roy Halladay, followed by disappointment at the news of losing Cliff Lee.  If you're not careful, you can end up with a personality disorder over this thing with all the thoughts that run through your head.

You can go back and forth with yourself 14 times while at a traffic light questioning whether or not the series the trades the Phillies have made in recent months have resulted in an improvement in the team or not and, whether or not the Phillies have handled things as best as they could.

The bottom line is that the big league roster is ever so slightly better tonight than it was four or five days ago and the minor league system is slightly weaker.  Other than that, everything is just speculation.  Could the Phillies ownership group turned over the couch cushions and found enough cash to keep both Halladay and Lee?  Maybe, maybe not, there's no way to know.  Could the Phillies have signed either Cliff Lee or Roy Halladay after the 2010 season?  Maybe, maybe not, there's no way to know.

In the end, this trade is just like a lot of trades, only time will tell if it was the right move(s) to make.  I have a hunch though, and that's all it is, that in 2011, we'll be glad Roy Halladay is a Phillie.

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Additional Observations...

...There's a lot of discussion about how if the Phillies hadn't handed Jamie Moyer a 2-year, $13 million deal after the 2008 season, which is now looking like a bad idea, they would have had enough money to keep both Lee and Halladay today.  To that I say, not so fast.

Look, I was someone who thought that signing Moyer to that contract was a bad idea then and nothing changes that.  However, if you take Ruben Amaro Jr. at his word, that he wanted to at least partially replenish the Phillies farm system, then even without Moyer's contract, Lee is the only player the Phillies could realistically trade that would allow for both salary relief and decent prospects in return.  Trading any other player wouldn't do that.

...It's amazing to think that the best pitcher in baseball wanted to come to Philadelphia.  It's not that long ago that such an idea would be absurd.

...Tyson Gillies, the outfield the Phillies obtained from the Mariners in return for Lee is significantly hearing impaired.  If the Phillies need a team-audiologist, similar to the team-chiropractor they have for Cole Hamels, well, lets just say I know a guy.

...Phuture Phillies has a very good analysis of the trade and scouting report on the prospects involved.

...Even without Lee, Halladay and Hamels will form a very formidable 1-2 punch.  I'm very willing to bet money that the Hamels of 2010 will be closer to the one of '08 than '09.

Happy Halladays?!!

A few days ago, Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com wrote that he had a hunch, not proof, that the Phillies were looking to trade for Roy Hallady from the Toronto Blue Jays and in the process involving a third team with which to send Cliff Lee.  At the time, my reaction was something along the lines of, "poppycock".  It sounded like something out of an episode of The League, not real-life baseball.

But now, Twitter is tweeting, bloggers are blogging and rumors are rumoring that the Phillies have sent Cliff Lee to the Seattle Mariners and they've received Roy Halladay from the Blue Jays.  It's not clear yet what other prospects from any team, or moneys for that matter, are also included in the possible three-way deal.

In addition, there's also chatter on the interwebs that Halladay and his agent have checked into a Philadelphia-area hotel.

Wow.

Stay tuned.

[And Ken, you have my deepest apologies.]

On Polanco, Schneider, Castro, and the Need for Bullpen Arms

In recent days, the Phillies have made several roster additions in order to shore up some persistently weak spots in the composition of the team.  One by one...

Photo from fOTOGLIF

...Placido Polanco [3yrs, $18 million]:  There are certainly some pluses and minuses to the addition of Placido Polanco and his Big Bertha-sized noggin [I guarantee you the hat on the table is looking back and thinking, I have to fit on THAT?].  The biggest plus is the flexibility Polanco offers to Charlie Manuel.  Don't forget, Polanco is a Gold Glove second baseman, so on some days he can play second base in place of Chase Utley and, presumably, Greg Dobbs will taking over third base on those days.  I tend to think that if you can get Utley an extra day off in April, May, June and July, then he'll be more like Chase Utley in late-August and September, rather than the tapering performance we've seen in recent years.

Another plus is what Polanco can do for the every day lineup.  With Polanco batting second, Charlie can do some things to hit and run with Jimmy Rollins on base.  The Phillies are built to score runs in bunches via the homer, and there isn't a darn thing wrong with that, however, having Polanco around will help to manufacture runs during those inevitable stretches of power outages that the lineup sometimes goes through.

On the downside, Polanco is 34 years old and the Phillies just gave him a three-year deal.  The Phillies are rapidly aging.  At 29, Shane Victorino will be the youngest every day player for the Phillies in 2010.  You can't wave a wand and get the type of player you want at the age you want, but still, the time is coming when the Phillies have to get younger.

What's more Polanco is showing his age a bit.  For three consecutive seasons, his batting average and OPS have declined.  Where will those levels be in three years at the end of his contract?

For the near term, the Polanco signing is a good one.  You get an overall better player than Pedro Feliz and for only $500,000 more in 2010 than you would have paid for Feliz.  But down the road, you can't help but wonder if the signing will become a bit of an albatross.

Brian Schneider [2 yrs, $2.75 million]: By adding Schneider to the roster, the Phillies will automatically have a 3-game advantage in the win column in 2010.  In previous tours with the Mets and Nationals, the Allentown-area native hit .450 against the Phillies.  OK, OK, those are exaggerations, but still, having him on our side will be a bit of a relief, rather than watching him get the wrong hit at the wrong time while on the other side.

Schneider's signing is interesting in that you have to believe, given his defensive reputation and ability to handle the bat a little bit, he would have been able to get a starting gig for another team if he had held out longer.  Instead, he chose to go with the Phillies and will be Carlos Ruiz' backup.  Having those two as your catching cadre is quite nice.

Juan Castro [1 yr, $750,000]:  Ugh.  By letting Eric Bruntlett go, you figured that the Phillies would try and find the upgrade for the role of "middle-infield backup" with the thinking being that Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley need a bit more rest from time to time than they've received in the past.  However, I'm not sure how Castro fits that bill.  He's probably a better defender than Bruntlett at shortstop [Fangraphs has Castro at a value of 6.1 defensive runs over the course of his career per 150 games at shortstop, 13.5 at second base, while Bruntlett rates at 1.9 and -3.2, respectively], but I'm not convinced that he'll hit any better than Bruntlett.

Sure, you're not going to get a very good player to ride the bench, but still, there's a very good chance this ends up being a lateral move.

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From here on out, expect the Phillies to focus heavily on pitching, in particular the bullpen.  With each passing day, it's less likely that Scott Eyre and Chan Ho Park are less likely to return, which leaves Ryan Madson, Brad Lidge, Chad Durbin and JC Romero as your back-end.  Those last three experienced long bouts of injury and/or ineffectiveness in 2009 and Madson has been used excessively over the last few years.  As a matter of fact, if he's smart, Scott Sheridan, the Phillies trainer, has a roll of duct tape reserved for re-attaching Madson's arm.

BREAKING: The Phillies Have a New Third Baseman

Photo from fOTOGLIF

From an email sent out by the Phillies:

Filling a void at third base for the departed Pedro Feliz, the Phillies have signed free agent infielder Placido Polanco to a three-year, $18 million deal.

Polanco hit .285 with 10 home runs and 72 RBIs in 618 at-bats last season with Detroit. He hit .341 in 2007 and .307 in '08. Among all active Major League players, Polanco has the second-best career strikeout/plate appearance ratio at 15.39.

Polanco has batted above .300 in three of his last five seasons and won the Rawlings Gold Glove Award in 2007 and 2009. As a third baseman, Polanco has a .982 fielding percentage in 322 career games (266 starts).

Watch this space for further analysis.