Phillies vs LHP/RHP

by MattS on Dec 14, 2008 1:35 AM EST Comment 7 comments

With this week's free agent signing of left-handed Raul Ibanez to reaplce right-handed Pat Burrell, a lot is being made of the Phillies being "too left handed". The backlash that has probably already started to develop is the following statistic about the Phillies in 2008:

OPS vs RHP: .757

OPS vs LHP: .801.

The natural conclusion that one wants to jump to is that the Phillies hit LHP better than RHP and that this is not a problem. Let's preemptively debunk this argument before it gains any steam. The reason the statistic above is misleading is that so many of the Phillies' plate appearances against LHP in 2008 were by hitters with naturally higher OPS overall, even if they were worse against LHP than RHP, and so many of their plate appearances against RHP in 2008 were by hitters with naturally lower OPS, even if they were worse against RHP than LHP. If you weight the average OPS of Phillies hitters (by plate appearance) against each type of pitcher and you get the following statistic:

average overall OPS of hitters who batted against RHP: .767

averall overall OPS of hitters who batted against LHP: .776

***I made a mistake in my initial calculations, causing me to severely overstate this effect. I just realized it and corrected it. It still explains a decent portion of this, but not as much as initially indicated.***

Essentially, the entire "platoon advantage" is due to the Phillies elite LHB hitters batted more often against LHP than anyone else. The following table contains four statistics: the percent of plate appearances that hitter has against LHP, the percent of the team's total plate appearances against RHP that the specific hitter recieved, the percent of the team's total plate appearances against LHP that the specific hitter received, and the hitter's career OPS against RHP less his career OPS against LHP.

	% PA vs L	% tm PA vs R	% tm PA vs L	career OPS diff
Rollins	28.3	10.3	9.4	-0.027
Werth	35.5	7.2	9.0	-0.165
Utley	38.2	10.1	14.3	0.057
Howard	37.9	10.0	14.0	0.279
Burrell	29.8	10.5	10.2	-0.131
Victorino	31.3	9.9	10.4	-0.081
Feliz	32.8	7.2	8.0	-0.054
Ruiz	21.7	6.7	4.3	0.050
Coste	30.2	4.9	4.9	-0.108
Jenkins	7.8	6.9	1.3	0.159
Dobbs	4.2	5.3	0.5	0.187
Bruntlett	34.9	3.6	4.4	-0.158

Notice that Howard and Utley both faced LHP about 38% of the time, and the team overall faced LHP 30% of the time. That number sounds large, but if you don't adjust for leverage, managing to get them more typical at-bats versus lefties and righties would probably only net about 5 runs or so. Of course, both assumptions are ridiculous and it is far more complicated to determine the net affect on winning ballgames. Now that Ibanez is signed, Charlie Manuel will have to be creative to ensure that Utley, Howard, and Ibanez do not get too many plate appearances against southpaws. Doing this kind of analysis with other teams and other managers would provide interesting insight into differentiating managers from each other, and quantitatively evaluating manager skill.

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Great work as always, Matt.

Assuming there are no more major additions to the lineup, Charlie’s gonna have to break out of his old habits to break up the lefties when Utley comes back. Utley 2nd, Werth 3rd? Can Werth be relied on?

http://www.thegoodphight.com
WHY CAN'T US?

by WholeCamels on Dec 14, 2008 12:26 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I think we’ll have to rely on Werth — Amaro’s pretty much left us with no other choice.

I was thinking about lineups versus LHP and RHP, and I tentatively came up with the following. Now, if we were really honest, we’d realize that Howard’s anemic .224/.294/.451 line against LHP means he should hit a lot lower than cleanup against southpaw starters, but we know that’s not happening.

Lineup v. RHP
Rollins
Victorino
Utley
Howard
Werth
Ibanez
Feliz
Ruiz
(pitcher)

Lineup v. RHP
Rollins
Utley
Werth
Howard
Victorino
Ibanez
Feliz
Ruiz

The bottom line is that Ibanez has to — HAS TO — hit 6th. Kevin Goldstein from BP has said that it’s probably stupid of the Phils to bat Utley and Howard back-to-back because it makes them too LOOGY-vulnerable; but even if you go Utley/Howard at 3/4 against RHP, you simply can’t triple up on LHB. It just makes it too easy for the Pedro Felicianos of the world.

by PhillyFriar on Dec 14, 2008 11:00 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

You are right, but my guess is that against lefties Cholly will bat Ibanez 5th and Victorino 6th, given his history of NOT splitting the lefties for whatever reason. As long as he splits Howard and Utley with Werth I would consider it a win…he’s not stupid enough to go Utley, Howard, Ibanez 3,4,5 is he?

by FuquaManuel on Dec 14, 2008 11:29 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Matt. What about the fact that Werth, Victorino, Coste, Ruiz, Feliz, Burrell and even Bruntlett are much better vs. lefties than righties? Rollins wasn’t last season but he normally is better vs. lefties.

Howard is bad vs. lefties although last year he was much worse than he had been. Utley is pretty good vs. lefties. Spare parts Jenkins, Dobbs and Stairs are platoon guys and are mostly used that way.

Most of last year’s club hit lefties better than righties. Only Howard and the platoon types were bad vs. lefties.

This club isn’t really left handed heavy in thier lineup. They might be vulnerable to LOOGY late inning strategy. But then again, they won a few big games last season when the opposing manager butcheredthe whole using the LOOGY strategy. And the LOOGYs of this world at times walk the guy they’re supposed to get out. Then where are you?

I hope the Phils are smart enough to get a Matt Murton type guy who can hit lefties really well to pinch hit for Ibanez late in games and improve the LF defense at the same time. Simply inserting Werth, a lefty killing machine in amongst Utley, Howard and Ibanez goes far to defeating the LOOGY strategy in my view.

This Paulino guy they just picked up has a .915 OPS vs. lefties in his career. Mayberry, the Golson replacement — his one offensive strength is the ability to hit lefty pitching.

by smitty99 on Dec 14, 2008 6:35 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

“I hope the Phils are smart enough to get a Matt Murton type guy who can hit lefties really well to pinch hit for Ibanez late in games and improve the LF defense at the same time.”

Agreed. Keeping Stairs and Jenkins on the roster behind Ibanez is redundant (especially with Dobbs as the other primary PH), and as much as I love Stairs, I can’t help but wonder if he’ll be cut, as he is owed just $1 million. If Manuel intends to caddy Ibanez (though Amaro’s apparently has am high opinion of Ibanez’s defense…sigh), and to hit him near the middle of the order, strong right handed PHs/defensive replacements are a MUST so we don’t keep getting Bruntlett hitting in key late game situations like we seemed to all the time last year.

by bugbear on Dec 14, 2008 7:49 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

OOPS

I made a stupid error in my spreadsheet which I caught and just fixed up. Sorry about the overstatement. The point still holds, but is much weaker. I think smitty’s point above about the strong platoon splits of the other players is important. Might be really helpful to split up Utley and Howard. The only other issue is Howard’s distinct advantage at hitting with runners on— so he really ought to bat after someone with high OBP.

by MattS on Dec 14, 2008 7:01 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Well I’ve calmed down a tiny bit since Friday about all this. Now, I still think it was a stupid move. But there’s a difference between the obviousness of a bad decision and the magnitude of a bad decision. Obviously wrong decisions like this one are the most frustrating. But it isn’t a franchise killer – as someone said in another thread, it’s not as if we just signed Andruw Jones. Our farm system will be hurt a bit, we’ll lose flexibility, we’ll be more lefthanded, and so forth, and all of it for no good reason. But we will still have a pretty decent-hitting leftfielder in our lineup next year, so we have that going for us at least.

by taco pal on Dec 14, 2008 7:22 PM EST reply actions 0 recs