How Did They Do That?

by dajafi on Nov 5, 2009 11:02 PM EST Comment 10 comments

Not quite 24 hours after the Phillies saw their season come to an end one day and two wins before we hoped it would, my disappointment at the conclusion is starting to give way to something like amazement that they got as close as they did. Of arguably the six most important Phillies pitchers from the 2008 championship run--starters Cole Hamels, Brett Myers, and Jamie Moyer, and relievers Brad Lidge, Ryan Madson, and J.C. Romero--a stunning five saw their contributions plummet in the season that just ended.

By contrast, consider the last NL team to win back-to-back pennants: the Atlanta Braves of the mid-1990s. The world champion 1995 Braves boasted a rotation led by future Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, who combined for 47 wins and 601 innings that season. Their bullpen was anchored by closer Mark Wohlers (204 ERA+) and setup men Greg McMichael (153) and Brad Clontz (117). The '96 Braves, who also lost their repeat bid to the Yankees in six games, had a pitching staff led by... Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, Wohlers, McMichael and Clontz. The three starters combined for 54 wins and an amazing 724 innings; Wohlers (ERA+ 145) and McMichael (136) were strong again, though Clontz (77) was much less effective. To sum up, the top five pitchers powered the Atlanta pennant-winners in both years.

Which brings us to the 2008-2009 Phillies.

In '08, Hamels, Myers and Moyer combined for 40 wins and 613.2 innings in the regular season (plus 6 wins and 65.2 innings through the three rounds of the playoffs). Lidge pitched to a superlative ERA+ of 225; Madson (144) and Romero (160) were great as well, and came up even bigger in the playoffs. A year later, Hamels went from "Darth Vader in spikes," as the Braves broadcasters (in perhaps the sole contribution to humankind) once dubbed him, to a young pitcher struggling with command and composure. Myers looked like he might challenge Bert Blyleven's single season home run record through a middling month and a half, then got hurt. Moyer pitched his way out of the rotation, remade himself as a surprisingly effective long reliever, then suffered a season-ending injury in September. They combined for 26 wins and 426.1 innings during the season, and Hamels added another victory in October. Lidge... well, you know about Lidge: his 2009 campaign was arguably the worst any closer has ever suffered through. His ERA+ was *59*. That's not a misprint. Romero missed the first fifty games of the season with a suspension for taking illegal supplements, briefly returned and was middling, then got hurt and missed the last month plus the playoffs. Only Madson stood tall again, with an ERA+ of 131. They were the anti-Braves.

That the Phils came within two wins of raising another championship banner anyway has to be credited mostly to GM Ruben Amaro Jr., whose late July trade for Cliff Lee and bargain-price signing of Pedro Martinez saved the rotation and who gave the bullpen a crucial boost in the person of Chan Ho Park. Manager Charlie Manuel and pitching coach Rich Dubee, who got great work from J.A. Happ and small but important contributions from the likes of Antonio Bastardo, Rodrigo Lopez, Tyler Walker and Kyle Kendrick over the course of the year, deserve kudos as well.

It's unclear what, if anything, this means for the future. Certainly there's every reason to hope Hamels will return to form, and Lidge and Romero seem decent bets to rebound from their miserable 2009 campaigns even if neither recaptures the heights of '08. Myers is a free agent who might or might not be back; Moyer will turn 47 this month and will be attempting to rebound from a fairly severe injury. But if you'd tried to sell the story eight months ago that the 2009 Phils would see five of their top six pitchers from the championship run essentially melt down, yet still win the pennant and take the World Series to six games, you likely would have had few believers.

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Well-done

An excellent analysis. The one pitcher you skipped who played an important part both years was Joe Blanton, who was a similar addition to Pedro as far as wins in 2008, and was reliable in 2009 (12-8, 21 QS). I don’t think he was more important than the addition of Pedro and Cliff Lee but he was a steady performer who did his part better than a lot of the other pitchers from 2008.
If you go into the offense as well it would be hard to find any hitter except maybe Werth who really had a career year in 2009. Howard put up his usual big numbers but nothing more than he’s done before. Ibanez certainly made a big difference in the first three months of the season, but didn’t do that much more than Pat Burrell used to do. The other regulars either had sub-par years or average ones at best. So, my overall impression is similar to yours. Considering that few players had especially outstanding seasons and that a few had serious drop-offs, getting within two games of another championship does seem remarkable.

by phillyinportland on Nov 6, 2009 3:03 AM EST reply actions

Blanton

If you think about it, Pedro 2009 was analogous to Blanton 2008. Joe wasn’t as good after coming on in midseason, I think because he was slightly injured, but he did provide needed stability as Kendrick began to crater. No doubt he was the team’s most consistent starter this year.

The thing about the Phillies hitters is that while only Werth arguably had a career year—and even there I’m not sure it was a fluke rather than a talented late bloomer finally putting it all together; his BABIP was .304, which is pretty close to average (and 20 points lower than in his ‘08)—they’ve all been mostly healthy, at least as far as not missing time, for two years now. Ibanez was out for a month, Ruiz a few weeks here and there, and that was it. I can buy this as a skill (as Will Carroll at BP argues) to some extent, but I’m not convinced we’ll always be as lucky as the whole lineup turns into thirty-somethings.

by dajafi on Nov 6, 2009 11:43 AM EST up reply actions

I think that's right

I’m not sure Ibanez ever really fully recovered from his injury. And they have to worry about Victorino and Utley wearing down.

Still, I think they’re in a much better position, depth-wise, than this time last year. They have Francisco on the team and Taylor close(ish). They’ll need to find a good utility infielder to make it less than malpractice to rest Utley a little more. And it’d be nice to have a right-handed hitter who we can use against lefties late in the game or spell Howard from time to time.

by phila on Nov 6, 2009 12:17 PM EST up reply actions

Ibanez did recover from his injuries

Ibanez has a Sportman’s Hernia and it was diagnosised when he pulled his groin. A sportman’s hernia is not a true hernia in that it doesn’t invovle a tear in the abdominal wall but abdominal muscle often in the pubic region or the oblique. The latter usually occurs wear the oblique attaches to the the rib cage. Jamie Moyer also suffered the same injury and I wouldn’t be suprised to if Condrey and J.A. Happ suffered the same fate….Michael Taylor just went down with one as well..

Utley is a poster child for overtraining….the first to the ballpark work ethic lauded by so many is really overtraining, in particular it over taxes the adrenal system as baseball is a speed/technical sport. These two aspects of athletics that are the most taxing to the adrendal system, that is they put greater demands on the neurochemistry involved in “fight or flight” actions of the sympathetic nervous system.

by j reed on Nov 7, 2009 12:27 AM EST up reply actions

WHOOPS...I Meant Ibanez didn't recover from his injuries

by j reed on Nov 7, 2009 12:29 AM EST up reply actions

Utley

My sense is that he spends a lot of his “extra” time studying film and refining technique. I guess in theory this could lead to a “paralysis by analysis” problem, but I don’t believe it has in fact. The other point is that if he was playing through an injury, as many suspected, it makes sense he’d come in early to get treatment.

That said, I think the week off between the end of the NLCS and the start of the Series helped him enormously. The goal for next year should be for Utley to make 145-150 starts, rather than the 155-plus that’s been his norm. How well he ages will be one of the biggest factors in seeing how far the Phillies can stretch this great run.

by dajafi on Nov 7, 2009 1:53 PM EST up reply actions

I'm in complete agreement especially paragraph two.

If the Phillies had 3 good bench players the workload for the 7 infield and outfield starters would be around
135 games. Most catchers already are in the 100 to 120 game range. If the three bench players were an
outfielder, middle infielder and corner infielder the breakdown would be something like this.
The MIF and CIF start two games each week, one for each position, and they would start 52 games.
The outfielder starts three games each week, again one each position, and he would start 74 games.
This would give you a rested starting team and valuable games and AB’s for your reserves.
The trick is finding the right compliment of players and also getting a manager to buy into this philosophy.

by SmilingJPhilsPhan on Nov 7, 2009 9:17 PM EST up reply actions

That seems to me an unworkable ideal—nobody has multiple reserves so good that you want them all to make multiple starts each week, and there’s probably an argument that so much shuffling in and out of the lineup could be disruptive—but there has to be a happy medium.

Let’s take Francisco as the example, since he’s the one reserve on hand who’s been a starter and whom we know is adequately solid at least. To me, you probably want him starting about 5-7 games a month next year, assuming we have the same three regular OFs: maybe 2-3 for Ibanez, 2-3 for Victorino, and 1-2 for Werth. Then the fifth OF—let’s say Mayberry—starts maybe twice a month, once in each corner. You’ve got them on the bench the rest of the time.

I’m probably happy to have all seven of my non-catcher regulars start 145-150 games, thinking about it. Maybe Howard, given both his importance in the lineup, the improvement he’s shown in other aspects of the game and the fact that he just isn’t a guy who seems to wear down (think about the great August-September stretches he always seems to deliver), is closer to 155.

by dajafi on Nov 8, 2009 1:18 AM EST up reply actions

Surprised

I’m surprised Lidge’s ERA+ was so high. I would have guessed 29, not 59. I think phillyinportland is right — the team got very solid work from Joe Blanton, which was a key part of it. And Hamels wasn’t the Hamels of 2008, but he was league average, with an ERA+ of 99.

by David S. Cohen on Nov 6, 2009 10:01 AM EST reply actions