Phillies Stat Notes: The Amazing Ben Revere

Contents

The intent of the Stat Notes posts is to show how the Phillies are doing in ways that aren't easily found elsewhere.

• NL Standings and team stats
• Phillies Team Stats vs. 2013 and vs. the Nationals
• Individual Stats: Hitters and Pitchers
  • How does each hitter contribute?
  • The Amazing Ben Revere
    
  • Walks: now you see 'em, now you don't
• Upcoming Milestones

NL Standings and Team Stats

Every team in the NL East is at .500 or better, and the Phils are in last place but only 3.5 games behind Atlanta.

The NL East has been the best division in the NL thus far.

Also, in interleague play, the NL holds a 24-17 advantage (.585 W%) through the first month. After gradually closing the gap with the AL in recent years, this may finally be the season the NL comes out on top.

Phillies Team Stats vs. 2013, and vs. the Nationals

Hitting

After a promising start, the Phillies' walk rate has plummeted:

first 13 games: 10.3% - first in the NL (next highest: 9.1%)
last 13 games: 4.8% - last in the NL (next lowest: 6.2%)

Over those last 13 games, they're still 8th in batting average, but 14th in OBP, 14th in ISO, and 14th in OPS (thank you, Padres, in each case).

Scoring has suffered accordingly, although maybe not as much as one would have thought, so there may be some timing luck keeping the recent stretch from being even worse:

first 13: 4.77 (4th)
last 13: 3.46 (11th)

So who is walking less? Almost everyone. Chooch is down slightly, but still walking at a high rate:

Phillies hitters at Fangraphs
Nationals hitters at Fangraphs

The Nationals are near the top of the NL in most offensive categories:

Pitching and Defense

Based on the advanced stats, there may actually be a team that fields worse than the Phillies...

Phillies pitchers at Fangraphs
Nationals pitchers at Fangraphs

Individual Stats

Hitters

While Utley has cooled off considerably (.582 OPS over the last two weeks), Ruiz and (lately) Byrd and have picked up the slack:

The previous Stat Notes included a breakdown of each player's OPS, showing how much is explained by 1) a player's batting average, 2) their walks (and HBPs), and finally 3) their isolated power (i.e. the difference between slugging percentage and batting average).

Below is the same thing, but instead of OPS, this breaks down the more accurate and comprehensive hitting stat wOBA:

Compared to the OPS graph, breaking out wOBA this way puts more weight on walks, but in the case of Ben Revere, for example, that is still a tiny portion of his hitting contribution.

The Amazing Ben Revere

Revere at the moment owns these distinctions:

- Leads the NL in singles with 28
- Is last in the NL in ISO at .021 (92nd out of 92 qualifying players)
- Is the only qualifying batter without a double so far
- Is the only qualifying batter with less than 3 extra base hits (he has 1, a triple)
- He is also 90th out of 92 in BB% (Ruiz is 7th, Howard 27th)
[last year, of the 71 pitchers with at 30+ PA's, 47 had a higher Isolated power than Revere's .021, and 39 walked more often than Revere's 2.0%; 24 of the 71 did both]

Also:

- With only 7 fly balls all year (only 8.9% of the balls he's put in play), he has by far the lowest FB% in the NL (and the majors)
- He has the 2nd highest GB% (67.1%) in the NL, behind only Jean Segura, and by far the highest GB/FB ratio.

Pitchers

xFIP (which is based on the two things pitchers can most clearly control, walks and strikeouts, while assuming a league-average HR/FB% rate) is about the same as last year across the board.

FIP (which is based on the walks, Ks, AND the home runs a pitcher actually allowed) isn't far off from last year's with Lee and Burnett better than Lee and Halladay last year, but Kendrick and Pettibone worse.

Numbers that are at least a half run different from last year are highlighted:

Milestones

Recent milestones and those that may be reached over the next week or so...

Jimmy Rollins -- Phillies Hits Record

Rollins' next hit will make him the 9th active player with 2,200 or more, as he gets closer to becoming the Phillies' all-time  hits leader:

At the moment he is projected to pass all three during home stands, but those projected dates will move around depending on how he does in the coming weeks.

Jimmy Rollins -- Other
- Rollins needs two more walks (11 total) to become the 6th Phillie in history to walk 700 times.
- He needs to get on base three more times (by hit, walk, or HBP), to tie Ed Delahanty for 3rd most times reaching base in Phils history, with 2,937.
- Rollins' next time caught stealing will tie him with Schmidt for 2nd most on the Phillies list at 92. Larry Bowa holds the team record with 94. Caught stealing stats have been kept since 1951.

Chase Utley
- Utley recorded his 5,000th official At Bat in Tuesday's game against the Mets, becoming the 14th player to reach that number with the Phillies.
- Four more total bases (57 total) will make him the 8th Phillie with 2,500 in their career.
- He needs five RBIs (19 on the year) to tie Pat Burrell for 9th in team history, at 827.
- His next sacrifice fly (2nd this year) will tie Greg Luzinski for 3rd on the Phillies list, leaving him behind only Bobby Abreu (54), and Mike Schmidt (108). Sac Flies were tracked at various times before, but have only been recorded continuously since 1954.

Ryan Howard
- Howard needs 6 more RBI (20 total) to tie Chuck Klein for 4th most in Phillies history, at 983.

Cole Hamels
- On Tuesday Hamels passed Eppa Rixey of the 1915 World Series team for 9th most innings pitched in team history, with 1607 1/3. Next on the list is Curt Schilling, 52 innings away. There are now only three left handers who have pitched more innings for the Phillies than Hamels has: Curt Simmons (1939 2/3), Chris Short (2253), and Steve Carlton (3697 1/3).
- Hamels will go for his 100th career win again on Sunday. When he finally gets it, it will also put him in a tie for 7th most in Phils history with Al Orth.

--------

For reference:

- Phillies All-time hitting leaders
- Phillies All-time pitching leaders