Phillies Stat Notes: Trout trivia, Hamels hot

Contents

• NL Standings and team stats
  Phillies would get the 8th draft pick in 2015 if season ended today
• Phillies Team Stats
  Their average with RISP has again caught up to their overall average
• Individual Stats
  Trout trivia, Howard's historically low OPS, and the bullpen's improvement
• Today in Phillies History
  link
• Milestones
  Rollins will become the 8th player ever with 450 steals and 800 extra base hits

NL Standings

Reverse Standings

2015 Draft Pick

8th if the season ended today (7th worst record, plus Houston's #2 comp. pick for Aiken).
8th based on FanGraphs' projected end-of-season standings (7th by record, plus comp. pick)

Phillies Team Stats

Key hitting stat progression:

The Phils have been hitting better with runners in scoring position over the last month or so, and their average with RISP has again caught up to their overall average.

Average with and without runners in scoring position:

Phillies and Angels at Fangraphs

Phillies hitters at Fangraphs
Angels hitters at Fangraphs

Individual Stats

Angels Hitters, i.e. Mike Trout

Mike Trout and RBIs

Trout is 2nd in the American League in RBIs, with 85, just one behind Jose Abreu. Of those, 83 have come while he was batting 2nd, which is already the 35th highest total ever (since 1914) for anyone in that spot in the order. He's on pace of 115 RBIs out of the #2 spot, which would beat the record of 114 by Eddie Mathews (1959), and Alex Rodriguez (1998).

I haven't checked everyone on that list to make sure, but a quick look shows that if Trout winds up leading the AL, he would become the first player ever to lead his league in RBIs while batting second.

Mike Trout and WAR

Trout is off to one of the best starts to a career in the history of the game. With a month and a half to go this season, he already ranks high on the list of most WAR through a player's age 23 season, among the fastest starters of the all-time greats:

Mike Trout the "Local Guy"

Occasionally some knucklehead will wonder why fans care about Mike Trout and call him a local guy, when, after all, he's from Millville, NJ. Well, Millville may be slightly further than a couple of recent Phillies' home towns, but you can actually get to Citizens Bank Park faster from there than you can from either Jamie Moyer's home town (Souderton, PA), or Erik Kratz' (Telford, PA):

Millville is at "A", Souderton and Telford both around "D"...

Phillies Hitters

Utley has retaken the lead in OPS. And despite Howard's recent heroics, his OPS remains in the sub-.700 area, where it's been since July 11th.

Howard is on pace now for 98 RBI on the season. We've covered the worst 90 RBI seasons in history, but in addition, Howard's .676 OPS would rank 4th lowest since 1901 among seasons of 95+ RBI (by the way 3rd lowest is John Mayberry Sr's .663 in 1976). If Howard manages to reach 100 RBI, which is certainly within reach if he stays healthy, his .676 OPS would be the lowest of all time for a 100-RBI season.

Something else that's not out of reach (though unlikely) for Howard is leading the NL in ribbies. He is currently 3rd in the NL with 72, behind Giancarlo Stanton (82), and Adrian Gonzalez (80).

The lowest OPS ever for an RBI league-leader was .709 by Heinie Zimmerman of the 1917 New York Giants, so barring a late season surge in his OPS (which it may take anyway to lead the league in RBIs), Howard would blow that away.

Pitching

The question came up in a recent game thread about how the Phillies' starting rotation and their bullpen have done since the relief corps' rough start in April.

The bullpen in the first month was at or near the bottom by virtually any key measure. Since then, it's still only about average in ERA, ranking 10th, and a little better in FIP (7th), but is 3rd in the NL in fWAR over that time.

The starting rotation, meanwhile, has staked out the very-bad-but-not-quite-worst territory in every category:

Below is how starters' ERAs have progressed since early May. Note Kendrick's steady rise after a decent start, while Hamels' ERA started high in his first couple of games after coming off the disabled list, but has continually dropped since then.

Since May 1st, Hamels has a 2.02 ERA, the 4th lowest ERA in the majors over that time:

1.80 - Clayton Kershaw
1.81 - Felix Hernandez
2.00 - Corey Kluber
2.02 - Cole Hamels
2.09 - Chris Sale

The graph below shows the number of starts for each starter, by a simple quality split:

Quality starts are green (using the basic 6+ IP, 3 ER or less definition). "Bad" starts are in red, simply mean allowing more than an earned run per inning (e.g. 4 runs in 3 1/3). Yellow are all others.

This Date in Phillies History

Milestones

Recent milestones by Phillies players, and those that may be reached over the next week...

Jimmy Rollins

• Rollins' next time caught stealing (6th of the year) will be the 95th of his career and will put him past Larry Bowa for sole possession of #1 in Phillies history. Caught stealing stats have been kept since 1951. When talking about Rollins and this caught stealing mark, lest people get the wrong idea it always feels necessary to add that Rollins has had one of the highest stealing success rates in history:

- 9th highest among the 147 players with 300+ attempts
- 4th highest among the 44 with 500+

• With his next extra base hit (37th this year), Rollins will reach 800 for his career. He'll be...
  - the 2nd Phillie with 800+, joining Mike Schmidt (1015)
  - and the 5th shortstop in baseball history with that many, joining Ripken (1078), Wagner (996), Jeter (859), and Cronin (803).
• Rollins is also three stolen bases away from 450 for his career. When he reaches that, along with the 800 extra base hits, the exclusive club of players with that combination will get an 8th member:

• Three more home runs (18 total) will tie Rollins with Cy Williams for 8th most home runs in Phils history, at 217. Cy Williams (not Ted) was the original target of the "Williams Shift" that Howard knows so well.
• Rollins also needs five RBI (54 for the year) to tie Sherry Magee for 7th in Phillies history, at 886.

Chase Utley

• Utley's home run double yesterday was the 600th extra base hit of his career. He joins these Phils with 600+:

  1015 - Mike Schmidt
  798 - Jimmy Rollins
  686 - Ed Delahanty
  643 - Chuck Klein
  634 - Del Ennis

• His next HBP (9th this year) will tie Utley with Kid Elberfeld for 17th most all-time, at 165. Derek Jeter is 16th (167), and Alex Rodriguez15th (169). Elberfeld was a turn of the century infielder who first came up with the Phillies (his SABR bio).

Jonathan Papelbon

• On the MLB all-time list, his next save (28th this year) will tie Robb Nen for 19th, at 314.

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For reference:

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

- MLB All-time hitting leaders
- MLB All-time pitching leaders