I think you can argue that the lingering effects of Rollins' injury were as damaging as the time on the DL. His power numbers were way down most of the year.

I guess it depends on how you define career year. I define a careeer year as a season much better than a guy's established norm. The '93 Phillies had a bunch of guys having career years. Dykstra; Stocker; Rivera; Chaimberlain; Green; West. Guys like that.

Plus, the '93 team had a bunch of guys like Hollins; Kruk; Inky; Eisenreich; Daulton; Mulholland and a few others having a their best ever year or very close to it. Further, much of this team had guys having their last good year ever -- or very close to it.

Last years' Phillie squad had some guys having good years or very good years but not really a season well above their established norm. Moyer had had many seasons as good or better than last season. There's no such thing as a 1/2 career year. Lots of guys have an excellent 1/2 season. And Myers has had a few brilliant stretches during his career and Blanton has pitched like he did for the Phils quite a bit in his career so far.

The '08 Phils won the WFC without any help from their good minor league guys. They had no young player come up and do great things. That's kinda unusual for a winning team. They really didn't get unexpected great years out of anyone but Lidge -- and Lidge is really good anyway.

Durbin was the closest thing to lightning in a bottle for the Phils last season but he wasn't THAT good. He mostly was used in a way that took advantage of his strengths and minimized his weaknesses.

If the Mets are hoping for a "regression to the mean" thing happening for the Phils, they are barking up a wrong tree (I realize some yahoo on Metsrefugee isn't the Mets per se).

zOMG BEST ROTATION IN BASEBALL

Perez joins Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz as the Mets' major additions of the offseason

um

ek wrote:they just re-signed Perez

http://blogs.nypost.com/sports/st/archi ... _term.html

That pushed them back to Perez, and now the Mets will hope that the lack of focus or lack of maturity or whatever it is exactly that detours Perez from consistent excellence will melt away.

Perez went 10-7 last year for the Mets in 34 starts with a 4.22 ERA. He allowed just 167 hits in 194 innings, but walked 105, the most in the majors.

ooo...sign me up. how did he get $12m a year???

smitty wrote:Last years' Phillie squad had some guys having good years or very good years but not really a season well above their established norm. Moyer had had many seasons as good or better than last season. There's no such thing as a 1/2 career year. Lots of guys have an excellent 1/2 season. And Myers has had a few brilliant stretches during his career and Blanton has pitched like he did for the Phils quite a bit in his career so far.

I get what you're saying. However, once the rotation started to gel, #1-4 was pretty damn formidable.

And when you've had a career as long as Moyer's, you get to have 2 or 3 career years.

If your point is we have every reason to be optimistic about '09, I'm with you all the way on that one. I think that this is going to be a formidable team for quite some time.

Bakestar wrote:I think you can argue that the lingering effects of Rollins' injury were as damaging as the time on the DL.  His power numbers were way down most of the year.

Yes.  It's certainly possible.  But I really think Rollins had a two year "career year" stretch in '06/'07.  I think he is a .275-.280 type hitter who has 15-20 HR power.  I think his hitting 25-30 dingers in a season will not happen again.  It's encouraging that he improved his walk rate last season.  I see him being a .275/.350/.440 type hitter for the next few seasons.  Add Gold Glove defense and very high percentage base stealing and you have a very valuable guy. 

I think he will continue to have some owies in the future that keep his performance at the less than MVP type year.  He had two big seasons at the ages of 27/28.  I think he is in a gradual decline phase of his career.  That doesn't preclude him from having another big year ever.  But it's not what I expect from him.

Awesome. I was hoping this would be what happened. Meanwhile, when he's got a 4.8 ERA next year in a pitcher's park, I'm sure they'll be really happy they didn't go all out for Lowe.

The epic stupidity of Omar Minaya is going to turn Ruben Amaro into a hero.

TenuredVulture wrote:

smitty wrote:Last years' Phillie squad had some guys having good years or very good years but not really a season well above their established norm. Moyer had had many seasons as good or better than last season. There's no such thing as a 1/2 career year. Lots of guys have an excellent 1/2 season. And Myers has had a few brilliant stretches during his career and Blanton has pitched like he did for the Phils quite a bit in his career so far.

I get what you're saying. However, once the rotation started to gel, #1-4 was pretty damn formidable.

And when you've had a career as long as Moyer's, you get to have 2 or 3 career years.

If your point is we have every reason to be optimistic about '09, I'm with you all the way on that one. I think that this is going to be a formidable team for quite some time.

Yes. That pretty much is my point. The Phils had the best team in baseball at the end of last season. They really didn't benefit from lots of guys playing over their heads. They will need some good luck this season (as all teams do) but they are certainly capable of being really good again.

smitty wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

smitty wrote:Last years' Phillie squad had some guys having good years or very good years but not really a season well above their established norm. Moyer had had many seasons as good or better than last season. There's no such thing as a 1/2 career year. Lots of guys have an excellent 1/2 season. And Myers has had a few brilliant stretches during his career and Blanton has pitched like he did for the Phils quite a bit in his career so far.

I get what you're saying. However, once the rotation started to gel, #1-4 was pretty damn formidable.

And when you've had a career as long as Moyer's, you get to have 2 or 3 career years.

If your point is we have every reason to be optimistic about '09, I'm with you all the way on that one. I think that this is going to be a formidable team for quite some time.

Yes. That pretty much is my point. The Phils had the best team in baseball at the end of last season. They really didn't benefit from lots of guys playing over their heads. They will need some good luck this season (as all teams do) but they are certainly capable of being really good again.

The real luck for the Phils was the way in which everyone started playing their best at the same time. Howard started pretty terrible, and Myers had to be sent down. Blanton comes in and wins a bunch of games, Howard returns to form, and Myers finds his groove.

i mean, the phillies were a 92-win calibur team who won 92 games. the real "luck" was that they were 11-3 in the playoffs. they are not a 127-win team like that would suggest. so if the luck did come from the playoffs, it came from the fact that cole hamels and the bullpen were a bit lucky in the playoffs and the defense was superb. cole had a .234 BABIP in the playoffs-- he's good but not that good; and the bullpen gave up only 2 HR in 40.1 IP. a little lucky for sure, but that was the kind of luck they had all year. frankly, i actually think the reason we're the world champions is just that our advanced scouting has been ridiculously good and was great in the playoffs. we had some luck, but the bullpen's HR rate is very low and it was all year. that could be luck but i'd bet they had good scouting. i wonder if infield flies are a way to look at that.

It would surprise me, since every player on the Phils had a career year last season and nobody on the roster got hurt

smitty wrote:The career year thing gets me. Actually who had a career year?

Isn't it obvious? Carlos Ruiz


(Of course, the sarcasm's directed at that MetsRefugee guy. If 08 was Ruiz's "career year"... well, that would be sad)

MattS wrote:Awesome. I was hoping this would be what happened. Meanwhile, when he's got a 4.8 ERA next year in a pitcher's park, I'm sure they'll be really happy they didn't go all out for Lowe.

The epic stupidity of Omar Minaya is going to turn Ruben Amaro into a hero.

If you start comparing Rube to other GMs, he's going to start looking ever more attractive. But I'd rather have Ed Wade as my GM than Omar Minaya.

MattS wrote:Awesome. I was hoping this would be what happened. Meanwhile, when he's got a 4.8 ERA next year in a pitcher's park, I'm sure they'll be really happy they didn't go all out for Lowe.

The epic stupidity of Omar Minaya is going to turn Ruben Amaro into a hero.

Interesting article comparing Perez and Cabrera by a BP guy (Seidman):

At this stage in their careers, Perez appears to be the better pitcher, but not by nearly as wide a margin as some might think. At $10 million per season for three or more years, the Mets are investing a pretty penny in the possibility that a seven-year veteran who has yet to establish any semblance of consistency will suddenly turn a corner.

MattS wrote:i mean, the phillies were a 92-win calibur team who won 92 games. the real "luck" was that they were 11-3 in the playoffs. they are not a 127-win team like that would suggest. so if the luck did come from the playoffs, it came from the fact that cole hamels and the bullpen were a bit lucky in the playoffs and the defense was superb. cole had a .234 BABIP in the playoffs-- he's good but not that good; and the bullpen gave up only 2 HR in 40.1 IP. a little lucky for sure, but that was the kind of luck they had all year. frankly, i actually think the reason we're the world champions is just that our advanced scouting has been ridiculously good and was great in the playoffs. we had some luck, but the bullpen's HR rate is very low and it was all year. that could be luck but i'd bet they had good scouting. i wonder if infield flies are a way to look at that.

I've harped on this before, but I think the Phillies' defensive production was fluky. I'm specifically targeting the middle infield. From 2007 to '08, Rollins went from +7 to +23 and Chase Utley went from +22 to +47. I know both are very good defensively, but there's no way Utley is 21 plays better than the next-best defensive second baseman, Mark Ellis (+26 in '08, +19 in '07).

The Phillies as a whole were +74 in '08 as opposed to +18 in '07. And their +74 last year was almost two standard deviations above the mean (slightly under 0) -- certainly not an outlier, but definitely out there.

So, the production of all of the pitchers was a bit worse than it looks. I'd be interested in finding out which ones benefited most. My presumption is Jamie Moyer since he is almost entirely reliant on balls in play being converted into outs.

CrashburnAlley wrote:

MattS wrote:i mean, the phillies were a 92-win calibur team who won 92 games. the real "luck" was that they were 11-3 in the playoffs. they are not a 127-win team like that would suggest. so if the luck did come from the playoffs, it came from the fact that cole hamels and the bullpen were a bit lucky in the playoffs and the defense was superb. cole had a .234 BABIP in the playoffs-- he's good but not that good; and the bullpen gave up only 2 HR in 40.1 IP. a little lucky for sure, but that was the kind of luck they had all year. frankly, i actually think the reason we're the world champions is just that our advanced scouting has been ridiculously good and was great in the playoffs. we had some luck, but the bullpen's HR rate is very low and it was all year. that could be luck but i'd bet they had good scouting. i wonder if infield flies are a way to look at that.

I've harped on this before, but I think the Phillies' defensive production was fluky. I'm specifically targeting the middle infield. From 2007 to '08, Rollins went from +7 to +23 and Chase Utley went from +22 to +47. I know both are very good defensively, but there's no way Utley is 21 plays better than the next-best defensive second baseman, Mark Ellis (+26 in '08, +19 in '07).

The Phillies as a whole were +74 in '08 as opposed to +18 in '07. And their +74 last year was almost two standard deviations above the mean (slightly under 0) -- certainly not an outlier, but definitely out there.

So, the production of all of the pitchers was a bit worse than it looks. I'd be interested in finding out which ones benefited most. My presumption is Jamie Moyer since he is almost entirely reliant on balls in play being converted into outs.

Much as I hate the word synergy, I think there is some of it at work here. I think a defensive rating is at least partly pitching as well as the opposite. I know about the Voros McCracken theory but even he backed off of his original proposition that the pitcher doesn't control batted balls that don't stay in the park if I remember it right.

As for the Phils, Utley and Rollins did go up a lot but Feliz went down by as much as the other two increased (+27 to + 7). Dewan himself says that the =/- ratings work best as three year averages.

I'm not sure what the right answer is here. But I think when pitchers are going well, fielders stats get better as well. I'm not sure how big an effect there is. It might just be negligible. But I remember following the Phils' DER last season and it seemed that as the pitchers' effectivness went up and down, so did the team's DER. And I'm thinking that fielding doesn't really fluctuate that much but pitcher's effectivness does. So I think there is some kind of effect going on there.

never badmouth synergy!

smitty wrote:

MattS wrote:Awesome. I was hoping this would be what happened. Meanwhile, when he's got a 4.8 ERA next year in a pitcher's park, I'm sure they'll be really happy they didn't go all out for Lowe.

The epic stupidity of Omar Minaya is going to turn Ruben Amaro into a hero.

Interesting article comparing Perez and Cabrera by a BP guy (Seidman):

At this stage in their careers, Perez appears to be the better pitcher, but not by nearly as wide a margin as some might think. At $10 million per season for three or more years, the Mets are investing a pretty penny in the possibility that a seven-year veteran who has yet to establish any semblance of consistency will suddenly turn a corner.

Well they were right about Victor Zambrano....

CrashburnAlley wrote:
I've harped on this before, but I think the Phillies' defensive production was fluky. I'm specifically targeting the middle infield. From 2007 to '08, Rollins went from +7 to +23 and Chase Utley went from +22 to +47. I know both are very good defensively, but there's no way Utley is 21 plays better than the next-best defensive second baseman, Mark Ellis (+26 in '08, +19 in '07).

The Phillies as a whole were +74 in '08 as opposed to +18 in '07. And their +74 last year was almost two standard deviations above the mean (slightly under 0) -- certainly not an outlier, but definitely out there.

So, the production of all of the pitchers was a bit worse than it looks. I'd be interested in finding out which ones benefited most. My presumption is Jamie Moyer since he is almost entirely reliant on balls in play being converted into outs.

i'm no stat geek, but i don't understand the point about utley vs. other second basemen... why can't he be "that much better?" (honest question here, not trying to be a smartass).

td11 wrote:i'm no stat geek, but i don't understand the point about utley vs. other second basemen... why can't he be "that much better?" (honest question here, not trying to be a smartass).

He could be, but I'm not buying it at least until there's more data. I could definitely be wrong about that. I just don't see a +25 jump from one year to the next as not being fluky.

CrashburnAlley wrote:

td11 wrote:i'm no stat geek, but i don't understand the point about utley vs. other second basemen... why can't he be "that much better?" (honest question here, not trying to be a smartass).

He could be, but I'm not buying it at least until there's more data. I could definitely be wrong about that. I just don't see a +25 jump from one year to the next as not being fluky.

Practice

Srsly... we can probably attribute it to working on it, another year experience (for himself and together with Rollins), and benefiting from better pitching (20 more DP, 50 more PO...).