phorever wrote:

sydnor wrote:thought this was a fair, and discouraging, piece of analysis on Dom

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/what-can ... o-for-you/

among things most likely to have the phillies performing under the projections, i think i would rank dom going bust right there along with overplaying decrepit versions of rollins-howard-paps-adams and a bum leg eliminating revere´s peak-years value.

Dom may indeed go bust, but that is the horse we have so no choice but to see what happens. Thankfully, there is good reason to believe he can actually improve from here.

If he does bust, this team needs a complete tear down (maybe it does anyway, but yet another major corner outfield hole makes it unbelievably worse).

Trent Steele wrote:I'm hopeful that our defense can't possibly be worse. Per the Fielding Bible runs saved for last year, we were -102 (unsurprisingly, worst in MLB). UZR has the Mariners worse.

C -1
1B -2
2B -6
3B -26
SS -16
LF -7
CF -20
RF -19
P -5
Total -102
INF -50
OF -46

Per Player:

Jimmy Rollins -15
Domonic Brown -7
Chase Utley -4
Michael Young -20
Carlos Ruiz 3
Ben Revere -5
Ryan Howard -1
Delmon Young - 10
Erik Kratz C -4
John Mayberry -4 (RF)
Cody Asche -7
John Mayberry -10 (CF)
Darin Ruf -2 (1B)
Darin Ruf -7 (RF)
Cesar Hernandez -3

Good thing they re-signed Ruiz?

Again, that's a $170 million team. Unreal.

But what do our scouts say?

Trent Steele's chart is alarming. If the Phillies are going to be successful their fielding can't be that bad. The strength of the roster is the SP. They need better defensive support than that. The numbers at 3B, -26, are predominantly Michael Young's. His poor defense was a killer and put a strain on Rollins which led to his -16. Hopefully Asche can do better than that and take some of the need for Rollins to over play the hole on the left side of the IF. If Rollins continues to decline, it has to be time for Galvis.
The CF/RF combination is a -39. Some of that is the Delmon Young factor and some of it is Revere. Byrd replaces Young so that will improve the defense in RF. Revere's defense is still open for discussion.
Whoever is making up the roster for the team in '14 needs to take a hard look at a players' entire package. Some guys don't hit well enough to balance what they give up in the field. That's especially true in the OF. Miscues out there lead to runs more often than those made in the IF.
The makeover for the '14 Phillies is going to be a challenge and probably will be an ongoing project. That's all the more reason to have Sandberg in the dugout. He'll probably give the vets first chance and if they mess up, try the youngsters. If they flop, then Amaro knows what he has to do when making trades.

GUYS DON'T WORRY ABOUT DEFENSE WE BROUGHT THE BOWA CONSTRICTOR BACK

rolex wrote:The numbers at 3B, -26, are predominantly Michael Young's. His poor defense was a killer and put a strain on Rollins which led to his -16. Hopefully Asche can do better than that and take some of the need for Rollins to over play the hole on the left side of the IF. If Rollins continues to decline, it has to be time for Galvis.

I definitely think there's something to that. I don't have the Fielding Bible, but everything else I've looked at says that Rollins' defensive numbers were markedly worse in 2013 than in recent years, including years where he fought off injuries. Rollins had been pretty consistent until last year.

Asche isn't great by any stretch, but he's nowhere near as bad as Young and actually has some range. Hopefully that'll help Rollins. I don't know if he'll be a plus defender, but at this point I'd accept him just being a net zero instead of a hindrance.

I did notice a lot of Rollins hesitation and confusion with Young in there, and he looked fine to his left

Bottom third of roster (including Doc) was comically bad or hurt. That could represent significant improvement potential, and we do have some young depth now. A good defensive OF who hits LH would be nice

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

rolex wrote:The numbers at 3B, -26, are predominantly Michael Young's. His poor defense was a killer and put a strain on Rollins which led to his -16. Hopefully Asche can do better than that and take some of the need for Rollins to over play the hole on the left side of the IF. If Rollins continues to decline, it has to be time for Galvis.

I definitely think there's something to that. I don't have the Fielding Bible, but everything else I've looked at says that Rollins' defensive numbers were markedly worse in 2013 than in recent years, including years where he fought off injuries. Rollins had been pretty consistent until last year.

Asche isn't great by any stretch, but he's nowhere near as bad as Young and actually has some range. Hopefully that'll help Rollins. I don't know if he'll be a plus defender, but at this point I'd accept him just being a net zero instead of a hindrance.

Fielding Bible has Rollins as -7, -8, and -15 the last 3 years. They think he's cooked. UZR is more kind and has some positive in 2011/12. Who knows

defense is a mystery

It's all tied together though, and it's a problem. Phillies pitchers had a .260 BABIP on ground balls last year. Only Detroit was worse and the league average was .240. Atlanta was the best at .218. The Phillies have up 90 more hits on ground balls than the Braves. That's an enormous number.

Shore wrote:My issues with this start here. Assuming platoons that we're reasonably sure won't happen, and what? "Crash"'s? hopeful take on the bullpen?

ahhh.... that´s more like it...
i was addressing what seemed to me to be the assumption that the roster, even if used well, would most likely win less than 80 games and would have an infinitessimally small chance of the playoffs. my point is that that the player projection systems and the career trajectory analyses they incorporate offer some evidence that the talent level is higher than that. i also stated a couple of posts later that things like revere´s injury could throw off the projections. but the likelihood sub-optimal usage is part of a different discussion: that concerning the most likely actual win total. if you want to get into usage, though, what is your basis for a high level of certainty that a manager with no significant major league track record will not try the platoon experiment?

Shore wrote:I can't argue with the math, since you don't show any. Are you including every Phillie projected to get ABs? Or just the regulars? We probably got 5-7 negative WAR from our non-regulars, and figure to get several again. How many negative WAR are included in the total? Steamer shows us with 14.1 WAR from the position players, in 5712 PA. You're using 20 in your calcs, based on platoons?

i held back most of the math because i suck at spreadsheets and did most of it by hand or in my head (i know it sounds retarded, but i don´t seem to have a middle gear between 20000 line programs for supercomputers and the most trivial of database manipulations), because it´s not worth typing out if no-one is interested, and because i thought that i made it clear enough what i did. i´ll try the latter again: i used the roster of the steamer projections and i used steamer pa´s to adjust the oliver war projections. after a quick scan through zips woba for control, i took the higher of the other two as a proxy for optimal platoon usage. i think that´s defensible because good platoons maximize potential and because player usage is on the manager and not a part of a roster quality estimate for me. [it may or may not be part of assessing a gm´s roster construction, depending upon how much one believes the gm should taylor the roster to the manager or the manager to the roster]. i don´t have my scribble pad with me, but i think the big boosts that came from the platoon proxy were

the bench is included. obviously, there will be more pa´s from callups and other roster filler than steamer has. normal callups are pretty much the definition of replacement. some will give positive value, some negative. on average it works out about even. some years on some teams, everything goes wrong. you may be inclined to assume based on the past couple of seasons that amaro is guaranteed to produce a disaster in that area. however, i think i recall more than one of amaro´s teams has had an unexpected bench addition that delivered enough positive value to cancel out the rest. i could be wrong... need to check that out.

Shore wrote:

And on the pitching side, Steamer already has the Phillies at 0.7 WAR in the bullpen. You're adding 4 wins, giving our pen 4.7 WAR. Last year, the Phillies got -0.1 WAR from the bullpen, according to fangraphs, within .1 of the worst team in the league. The 3 best bullpens in the league got 4.8, 4.8, and 5.2. So for this exercise, we're assuming the Phillies go from thisclose to the worst bullpen in the league, to thisclose to the best bullpen in the league. And that's before leverage adjustments that you give them, on top.

i forgot to state that at least 1 win of the value of gonzalez would come from starting. that and the brain cramp of calling him mgm instead of mag, is a justifiable source of misunderstanding. that makes my pen war more like 3.7, which would have been good for 5th in the nl in 2013 and 2014. if you want to discuss my pen war ranking with the leverage adjustment relative to other teams fairly, you´ll have to find a way to get the b-r team bullpen war rankings. i failed to figure out how to do that quickly.

Shore wrote:So it seems we take the best of 2 projection systems, based on platoons that won't happen.
We don't add any negative value for crappy bench or part time players.
We take full value from our pitching projections.
We add 4 wins to that based on "Crash".
We add 1.5 more wins to that based on reliever leverage (giving our awesome bullpen of great dominance 6.2 WAR)

And that's how you get 47.7+20+14.6+1.5=83.8, then you add 1 win for luck, and round up. Then you're hopeful we can add the next Yu Darvish, though we're not linked to him at this point, and then with a little luck, compete.

It doesn't make you uncomfortable that Steamer, seemingly the biggest influence in your scenario, without Crash or other adjustments, has the Phillies at 72 wins? (47.7+14.1+10.6=72.4)

steamer left out mag, was much more pessimistic about byrd´s offense than steamer or zips, was very conservative about the innings of lee and hamels, and has martin projected as a part-time starter which darn well better not happen again. that´s seven extra wins right there, i think, without any unreasonable assumptions. the pen and platoons give me the other 4 or 5 wins. i´ll try to get more data to back up my arguement for the plausibility of 2 to three wins extra from each effect not being a high-end estimate of what would be produced with proper usage of the existing roster.

checked the position player roster filler bwar (easier for me than fwar) for the past 4 phillies seasons.
with filler defined as non-pitchers not in the teams top 14 (or not in the top 15... since steamer gives significant pa to 15) by plate appearances i get
2013 -2.6 (-1.9 ... difference is nix)
2012 +1.2 (+1.1)
2011 -0.6 (-0.3)
2010 -0.2 (-0.6)

i´ll check fwar later, but it looks to me like i was justified in assuming a net 0 from the filler, even with rubes as gm.

So is hot stove over?

did it ever start for us?

Stove was broken. We had to use a George Foreman Grill.

Todd Zolecki ‏@ToddZolecki
Phillies invite 5more players to camp as non-roster invitees: Jesse Biddle, Maikel Franco, Sebastian Valle, Mario Hollands and Ken Giles.

Yay! Young people.

Kenny G! Favorite prospect.

Doll Is Mine wrote:Todd Zolecki ‏@ToddZolecki
Phillies invite 5more players to camp as non-roster invitees: Jesse Biddle, Maikel Franco, Sebastian Valle, Mario Hollands and Ken Giles.

Yay! Young people.

Settle down, Candy van.

1 wrote:Kenny G! Favorite prospect.

Bill's grandson?

swishnicholson wrote:

1 wrote:Kenny G! Favorite prospect.

Bill's grandson?

Nickname: Napken