I'm not even sure it's hate. I think they just can't figure out what to make of the Phils. We've got the last two MVP's, but they both suck. We have only 3 pitchers who are good. The bottom of the order is a black hole. They just can't figure out how we're winning, we're not supposed to win and it's driving them crazy.

JFLNYC wrote:I'm not even sure it's hate. I think they just can't figure out what to make of the Phils. We've got the last two MVP's, but they both suck. We have only 3 pitchers who are good. The bottom of the order is a black hole. They just can't figure out how we're winning, we're not supposed to win and it's driving them crazy.

And to be honest, it is confounding.

If you had said, prior to last night, we'd strand 11 men on base and go 0-13 with RISP, how many people would have projected a win, even with Hamels pitching?

This team never quits. That can't really be quantified, you can look at it and say we have a good record late in games, but it doesn't show up in the bigger picture. And it is a factor. But who knows what the next game will bring.

Agreed.

Another thing that needs to be pointed out, which some people have. Over the course of 160 games, run differential, 3rd order wins, and all of those metrics matter, and generally they tell the big picture. But a 7 game sample is a lot smaller, and as we see even in the regular season, anything can happen over a 7 game stretch. Hell, anything can happen in a 4 game stretch. Thats why great teams get swept, why great teams sweep other great teams, etc etc.

But I think what's driving analysts crazy is that it's been 10 games over 3 series. They're convinced it will catch up with the Phils. And, who knows, it might very well. They'll probably get blown out tonight!

FTN wrote:Another thing that needs to be pointed out, which some people have. Over the course of 160 games, run differential, 3rd order wins, and all of those metrics matter, and generally they tell the big picture. But a 7 game sample is a lot smaller, and as we see even in the regular season, anything can happen over a 7 game stretch. Hell, anything can happen in a 4 game stretch. Thats why great teams get swept, why great teams sweep other great teams, etc etc.

More or less, I think the biggest point here is that a smart, well-constructed team is the best way to get INTO the playoffs, but once you're there, for the most part, all bets are off ("My shit doesn't work in the playoffs!").

Well, one thing that separates us has been the perfection of the back end of the bullpen. Without that we'd be like 7-5, or home.

I think they are not analyzing the Phillies properly. The Phillies are a very good team. They went 92-70 this year. Yes, their 3rd order win total was low, but as I explained at TGP, that's really not telling the whole story. The Phillies are a very good hitting team. They have two very strong guys in the back of the bullpen and they have the best ace in the playoffs short of Sabathia and maybe Harden. That makes for a very good playoff team.

The reason that I think sabermetric analysts like Sheehan and Law are not really fond of the Phillies is that there isn't an obvious genius at the helm who is doing things. The reason we are good is that a traditional old-school theory of team building actually holds a lot of weight in sabermetric analysis: build a strong team up the middle. The main reason that the Phillies are good is that their SS is good for an .800+ OPS and their 2B is good for a .900+ OPS. And they both field their positions better than the average middle infielders. And our CF is good for an .800 OPS with above average defense. Granted, Ruiz is not that good. But Victorino, Rollins, and Utley just make the Phillies an instant contender with decent contributions.

We don't have an amazing stash of youth. We don't have a series of OBP superstars that we've been compling, or a steady reliance on GB pitchers or pitchers with excellent K/BB ratios up and down the line. There's no fun story for Sheehan or Law to tell to explain why we are as good as we are. We don't have a story they can tell to make themselves seem smart.

And we have even less of a story for talking heads at ESPN and Fox who don't know what sabermetrics is. We don't have a powerful 1-2-3 at the top of our rotation that can help them say "pitching wins championships". We don't have a lot of playoff experience to make them say "veteran leadership wins championships". We don't have a fountain of youth to help them say "passionate young stars who are taking over the game win championships".

We have a series of very good players in their primes, and we are solid up the middle and have a solid ace and a solid closer and set-up man. We are fortunate to be hot at the right time, and as a result, we may win. Neither Joe Sheehan nor Joe Morgan will have a great story to make themselves seem wise. We just add up well. We're top heavy in the lineup, top heavy in the rotation, and top heavy in the bullpen. That gives us a comparative advantage in the playoffs because (1) the "big bang theory" of baseball is that the winning team in a world series game frequency scores more runs in their best inning than the losing team does all game-- so having that top heavy lineup is relatively more valuable in the playoffs than during the season, (2) aces pitch at least 29% of all world series games, making them more valuable than the 20% they pitch during the season, and (3) closers can pitch every day in the playoffs with many off-days and minimal risk of overuse.

We still may lose this thing, and everyone will have a story why. If we win it, no one in the media will seem smart. No one will have called it in advance and no one will have a great post hoc explanation of it.

Keith Law is pretty much like Joe Sheehan in some ways. They both agree on a lot of stuff. Like Sheehan, Law thinks the Rays are better because they are the AL team. He agreed with Sheehan that Howard is a platoon player. He has written that Lidge is pitching scared or some such nonsense.

All of these guys, no matter how Sabremetrically and numbers inclined, write stuff that clearly is wrong. They sometimes don't look stuff up that is easy to look up.

Part of it, I think, is that it's really important to be "edgy" and say and write stuff that gets folks upset. It's the way to get attention and to get folks to pay attention to you -- which is part of what their job is.

I don't know. This stuff is these guys' job and they sometimes write and say stuff that we folks who just do this for fun can disprove pretty easily. I'm not sure why that is.

Matt S --

Very good analysis there. One thing that I think is kinda interesting is that some "new school" stuff is acutally old school stuff but using different terminology.

For example -- old school folks have been saying forever that guys hit in "bad luck" and stuff like that. Isn't that BABIP?

Many old school ideas are certainly wrong. Using old school thinking to think Juan Pierre is good is one example. But some old school thinking is right in tune with new school stuff. They just use different ways to express it.

Another interesting thing I found recently. Not only are Utley and Rollins above average defensively, they both finished #1 in MLB at their postition in Dewan's +/- ratings. Utley was way, way ahead with an unbelievable +47. Dewan's system isn't perfect. But it's interesting that Rollins was #1 and Utley was so dominating.

Law also mentioned the Phillies patience/power lineup as being "American League" style. That really isn't true. In fact, the Phils have had less patience this year than in the recent past. But, more important, patience and power is the key tosuccess in both leagues and both leages have about the same number of teams who are good/average and poor in these key factors. There is no "American League" style of offense. But it just goes to show pretty much all of these guys fall back on cliches more often than they should.

MattS wrote:I think they are not analyzing the Phillies properly. The Phillies are a very good team. They went 92-70 this year. Yes, their 3rd order win total was low, but as I explained at TGP, that's really not telling the whole story. The Phillies are a very good hitting team. They have two very strong guys in the back of the bullpen and they have the best ace in the playoffs short of Sabathia and maybe Harden. That makes for a very good playoff team.

The reason that I think sabermetric analysts like Sheehan and Law are not really fond of the Phillies is that there isn't an obvious genius at the helm who is doing things. The reason we are good is that a traditional old-school theory of team building actually holds a lot of weight in sabermetric analysis: build a strong team up the middle. The main reason that the Phillies are good is that their SS is good for an .800+ OPS and their 2B is good for a .900+ OPS. And they both field their positions better than the average middle infielders. And our CF is good for an .800 OPS with above average defense. Granted, Ruiz is not that good. But Victorino, Rollins, and Utley just make the Phillies an instant contender with decent contributions.

We don't have an amazing stash of youth. We don't have a series of OBP superstars that we've been compling, or a steady reliance on GB pitchers or pitchers with excellent K/BB ratios up and down the line. There's no fun story for Sheehan or Law to tell to explain why we are as good as we are. We don't have a story they can tell to make themselves seem smart.

And we have even less of a story for talking heads at ESPN and Fox who don't know what sabermetrics is. We don't have a powerful 1-2-3 at the top of our rotation that can help them say "pitching wins championships". We don't have a lot of playoff experience to make them say "veteran leadership wins championships". We don't have a fountain of youth to help them say "passionate young stars who are taking over the game win championships".

We have a series of very good players in their primes, and we are solid up the middle and have a solid ace and a solid closer and set-up man. We are fortunate to be hot at the right time, and as a result, we may win. Neither Joe Sheehan nor Joe Morgan will have a great story to make themselves seem wise. We just add up well. We're top heavy in the lineup, top heavy in the rotation, and top heavy in the bullpen. That gives us a comparative advantage in the playoffs because (1) the "big bang theory" of baseball is that the winning team in a world series game frequency scores more runs in their best inning than the losing team does all game-- so having that top heavy lineup is relatively more valuable in the playoffs than during the season, (2) aces pitch at least 29% of all world series games, making them more valuable than the 20% they pitch during the season, and (3) closers can pitch every day in the playoffs with many off-days and minimal risk of overuse.

We still may lose this thing, and everyone will have a story why. If we win it, no one in the media will seem smart. No one will have called it in advance and no one will have a great post hoc explanation of it.

my summary: "Top-heavy" = (appropriately) the tits

so why isn't that a story in Tampa?

oh wait

Is there a difference between a team designed to do well in the regular season compared to a team designed to do well in the post season?

The obvious difference, one that applies to the Phils, is a crappy 5th starter doesn't hurt you in the playoffs. I would guess you wouldn't worry as much about depth in your pen either. Is there anything else?

TenuredVulture wrote:Is there a difference between a team designed to do well in the regular season compared to a team designed to do well in the post season?

The obvious difference, one that applies to the Phils, is a crappy 5th starter doesn't hurt you in the playoffs. I would guess you wouldn't worry as much about depth in your pen either. Is there anything else?

Nate Silver has discussed this before with Secret Sauce.

Silver has also developed a formula, which he calls "Secret Sauce," to predict whether Major League teams are likely to be successful in the playoffs if they somehow manage to reach them.[8] This formula comes out of research that he initially conducted and published with Dayn Perry.[9] Although during the regular season having an excellent offense above all else may get a team to the playoffs, once in the playoffs a team's success depends much more on strong defense, including pitching.

The "secret sauce" formula includes

"

[three] key ingredients that strongly correlate with postseason success: a team's [pitchers'] strikeout rate, or Equivalent K/9 (EqK9), adjusted for a team's league and ballpark; its quality of defense, or Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA), an estimate of the runs a defense has saved or cost its pitchers relative to the league average; and its strength of closer, or Win Expectation Above Replacement (WXRL), which measures the wins the closer has saved versus what a replacement-level alternative would have done.[10] In other words, teams that prevent the ball from going into play, catch it when it does and preserve late-inning leads are likely to excel in the playoffs."[11]

So using that as a template.

1. Good starting pitching, namely power guys with big K rates.
2. Good team defense
3. A good bullpen, namely a good closer

These guys can't seem to wrap their head around one simple, defining concept of playoff success: In a short series, it doesn't matter who your 20-25 guys are. It matters who your 1-5 guys are. You don't need a deep rotation, you need one stud and two above average guys with three trustworthy relievers. The Rays' four-deep pitching rotation puts pressure on the Phils every game, but it doesn't blow them away.

Yeah, the Phils left a bunch of RISP. But it doesn't matter how many innings you score runs in. It matters how many you score. Innings aren't pass-fail in baseball. The Phils' 7-9 might be inferior to other teams', but if your 1-6 is good, you gon' hit.

jerseyhoya wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:The Phils are the Rodney Dangerfield of MLB. I guarantee that when the Phils win the WS, all the post-series chatter will focus on how they managed to win almost in spite of themselves.

Welcome to being a Giants fan for the last 9 months. It's about 80% fun, 20% infuriating.

well the giants were average and got lucky so no totally unrelated.

TenuredVulture wrote:Is there a difference between a team designed to do well in the regular season compared to a team designed to do well in the post season?

The obvious difference, one that applies to the Phils, is a crappy 5th starter doesn't hurt you in the playoffs. I would guess you wouldn't worry as much about depth in your pen either. Is there anything else?

I think the media just assumes that if a team has been to the postseason a few times "it is built for the postseason" whereas a relative newcomer is "built for the regular season." But maybe that doesn't apply to the Rays.

TenuredVulture wrote:Is there a difference between a team designed to do well in the regular season compared to a team designed to do well in the post season?

The obvious difference, one that applies to the Phils, is a crappy 5th starter doesn't hurt you in the playoffs. I would guess you wouldn't worry as much about depth in your pen either. Is there anything else?

The bullpen is clearly the biggest issue. Elite relievers are absurdly valuable in the playoffs because of their ability to pitch in bascially every game due to offdays.

The Phillies are 8-2 in the playoffs. Excluding the Moyer start in LA where the Phils were forced to go to the bullpen way early, the bullpen breakdown looks like this for the 9 other games:

Madson and Lidge: 18.3 IP (2 runs)
Everyone else: 6.3 IP

JFLNYC wrote:I'm not even sure it's hate. I think they just can't figure out what to make of the Phils. We've got the last two MVP's, but they both suck. We have only 3 pitchers who are good. The bottom of the order is a black hole. They just can't figure out how we're winning, we're not supposed to win and it's driving them crazy.

...and we ain't the venerable Red Sox.

it comes down to Madson's secret sauce