Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Featured Game: Boston at Philadelphia, 13:35 ET
2. Largely Superfluous Video: Cliff Lee’s May 15th Start
3. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
4. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Boston at Philadelphia, 13:35 ET
Cliff Lee Status Update
Here’s a status update for 33-year-old left-hander Cliff Lee, who starts this afternoon for Philadelphia: 37.0 IP, 26.2% K, 3.1% BB, 61.1% GB, 2.09 SIERA, 61 xFIP-, 1.1 WAR.

Regarding Lee’s Strikeout Rate, Where It’d Rank in Terms of His Career
Regarding Lee’s present strikeout rate, it would represent the best mark of his career were the season to end today. (He posted a 25.9% strikeout rate last season.)

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“In the end,” Thompson wrote, “very few people will remember anything I have done as a baseball player. But hopefully they will remember what kind of person and teammate I am.”

– the Philadelphia Inquirer

For those who missed the Rays and Red Sox game last night, here’s the update: In the bottom of the eighth, moments before a blood-souring hit-by-pitch to Will Rhymes, pinch runner Rich Thompson took over for Luke Scott at second base. Much of the audience was probably — and perhaps rightly — focused on Rhymes.

But at the same time, Thompson standing at second was a spectacle in itself.
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Coming into the 2011 season, Domonic Brown ranked as the fourth-best prospect in all of baseball according to Baseball America. The Philadelphia Phillies had just watched right fielder Jayson Werth depart for greener pastures in Washington and felt confident that Brown was the long-term answer at the position.

A little more than a year later, we’re all left wondering what went wrong.

At age 23, Brown got his second extended look in the big leagues starting in May of 2011. Though some skill at the plate was evident, he ultimately underwhelmed with a .322 wOBA in 210 plate appearances. The league-average wOBA in right field was .334 in 2011, and the struggles on defense could not justify allowing him to work through his growing pains at the big league level — at least, not for a team with legitimate World Series aspirations.

Philadelphia sent Brown back down to Triple-A in August. The only other big league action he saw last season was a brief call-up in late September once rosters expanded and the Triple-A season had already been completed.

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Jonathan Papelbon has been sharp in his debut season with the Phillies thus far. He has allowed just four runs in his first 15 innings of work (2.40 ERA) and continues to blow away hitters, notching 18 strikeouts already. He was unavailable Monday afternoon, though — after throwing the past three nights consecutively, including with a four-run lead in Sunday’s game (+0.01 WPA), Papelbon was unavailable. It was Chad Qualls‘s ninth inning, then, when the Phillies took a 3-1 lead into the ninth against the Astros.

Qualls wouldn’t finish the ninth, as the Astros tied the game behind four hits and nearly took the lead, stranding runners on second and third thanks to Jake Diekman‘s first career strikeout. Hunter Pence picked up Qualls with a walk-off home run in the 10th inning, but with Papelbon making $50 million over the next four years, it’s easy to question Charlie Manuel when he sits in the bullpen as a journeyman reliever blows a save. Is what we saw Monday a theme for the season?

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Heading into the 2008 draft, Baseball America concluded their scouting report on Long Beach State right-hander Vance Worley by saying this:

Command is the primary concern with Worley, not in terms of walks but in quality of pitches and efficiency, as he frequently finds himself in deep counts. With refinement of his secondary offerings, he could develop into a mid-rotation starter in pro ball, but his power arm makes a conversion to the bullpen a solid option.

Worley had struggled in his junior season at LBSU, but had impressed enough in the Cape Cod League the summer before that the Phillies ended up selecting him in the third round of that 2008 draft. After a two start stint in the short-season New York Penn League, he finished he season at low-A Lakewood and pitched pretty well, running a 53/7 K/BB ratio in 61 innings. Of course, as a college pitcher facing a string of teenagers, anything less would have been a significant disappointment.

The Phillies moved him up to Double-A in 2009, a more appropriate level of competition for a guy with his experience. This didn’t go so well. He threw 153 mediocre innings, walked 49 batters, struck out just 100, and gave up 17 home runs on the way to posting a 4.39 FIP and 5.34 ERA. His 15.2% strikeout rate was perhaps the most alarming sign, as guys who don’t miss bats in the minors generally don’t make successful conversions as they climb the ladder.

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Yesterday, it took Los Angeles Dodgers manager Clint Hurdle Don Mattingly* approximately 40 seconds — depending on where you start and stop your timer — to argue The Worst Call of the Season. Meanwhile, in St. Louis, it took the umpiring crew about 2 minutes and 50 seconds to gather in the infield, discuss Carlos Beltran‘s hit, reconvene in their underground video review chamber, and then return to announce a home run.

* All white guys look the same to me.

Getting the calls wrong in baseball takes time. Managers — depending on their personality, the game situation, and the offense — take different amounts of time arguing both bad and good calls. The arguing, for the most part, exists because of uncertainty. My lip-reading skills inform me most arguments follow this general pattern:

Manager: “Did you really see X event?”

Umpire: “Most certainly did I see X event.”

Manager: “That statement you just made right there is tantamount to the excrement of bovines.”

Umpire: “You are ejected.”

Recent evidence suggests, however, that despite these conflicts resulting from close calls, instant replays still take more time than good ol’ fashioned shout-spittin’ matches.

Evidence furthermore suggests that in the time it takes to get in a healthy workout, a normal person could empty approximately ten Squeeze Cheese cans directly into his or her porcine gullet.

Which is to say: Quicker is not always better.

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Given his excellence over the last decade, it’s become difficult to discuss Roy Halladay without merely descending into a list of superlative adjectives.

Indeed, Roy Halladay posted the league’s best WAR (8.2) among pitchers last season. By WAR, he’s been the best pitcher over the last two years, as well. And last three years. And four years. And five. And six. And seven. Really, to find a recent analog to Halladay’s achievement as a pitcher, you have to go back to 1998; over the final 12 years and ca. 2,400 innings of his career, Randy Johnson posted a 73.3 WAR. (Halladay debuted in 1998 himself, and has recorded 70.5 wins in 2554.0 innings since then.)

Given Halladay’s dominance, it’s unusual to find him in a jam of any sort while pitching; however, during last night’s contest against the Giants, something like a jam unfolded for the right-hander.

With Philadelphia leading San Francisco by a score of 5-1 heading into the bottom of the fourth, Halladay allowed consecutive hits to Brandon Belt (single) and Brandon Crawford (double) to start the inning (box). That situation (runners on second and third base with no outs) created a generic run expectancy of 1.79 for the Giants. That accounted not only for Halladay’s highest-allowed run expectancy of the young season, but would have actually been his fifth-highest mark during all of 2011. Over the span of two batters, San Francisco’s win expectancy had risen from 8.4% (at the conclusion of Philly’s half of the fourth) to 20.5%. Even two outs, provided they were of the batted variety, could shrink Philly’s lead by two runs.

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I have been toying around with an idea for pitcher-hitter match-ups based not on prior head-to-head performance or platoon splits, but rather pitch type linear weights.

For those that are unfamiliar, pitch type linear weights basically takes a batter or pitcher’s performance on each type of pitch they throw or face during the year (e.g. four-seam fastball, slider, etc.) and converts that performance into runs created or runs saved relative to average. At FanGraphs, we show both the total runs created or saved for each pitch (e.g. wFB) and a normalized version for the value per 100 pitches thrown (e.g. wFB/C).

I thought it would be interesting to compare the starting pitcher’s pitch type linear weight performance against the lineup he is facing. To do this, I calculated the difference in run value between each pitch type for each starting pitcher and the hitters they might face. The difference is shown in the tables below. Green coding denotes an advantage to the pitcher, while red indicates an advantage for the hitter. I used the normalized version of each pitch type (i.e. run value per 100 pitches thrown/faced) to control for playing time, pitches seen, etc.

The tables below show the match-ups for tonight’s game between the Marlins and Phillies (7:05pm EST) for both Josh Johnson and Roy Halladay:

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It has become a war of attrition at second base in Philadelphia.

On Monday, we heard that Phillies second baseman Chase Utley has plateaued in his rehab. He is not expected to be healthy by Opening Day. To make matters worse, utility infielder Michael Martinez broke a bone in his foot after being struck by a pitch from Orioles’ reliever Jim Johnson on Tuesday afternoon. The 29-year-old Martinez is not projected to be available for Opening Day, either.

So who will handle the keystone duties opposite shortstop Jimmy Rollins to begin the season?

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Last season, Chase Utley opened the season on the disabled list due to knee tendinitis. He would miss 46 games. Now, reports are surfacing at CSN Philadelphia that the 33-year-old second baseman has left Phillies camp to see a specialist for his continually sore knees. It’s now considered “likely” Utley will begin the season on the disabled list, putting the Phillies’ entire infield situation into question.

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With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.

League Trends

To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.

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Shane Victorino has been pretty chatty about his contract lately. He’s said that he wants to stay in Philadelphia and will give the Phillies a “home town discount” in order to keep him, but then yesterday, he noted that his goal is to get a five year extension that would cover his age 32-36 seasons. Victorino’s been an underrated player for a while and has certainly been vital to the Phillies success, but can he really expect to land a five year contract next winter if he hits free agency, as his agents have suggested?

Here are the players that have signed contracts of five years or longer as free agents over the last five years.

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It sounds as if Roy Oswalt should sign sometime this very Thursday. Since you are reading this in the future — which, to you, will feel like the present, but trust me: it’s the future — you may already know of Oswalt’s new team. Don’t gloat.

Instead, let us turn our languid eyes to Oswalt’s future, more specifically, his 2012 projections.

Maybe it is because he has pitched 150 innings in every season since the beginning of the Bush administration — or maybe it is because he played such a prominent role in a successful Houston Astros that seems now so distant from reality — but Roy Oswalt somehow feels ancient. Despite that, he is only a year and change older than Mark Buehrle and a year and one day older than Cliff Lee.

So Oswalt, first of all, is really not old — especially for a pitcher. At the same time, though, he is not necessarily healthy. He hit the DL twice last year and his back problems and his full history of injuries leaves great cause for concern.

Still, the Wizard of Os also ranks among some the best active pitchers. Regard:

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Take the best available player.

That refrain continues to be the draft philosophy espoused by all thirty major league organizations throughout each summer. It does not matter if the player is 18-years-old and in high school or if the player is 21-years-old and in college. Simply evaluate the talent on the field and draft accordingly. As Mariners’ scouting director Tom McNamara stated last June in preparation for the 2011 Draft:

“If we think the high school player is the best player at No. 2, we’ll take the high school guy. If we think it’s a college guy, we’ll take the college guy.” (source)

Seattle eventually selected collegiate left-hander Danny Hultzen with the second pick in the draft. In 2010, Seattle selected prep right-hander Taijuan Walker in the supplemental first round, which happened to be their first and only first-round pick of the draft. The year before, they had three first-round picks and selected one collegiate player and two high school players.

Echoing the best player available approach, the Mariners have not shown preference toward high school or college. In fact, the organization has drafted seven prep players and six collegiate players since the 2000 Draft. Essentially an even split.

All organizations are not like this, though. I gathered all of the first-round draft picks (including the first supplemental round) since the turn of the century, and noticed a few trends that have developed.

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For much of the past decade, the Philadelphia Phillies had one of the best offenses in baseball. But that was not the case last season, and the biggest question facing the Phillies this season is whether the offense rebounds, or continues a regression that could threaten to leave them on the outside of the postseason for the first time in six seasons.

Philadelphia’s offense began to make some noise in 2002 and 2003, and in 2004, the core of their playoff teams began to take shape. Jimmy Rollins, Placido Polanco and Pat Burrell were already on hand to start the season, and then Chase Utley came along in May and Ryan Howard in September. The group would finish in the top six in wOBA in 2004, 2005 and 2006 before punching up to second-best in the game in 2007. By 2007, Shane Victorino was on hand, and ’07 was the season that Jayson Werth stormed onto the scene as well, with a nifty .385 wOBA. That season, their wRC+ of 107 as a team was fourth-highest in the game. It would also be their pinnacle as an offense, as would be their .354 wOBA.

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It is a simple question.

What is sabermetrics?

Not the history of it, but what is it, right now? What is, in our nerdiest of lingoes, its derivative? Where is it pointing? What does it do?

Last Tuesday I created no little stir when I listed the 2012 saber teams, delineating them according to their perceived embrace of modern sabermetrics.

Today, I recognize I needed to take a step back and first define sabermetrics, because it became obvious quickly I did not have the same definition at heart as some of the readers and protesters who gathered outside my apartment.

I believe, and this is my belief — as researcher and a linguist — that sabermetrics is not statistics. The term itself has come to — or needs to — describe more than just on-base percentage, weighted runs created plus, fielding independent pitching, and wins above replacement.

Sabermetrics is the advanced study of baseball, not the burying of one’s head in numbers.
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Silly monkey, BRAINS ARE FOR ZOMBIES.

Casey Kotchman is in many ways a man without a home — a player equal parts under-appreciated and over-valued, who irks both old and new schools at the same time. Old school analysts say his defense is amazing, but they cannot quantify it, and in 2011, they claimed his cleared vision meant he finally learned how to aim the ball “where they ain’t,” but he’s still a .268 hitter with little power. The new school says he’s worth about 7.6 runs per season defensively, but worth ~1.1 WAR per 600 PAs — not good — and his BABIP was high 2011, so he should not be able to repeat his success.

Despite his inability to build a consistent following of fans in the baseball outsiders communities, Kotchman seems to have some insider communities very much interested in him, as Tom Tango points out:

Kotchman’s last four teams: Redsox, Mariners, Rays, Indians. Can we say that a team that signs Kotchman is saber-leaning?

Indeed, after spending five and a half seasons on the Angels’ and Braves’ rosters, Kotchman has begun to shuffle around with the Nerdz, most recently signing with the Cleveland Indians. It makes sense too — Kotchman’s lack of power keeps him cheap, and his strong defense keeps him amorphous for the old school teams, while the new schools might have different valuations on Kotchman, they can at least quantify his contributions and better know how he fits.

Then, on Monday, the Houston Astros signed Justin Ruggiano, long-time Tampa Bay Rays outfielder who was never good enough to stick on the Rays’ roster, but who possesses strong defensive chops and above average patience. His lack of power and ~.290 batting average, however, must make him a mystery — or at least an undesirable asset — to the old school teams.

Upon Ruggiano signing with the Astros, a once highly old school team, my reaction was all: “Welp, that’s one more team to compete with” — and then it occurred to me! No only have the Astros entered the realm of, so to speak, saber-minded organizations, but so have the long-backward Chicago Cubs.

Suddenly the league looks very different.

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This morning I was scrolling through some of Dan Szymborski’s projections over at Baseball Think Factory, and I noticed that he had run a projection for Matt Stairs. I had not heard any news about the guy we all know now as a pinch-hitter. As I scoured the internets (read: typed “Matt Stairs” into Google) I quickly realized that Stairs had retired, though since he will be a studio analyst for NESN this year, all is not lost. Still, it will be disappointing to not see him on the field any longer.

Few pinch hitters struck fear in my heart the way Matt Stairs did. When Stairs came to the plate against a team for which I was rooting, I always sure that something bad was about to happen. Even still, I couldn’t hate him. A portly slugger with a great sense of humor — I will always remember Will Carroll forwarding the Baseball Prospectus email group an email from Stairs with a picture of his flexed calf muscle and promptly doubling over in laughter — Stairs was exceedingly easy to root for, and in the latter, pinch-hitting days of his career he became somewhat of a nerdy folk hero.

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Episode 135
Bill Baer is the proprietor of Phillies internet weblog Crashburn Alley, a volume tweeter, and — of late — author of a real book called 100 Things Phillies Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. Topics discussed: Bobby Abreu, how he’s good; cheesesteaks, how they’re delicious; Domonic Brown, how he’s blocked.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 43 min. play time.)

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Phillies signed Juan Pierre today to a Minor League deal. While the Phillies were wise to take on no risk with the deal, signing Pierre simultaneously makes little sense for the Philes as well as puts another obstacle in the path of Domonic Brown.

In announcing the deal, Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro, Jr. said that Pierre could serve a valuable speed role for the Phils, who didn’t have much speed on their bench last season. What this generally means is that Pierre would serve as a pinch runner. Unfortunately, Pierre, who has long been one of the least efficient basestealers in the game, is ill-equipped to be a late-game weapon.

Last season, Pierre was caught stealing more than any player in the game, and that wasn’t a fluke — over the past three years, Pierre has been caught stealing nine more times than any other player in the game. And while some of that is a function of the fact that he runs so frequently — only Michael Bourn attempted more steals over the same three-year period — it’s not all of it. Of the 160 players who have attempted at least 25 steals over the past three seasons, Pierre’s 72.7% success rate ranks 95th.

That’s not to say that Pierre isn’t a good base runner. While he may be a bit overaggressive in trying to steal bases, he is that way for a reason — he’s fast. Pierre has a positive BsR in every season for which it has been measured, and over the past three seasons, his 14.4 BsR is third-best in the game. That’s all well and good, but it’s also likely a quality that either has little value or is redundant on the current Phillies roster, take your pick. Hunter Pence and Shane Victorino certainly don’t need to be pinch run for. Laynce Nix isn’t a burner, but he has generated neutral or positive BsR scores throughout his career.

Looking at the infield, the story is much the same. Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins aren’t going to get taken out of the lineup for a runner, and while Placido Polanco, Ty Wigginton or Jim Thome aren’t the fleetest of foot, you would need to get Michael Martinez or John Mayberry into the game afterwards if you bring in Pierre to run for them. Catchers are always easy to run for, but managers are also usually loathe to leave themselves without a catcher on the bench. There will be opportunities to pinch hit for the pitcher, but are you really going to pinch hit Pierre? Jim Thome will be the primary pinch hitter du jour against right-handers, and while Pierre has hit better against lefties the past four years, Wigginton is still probably the better option. Again, Thome and Wigginton aren’t the swiftest duo in the Majors, but pinch hitting one of them and then inserting Pierre as a pinch runner if they reach burns two of the team’s four bench players who aren’t the backup catcher in one move. That doesn’t leave much wiggle room, especially for a National League team.

Adding Pierre also makes little sense because the Phillies roster was already pretty chockfull. Assuming that there are 13 slots for position players, the Phillies lineup looks as such:

Catchers: Carlos Ruiz, Brian Schneider
Infielders: Ryan Howard (DL), Michael Martinez, Placido Polanco, Jimmy Rollins, Jim Thome, Chase Utley, Ty Wigginton
Outfielders: John Mayberry, Laynce Nix, Hunter Pence, Juan Pierre, Shane Victorino

This is where the Phils get a little extra credit for keeping the deal to a Minor League one. If you were counting, you noticed 14 names. In other words, when Howard returns — which could happen as early as May — someone on the above list will need to go. It seems like a good bet that that person would be Pierre.

Of course, the real crime here is that one of the 14 names you didn’t read on the above list was Brown’s. With Raul Ibanez leaving for … something, it was thought that Brown would get a chance to garner substantially more playing time. In his time in the Majors last year, Brown put up league-average offensive numbers. He put up the same wOBA as did Nix, and bested Pierre by 28 points. Perhaps that’s not much to hang your hat on — after all, it was only 210 plate appearances — but you have to start somewhere. Brown posted his best BB% and K% since A ball, the latter of which was likely a concern after his 2010 cup of coffee. He didn’t go all Brett Lawrie on National League pitchers, but he wasn’t atrocious either. He deserved a shot at more Major League playing time, but now if he hopes to get any, he will have to get hot in March. And that still might not be enough.

Perhaps the most telling thing about Pierre’s signing is that the Phillies may only need him for the first six weeks of the season. Given the choice between keeping Brown on the Major League roster and giving him a chance to work his way into regular playing time while Howard is out or signing someone else, the Phils chose to sign someone else. Even if Pierre stays with the Phils for the duration of the season, his value is limited due to the fact that he is not an efficient base stealer, as well as the fact that the Phillies have few players for whom he can pinch run without Charlie Manuel having to burn a second player after the inning ends. Finally, bringing in Pierrer also throws another road block onto Brown’s already cluttered road to regular playing time. Like many of the Phillies’ moves this offseason, signing Pierre probably doesn’t make the Phillies any worse, but it is also unlikely to make them any better.