The 2013 Phillies at the Break

Roy Halladay started 7 games and racked up an 8.65 ERA in 34.1 innings before heading to the DL for shoulder surgery.

Ryan Howard played 80 mostly ineffective games (probably half of which were played on a torn meniscus), batted 4^th, hit 11 home runs in 286 at bats, and slugged just .465 before hitting the DL for knee surgery.

Cole Hamels has come on of late, but he managed to rack up 11 losses before July and seemed to lack control and composure on his way to finishing his first half with a 5 and – excuse me Jonathan Papelbon blew Hamels’ latest win – 4-11 record with a 4.05 ERA.

Although it has settled down some in the past few weeks, the Phils much beleaguered bullpen is the worst in the NL with a 4.39 ERA. The bullpen is also dead last in batting average against (.270), and WHIP (1.50). The other stat they are dead last in is innings pitched, which is technically first so those terrible stats are at least being employed for the least amount of game time in the NL.

The highest paid reliever in the game, the aforementioned Papelbon, seemed untouchable through his first 25 appearances this season. Then, all of a sudden, he seemed to have lost his mojo and blew 4 saves in an 8 day stretch. That’s pretty hard to do. He recovered to save 6 straight from the end of June until the last day of the break but he then managed to blow that game. At least he kept it tied and the Phils pulled it out in the 10^th.

That’s the lowlights of the bad and the ugly of the first half.

Despite all that, the Phillies are in a markedly better position than they were last year at the All-Star Break. They finished a 10 game home stand on Sunday with a 7-3 tally to compile a .500 record of 48-48. The Atlanta Braves jumped out to a 12-1 record (That only loss was to the Phils.) to start the season and have played .500 ball ever since. They hold a 6.5 game lead over the Phillies and a 6 game lead over the Washington Nationals.

If you’ll indulge me and give this link a click, you’ll see that last year’s Phillies squad, as you probably remember, was in a far worse position than this year’s version. That team last year was 13 games below .500 at the break and the Nats ran away from everybody to win the division, so the deficit was 14 games at the break in 2012. Of course, as my biggest critic and steadfastly avid sabermatrician enthusiast Mike Rumbaugh would say, last year has absolutely no bearing on this year. Nevertheless, it’s still nice to see the Phils are in a better spot than they were last year.

So with arguably the three most important players on the team throwing stink bombs onto the diamond in the first half, you have to wonder how the Phillies managed to keep themselves in contention through the first 96 games?

The highlights of the first half:

Dom Brown has emerged! Dom enters the break with a by far team high 23 home runs, a team high 67 RBI, and has added value in left field with a plus arm that has been throwing out plenty of runners looking for an extra base. He is an All-Star and he belongs. During a 12 game stretch from the end of May to early June, Dom swatted 10 home runs and earned back-to-back player of the week honors as well as NL Player of the Month in May. He is now the man in the cleanup spot and he looks comfortable being there.*

Cliff Lee is back to being Cliff Lee. Lee went 10-3 in the first half and enjoyed a 12 game stretch without taking a loss until his final start before the break. He has a 2.86 ERA and is 3^rd in the NL in innings pitched with 138.2 innings while striking out 125. When Cliff is scheduled to start that day you feel good about the team’s chances. He pounds the strike zone like you wouldn’t believe, almost to a fault actually. In his recent loss he threw 50 strikes in his first 58 pitches. That’s wild. He will join Dom Brown in Queens for the All-Star Game.

What’s next hurts.

Ben Revere has been stellar at the plate. That’s saying an awful lot for a guy who has 336 plate appearances this year and has yet to hit a home run (He’s at 1400 all time plate appearances without one, for those waiting for Benny to jerk one down the line.) Revere was playing himself out of the lineup during the first month of the season, but since May 1^st he has been the table setter for this offense. It just seems like when he comes up for his third or fourth at bat he has one or two hits, damn near every game. Once he gets on he’s a constant threat to steal and causes havoc with his speed. His consistent hitting and speed made you accept the fact that he probably is ranked 2 out of 10 for arm and power in video games.  During the past 2 plus months he’s hitting close to .400 and has his overall average up to a team high .305 while racking up another team high of 22 steals.

Just when the fan base was really starting to turn the tide on the thinking of the Revere acquisition Benny went and fouled one off his foot, breaking it. Ouch! In many different ways. He had surgery today and is scheduled to miss 8 weeks.

So, like I said, it hurts.

Moving on to my keys for the second half:

**Captain Obvious Alert** The Phillies win when they score 4 or more runs. They are 35-12, that’s damn near .750 ball, in games when the score 4 or more runs. The caveat is that they have been scoring that many with more frequency since June 1. In their first 55 games they scored 4 or more 24 times or 43.6% of the time. In those games they went 18-6. In the 41 games they have played since June 1, they have scored 4 or more 23 times or 56.1% of the time. In those games they went 17-6. This is obviously a pretty simple concept, and the Phillies made a living of winning divisions by averaging over 4.5 runs a game year after year, but when you have an offense that catches as much grief from fans, writers, pundits, and part-time bloggers like myself it’s nice to shut your critics up a bit with a sustained period of above average offense.

They’ve been doing this by committee for the most part. Dom Brown has hit 23 home runs but no one else on the team has more than 11. Howard is second with 43 RBI. It seems like every one on the team is capable of getting a big hit on any given night, but certainly not with much frequency.

At this point the pitching staff includes a litany of unproven talent and proven mediocrity starring Jonathan Pettibone, John Lannan, and a struggling of late Kyle Kendrick as starters. Couple that with a bullpen that has regulars of an always adventurous if not effective Antonio Bastardo, Justin De Fratus, Jeremy Horst, as well as new edition JC Ramirez and the offense will still need to produce like they have for the past 40 games.

With Revere going down, the Phillies will really need to lean on the guys who have done it before to pick up the slack. Jimmy Rollins has hit 4 home runs this year after hitting 23 a season ago. He has been the subject of plenty of ire of late for continuing to do the things that every one dislikes, swinging early in at-bats, popping up in the infield, and not hustling on ground balls. He still gets it done in the field with the best of them, but the hitting for extra bases and power needs to start happening in the second half for the Phillies to contend.

Chase Utley has to be circa 2007-2009 Chase Utley. Can it still happen?

My take is that the Phillies have at the very least put themselves in the position to make a move for the playoffs with 66 games remaining even with more going wrong than right. At the start of the 2012 season all of us would have been disgusted if we were told that the Phillies missed the 2012 playoffs and had played to a dead even 127-127 record in a little over a season and a half. These Phillies were built to last with the pitching they had amassed, they couldn’t possibly fall off like this. The new faces that go with Utley, Rollins, Hamels and Chooch have earned the chance to not have this team dismantled with their play in the first half despite endless rumblings from every one who had an opinion. They should be laying pride on the line for the next 3 months as they have to be thinking that this will be their last shot with the core group still intact. Needless to say.. I’ll be following along so I hope you will too.




**Addendum for the stat geeks like me**

Here's a little show and tell on how the offense is stacking up compared to the last two years at the break. Their NL rank is in parentheses.

2011:      Avg.         HR          R               SLG              OPS           

         .250 (10)      78 (9)     4.0 (9)       .382 (9)       .705 (8)

2012:      Avg.         HR           R              SLG              OPS

         .262 (4)        84 (9)     4.2 (7)       .403 (9)       .719 (9)

2013:      Avg.         HR           R              SLG              OPS
          .257 (5)       90 (5)     3.9 (10)      .402 (6)       .714 (5)


Here's a hey-day year just so you can reminisce on the good old days. This is a full season as opposed to numbers at the break which are above.

2007:   Avg.            HR            R              SLG             OPS
        .274 (5)        213 (2)      5.5 (2)      .458 (1)        .812 (1)


Alas..

*I hold a little skepticism about this but I can’t voice that in the main column.