Phillies

In a situation which brings no pressure whatsoever, lefty J.A. Happ makes his first big league start of the season tonight in Philadelphia versus the rival New York Mets and a pretty good lefty pitcher named Johan Santana.

Happ was brilliant for AAA Lehigh Valley in June; the Phillies surely hope he can continue his hot streak a few miles south on the Northeast Extension.

The Mets currently sit 4.5 games behind the Phillies in the standings, and could sit just a half game back in the event of a sweep...

Happy 4th, go have some hot dogs.

 

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The Phillies go for their second road sweep of the Atlanta Braves this season, with young lefty Cole Hamels taking the mound against even younger righty Jair Jurrjens.

In the past two games, the Phillies have scored late-game runs which have put the games away, and last night proved especially important, as two errors by Ryan Howard allowed the tying run to come to the place in the person of the always dangerous Mark Teixeira.

Brooms out, fellas.

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            For many years, it has been well documented that home teams win baseball games more often than road teams.  In fact, from 1977-2008, home teams have won 54.0% of all baseball games—a .080 percentage point advantage.  Some teams have larger advantages than others, as documented by Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus in a recent article (http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=7732), and looking through this data, the variance between teams’ winning percentages is large (by my calculations, the standard deviation of .046).  There are a number of reasons that home teams could have an advantage in games, and it may be that a larger than usual discrepancy between winning percentage at home and winning percentage on the road could be an indicator of either a team’s skill at taking advantage of homefield advantage or eliminating their opponents’ skill at taking advantage of their own.  It could also be a random correlation that is not based on any particularly characteristic of a team, but instead on other factors altogether.  This area of baseball research is a significant one-- being able to understand what is behind homefield advantage has the potential to help teams in both team building and individual game preparation.

            The first question that we need to check is if certain teams are more prone to homefield advantage by chance or by luck.  To check this, I computed the correlation between a team’s home field advantage in different pairs of years (as measured by the difference in winning percentage at home and on the road).  I found the following correlations.

 

YRS.	’07&’06	’07&’05	’07&’04	’06&’05	’06&’04	’05&’04
Corr.	.196	.072	.162	-.060	-.190	-.060

 

            It appears as though homefield advantage is not a persistent thing—the Phillies have not squandered homefield advantage and the Rays have not capitalized on it for any specific reason and there is no reason to expect that the Phillies will have a weaker homefield advantage next year than the Rays.

            So what does cause homefield advantage and can teams learn to exploit it—or keep other teams from exploiting their own?  For one thing, the correlation in between winning percentage and homefield advantage is strongly negative, -.190, and significant at the 97% confidence level!  That means that there is only a 3% chance of getting a value so far away from 0 by random chance.  In other words, homefield advantage probably entails a disability on the road more than an advantage at home.

 

WHEN DOES HOMEFIELD ADVANTAGE SET IN?

 

            The first thing that I checked was the odds of the home team winning a tie game at the beginning of each inning.  This helped establish some ideas about the timing of when homefield advantage takes place.

 

Tie Game—inning #	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	Extras
Home Win Pct.	.540	.533	.533	.525	.529	.522	.520	.521	.522	.520

 

I have a few observations when looking at this table.  Firstly, homefield advantage declines as the game goes on and it remains tied.  That means that the homefield advantage clearly takes place during the game from the start.  It helps teams establish leads early and acquire them late.  Another thing that is clear is that tie games in the 9^th inning are still won by the home team over 52% of the time.  If being able to bat last at the end of the game were not an advantage at all, that number would be much closer to 50%-- instead it is halfway between that and the 54% homefield winning percentage at the beginning of the game.  Therefore, I have to conclude that the opportunity to bat last at the end of the game is an advantage.  Another thing that is worth noting is the huge drop off between the 1^st and 2^nd inning as compared with any other consecutive innings.  This leads me to believe that there is a first inning advantage.  In Silver’s article, he wonders if National League teams might have larger homefield advantages since they are able to pinch-hit for their pitcher in the bottom of the inning and get one more inning out of him in advance.  However, this table indicates that there is no large drop off in the 6^th-8^th innings when the pitcher is usually pinch hit for, so this probably does not have much of an effect.

 

WHAT DOES THE HOME TEAM ACTUALLY DO BETTER?

 

            In my opinion, the most important and interesting question is what home teams actually do better at home.  Do they field better?  Do they hit for more power?  As it turns out, the answer is pretty much all of the above and much more.  Using data from 2003 through June 29, 2008, I checked a variety of ratios and found significant differences in many.

 

Statistic	Home	Away	%Difference	Statistical Significance?
HR/100PA	3.18	3.06	5.75	Strong
K/100PA	16.28	17.26	-5.69	Strong
BB/100PA	8.76	8.20	6.90	Strong
BABIP	.304	.298	2.19	Strong
CG SHO/100 BIP	1.52	0.95	59.84	Strong
ROE/100 BIP	1.43	1.35	5.86	Strong
SB%	72.2	70.8	2.01	Strong
HBP/100PA	0.974	0.934	4.30	Strong
3B/100BIP	0.759	0.640	18.61	Strong
2B/100BIP	6.919	6.853	3.807	Not
Picked off/100 baserunners	0.487	0.518	-6.06	Strong

 

The fact that homeruns, batting average on balls in play, reaching on error, and complete shutouts are significant indicates that hitters, fielders, and pitchers probably receive an advantage from homefield advantage. 

The statistical significance of walks and strikeouts were particularly strong.  This means that homefield advantage works its way into the strike zone, and not simply onto the field.  While it is not particularly surprising that hitters both get more hits on balls in the field of play, and reach on errors more often, it is important to notice that the difference takes place even in the strike zone where the homefield itself is not necessarily part of the homefield advantage.  Some of this could be familiarity with the mound or batter’s box.  However, it may be that umpires are even biased.  The fact that there is an improvement in stolen base percentage at home would lend some credibility to this theory.  However, it may be that even the basepaths are more familiar to baserunners and that could explain some of this as well. The lack of pickoffs by home teams can probably be explained by some of the same logic.

            The statistical significance of triples but not doubles is particularly interesting to me.  A few weeks ago, the Phillies played a home game against the Red Sox in which slowfooted Pat Burrell and Ryan Howard each had triples—initially, the odds of these each happening in the same game given their triples/game for their recent careers seemed to be one in 40,000.  My observation watching the game was that both balls were misplayed by Jacob Ellsbury due to the fact that he did not know where the wall was and how the ball would bounce off of it.  I believe that this anecdote explains a lot of triples—many are misplayed doubles—and it indicates why home teams have 18.61% more triples than road teams.  I believe that the statistical insignificance of the difference in doubles is a result of many balls that would have been doubles in some circumstances turning into triples due to road teams’ unfamiliarity with the field.

            I’m particularly surprised that home teams are more likely to be hit by pitches than road teams.  If anybody has any ideas why that may be, I would love to know what they are. 

            There are a few pieces of data that I would love to check that I was unable to check related to this.  One is groundball BABIP vs. flyball BABIP.  Do both of these exhibit homefield advantage?  This could help establish what types of things are occurring on the field that cause homefield advantage.  Another thing that would be very interesting is to check if umpires make more mistakes on balls and strikes in favor of home teams.  If they do not, it is unlikely they make biased calls about whether a player is safe or out.  If it seems that pitchers have a homefield advantage, then it would be interesting to compare their velocity at home and on the road.

 

INTERLEAGUE AND INTERDIVISION HOMEFIELD ADVANTAGE

 

            Looking through the data above, it’s hard to doubt that homefield advantage affects nearly all aspects of a player’s game.  Whether they are trying to hit for power, average, steal, field, or pitch, baseball players do it better at home.  The question about why still remains somewhat unanswered.  I have split games into a variety of categories and checked homefield advantage in each of them.   Keep in mind that home teams win 54% of games—a winning percentage of approximately .080 more than away teams.  If homefield advantage were exclusively related to location and playing field, then one would expect there to be little difference between homefield advantage in interleague games and non-interleague games.  This is not the case.  From 1998-2008, winning percentages of home teams in interleague games are .101 higher than road teams in interleague games; winning percentages of home teams in non-interleague games are only .077 higher than road teams in non-interleague games.  This is a statistically significant difference.  Part of the reason that interleague games may exhibit larger homefield advantage is the existence of the DH in American League parks, but not in National League parks.  Teams in each league construct their benches differently according to whether there is a DH in their league’s games, and National League pitchers may hit better as well.

            National League home teams have a different environment than American League home teams in that the existence of pitchers (who rarely finish games) in the NL lineups may affect homefield advantage.  Since the inception of the DH in 1973, National League home teams’ winning percentage is .081 higher than that of road teams and American League home teams exceed road teams by .076.  That is notable but not statistically significant.  (For most of this, I am using 1998-2008 data.  The same test with those numbers is similar: .078 homefield advantage in NL games, and .072 homefield advantage in AL games.)

            If we want divide non-interleague games into intra-division and inter-division games, a statistically significant difference emerges: homefield advantage is smaller in division rivalries.  Home winning percentages are only .067 higher than road winning percentages within a division, but are .082 higher in games between teams in different divisions.  This is not a small finding—whatever it is that makes players hit, field, and pitch poorer away from their home turf does not hurt them as severely when they play teams in their own division.  This could be a factor of at least two (and probably more) causes—travel distance and familiarity.  In Silver’s article, he notes that homefield advantage was stronger before World War II when transportation was worse, and especially stronger for teams who played further from the rest of the league.  The discrepancy between homefield advantage in and out of the division hints that some of this effect may be present.  However, players who play in their division rival’s stadium nine teams a year will eventually get very used to the field.  I have little doubt that AL East leftfielders know how to play a ball off the Green Monster better than NL West leftfielders.

            The next thing I did was divide interleague games into those against teams in the same division (i.e. AL West vs. NL West).  Despite the overall .101 homefield advantage since 1998 in interleague games, interleague same-division games had a smaller homefield advantage of only .079.  When I divided this group into teams that had played each other 20 or more times and teams that had played each other less than 20 or more times, the difference was staggering—teams that played each other more frequently had only a .059 homefield advantage and teams that played each other less frequently had only a .092 homefield advantage.  There are two notable comparisons here—one is that the sometimes-manufactured interleague rivalries (Mets/Yankees, Padres/Mariners, Reds/Indians) have smaller homefield advantage than teams that actually play each other more often.  These teams play each other less often than typical division rivalries within the same league, which exhibit a .067 homefield advantage during the same time period.  Certainly, this could be attributed to both shorter travel time (Queens is further from Miami than the Bronx) for the teams, and shorter travel time for the fans.  The closer teams are, the more likely it is that fans will travel to root for the away team and this may have some effect on players.   The other thing that’s worth noting is that the .092 homefield advantage of interleague games of non-"rivals" teams in matching divisions is larger than the .082 homefield advantage of interdivision games in the same league.  This gives strength to the argument that homefield advantage is also based on familiarity of stadiums or the existence of the DH in AL parks.

 

HOMEFIELD ADVANTAGE AT A NEW HOME

 

            If stadium familiarity is so essential in causing homefield advantages, then one might expect to observe a difference when teams change stadiums.  This effect could go in either direction—a team may have less familiarity with its own park and not have as strong an advantage, or opponents may have never played in the park before and this lack of experience could add to the homefield advantage, as the home nine have relatively more experience with their new parks.  Three teams have always played in the same stadium (Rays, Marlins, Diamondbacks), and three teams have played in the same stadium for far longer than any other teams (Yankees, Red Sox, and Cubs).  Due to lack of information in the first case, and biased data in the second case, I removed those from the analysis (though including them had little effect on the results).

 

Year	Homefield Advantage	Average League Homefield Advantage in that year
Last year in old stadium	.087	.073
First year in new stadium	.081	.070
Second year in new stadium	.085	.073
Third year in new stadium	.050	.077

 

These differences are notable, but none of them are statistically significant.  I have to assume that despite the bizarrely small homefield advantage in the third year of a stadium’s existence, there is not much of an effect the third year in.  There was not enough data to establish statistically significance here, so the only cause I can think of is that the lure of a new stadium is smaller after a couple years and fans may have less affect on outcomes after a while, but I find that doubtful.  It is worth nothing that in the year after switching stadiums, homefield advantage is smaller.  If the main reason behind homefield advantage was fan enthusiasm, one might expect homefield advantage to grow significantly upon switching stadiums.  Keep in mind that the last year of a stadium’s existence is not a random sample though—teams frequently move because their stadiums are falling apart and home teams may be able to play funny bounces in crumbling stadiums particularly better than their opponents.

            Overall, the new stadium effect seemed to produce comparatively little in the way of interesting results.

 

MARGIN OF VICTORY AND TOTAL RUNS SCORED

 

            The last thing I checked was which kinds of outcomes are more affected by homefield advantage.  This is tricky to study as there is a huge censoring bias--- as games stop when the home team has scored more in the 9^th inning or extra innings, home teams do not have the ability to tack on runs in their final inning.  It is unsurprising that for each of 2003-2008, the Runs Created formula overestimated home team runs scored by more than it did for road team runs scored.  Using games from 1978-2008, the most clearly biased result due to censoring is home teams’ winning percentage in one-run games: .611.  Clearly, if the rules dictated that teams continue to chip away after walk-off hits, presumably some of these one-run home victories would be two-run and three-run victories.  Home winning percentage in two-run, three-run, four-run, five-run, and six-run games were .508, .508, .512, .509, and .510, respectively.

            I then compared home winning percentage in games with larger-than-four-run margin of victories and compared it to four-run-or-less margin victories.  The former was .513 and the latter was .550.  Dividing the data similarly into larger-than-eight run margin victories and eight-or-less produced winning percentages of .519 and .541, respectively.  All of these are statistically significant differences.  It appears clear that homefield advantage has a larger effect on close games than on blowouts, even accounting for the censoring bias that the home team stops scoring when they have won—it is unlikely that home teams would have scored that many more runs in the bottom of the 9^th to produce such a discrepancy in winning percentage.

            I also checked whether high-scoring or low-scoring games had a larger homefield advantage. 

 

TOTAL COMBINED RUNS SCORED	1-5	6-10	11-15	16-20
WINNING PERCENTAGE	.567	.543	.525	.504

 

Homefield advantage is seemingly larger in low-scoring games.

 

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH

 

            This is clearly just a starting point for future research.  There is a lot of information here, but there is a lot more to acquire.  If travel negatively affects players’ performance, then it would be interesting to check how home teams fared in the first game of a series as compared with later games in a series—especially for teams who were already at home for previous series.  I was unable to obtain this data, however.  If anybody knows how to acquire it, I would appreciate some guidance.  I also believe that there is a lot of work to be done with Pitch F/X data, but I am not adept at using this, so I would suggest that others research this.  It would be interesting to check umpire accuracy, pitch velocity, and groundball/flyball/line drive data for both hitters and pitchers and compare them at home and away.

           

In summary, I have made the following observations and conclusions.

 

1. There is no persistence in which teams have larger homefield advantages
2. Weaker teams have larger homefield advantage—or more likely, disadvantage away from home
3. Homefield advantage sets in particularly during the first and last innings
4. Home teams succeed at
   1. Hitting more homeruns
   2. Striking out less
   3. Walking more
   4. Getting hits on balls in play
   5. Pitching complete game shutouts
   6. Allowing fewer runners to reach on error
   7. Stealing bases more successfully
   8. Getting hit by more pitches
   9. Hitting triples
   10. NOT especially at hitting doubles, but at hitting extra base hits on balls in play overall
   11. Picking off opponents’ runners
5. The largest homefield advantage in order occurs from largest to smallest in:
   1. Interleague cross-division games
   2. Interleague same-division games between non-“rivals”
   3. Non-interleague cross-division games
   4. Non-interleague same-division games
   5. Interleague “rivals” games
6. There is no strong tendency to gain or lose homefield advantage when moving stadiums—but a very slight tendency to lose homefield advantage (though statistically insignificant)
7. Home teams have more success in close games than blowouts
8. Home teams have more success in low-scoring games

The Phils go for two in a row in this rematch of the last game before The Sucking began. R.J. Swindle in da hizzy; Werth/Coste in the lineup. This game also begins a stretch of, I think, five straight in which yours truly won't be around, so play nice. 

 

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To replace Brett Myers, the Phillies called up RJ Swindle today.  Yup, the RJ Swindle that has become a Good Phight favorite.  The RJ Swindle who throws a curve in the low 50s and a fastball in the mid 80s.  The RJ Swindle that did a great interview with us earlier this year.

I know I speak for all of the Good Phight writers and readers wishing RJ the best of luck in the big leagues.  His minor league performance has been outstanding.  Even with a few rocky performances in early June, RJ comes to the Phillies after posting a 1.93 ERA with the IronPigs and a 0.54 ERA with the Reading Phils.  All told this year, his minor league numbers are sickening:  1.35 ERA in 40 innings pitched, a 48:6 strikeout to walk ratio, and a 0.85 WHIP.  After being jerked around by a couple other organizations, RJ certainly has earned his big league invite.

Go get 'em RJ!

Jimmy's MVP award was definitely a debatable topic.  He had great counting numbers, but his rates were good, but not great.  I am not going to deny him what was a truely great year for him.  However, that was last year and this is this year.  I think we can all grasp that concept.  Yeah, Jimmy was hurt, but does that excuse his average play so far this year? 

Rollins has the following line:

.267 BA

.331 OBP

.432 SLG

.763 OPS

He ended last year with this line:

.296 BA

.344 OBP

.531 SLG

.875 OPS

He has tailed off in all categories, but his power is ridiculously down by 100 points. 

Looking at his career, the .531 SLG may be the anomoly and not the rule.

2008: .432 (-99)

2007: .531 (+53)

2006: .478 (+47)

2005: .431 (-24)

2004: .455 (+68)

2003: .387 (+7)

2002: .380 (-39)

2001: .419

He didn't have much power when he came up, but appeared to be developing it as he approached his peak years.  His IsoP (Isolated Power) really bumped up in 2006 to .200 up from being in the middling .100s.  He gave it another nice bump last year to .235 before dropping back down to 2004 levels at .165 this year. 

What does that say for the rest of the year?  Well, probably that we can expect a decent power surge from Rollins compared to what we have seen.  Will we see him slugging over .500 at year's end?  Probably not.  I think he may be able to slug about .485-.500 for the rest of the year which could put his year end SLG in the .450 - .460 range.  I have never been a huge fan of Rollins, primarily because of his low OBP.  But his high SLG is definitely a benefit at his position and if the Phils are to continue to lead the NL East, we will need Rollins to increase the 2B/3Bs as well as the HRs a notch and I think he will.

Back to the NL, where the pursuers are drooling. The last series the Phillies won was in Atlanta, more than three weeks ago; maybe the return visit that begins tonight will inspire them to stop, y'know, sucking. A rookie pitcher named Charlie Morton starts for the Braves; Larry Jones Jr. is sidelined with a quad injury and might be bound for the disabled list soon.

To Triple-A. He'll start Wednesday night for the Iron Pigs. Very interesting.

Myers had to agree to the assignment, and did so. Pat Gillick offers praise:

"I can't say enough about Brett's willingness to accept this assignment," Phillies GM Pat Gillick said. "He understood and is eager to get back on track again."

No word on how the Phils will reshuffle their rotation, but my guess is that Hamels will start Thursday in Atlanta and J.A. Happ will get called up to face the Mets on Friday.

Fun/painful fact: Myers, a six-year veteran in the majors, is younger than all but three (Blackley, Happ, Swindle) of the pitchers on Lehigh Valley's roster.

It's true, we suck.  Yesterday, I was listening to Chase talk about his first AB after he had his grand slam homerun as his first hit.  The Phils were up big, he struck out and people booed him.  Now, I have no idea if that is what happened or if he just remembered that as happening, but does it matter?  It just matters what he thinks. 

Taking this sa step further, BaseballProspectus.com tallied up the home winning percentages of all teams in MLB since 2004.  Here is the chart:

 

Team  HomeW% RoadW%  Diff

TBA     .516    .340     .177

MIL     .569    .394     .175

BOS     .655    .508     .147

COL     .530    .385     .146

TOR     .558    .419     .139

PIT     .500    .371     .129

SLN     .572    .450     .122

HOU     .572    .455     .117

SEA     .507    .391     .116

TEX     .556    .443     .113

NYA     .645    .537     .107

ATL     .585    .481     .104

MIN     .586    .494     .092

CIN     .508    .418     .090

LAN     .554    .466     .088

KCA     .428    .346     .082

OAK     .575    .501     .073

CHN     .549    .479     .070

CHA     .568    .499     .070

CLE     .558    .496     .062

ARI     .490    .429     .062

NYN     .548    .492     .057

FLO     .515    .463     .052

SDN     .541    .496     .045

DET     .523    .479     .044

SFN     .496    .460     .036

LAA     .591    .559     .031

BAL     .478    .448     .029

PHI     .544    .530     .014

That's right, the Phillies have the WORST homefield advantage in all of baseball.  In fact they are practically playing with no homefield advantage.  How is this possible, especially with our new park?  Are we that bad at home, or are we just that good on the road?  BP suggests that it may be due to our fans. 

" It’s also funny to see the Phillies at the bottom of the list when half the time their fans seem to be rooting against them."

I don't even know how to even argue that point.  It could possibly be true, but hardly any evidence points to it (well, other than testimonies like Chase Utley's).  I actually think it has more to do with management than anything.  I'll give credit where credit is due and while they are bumbling oafs up there, we did get to the playoffs last year and have been a consistently above average team for most of the decade.  Enough with the faint praise, the biggest problem with the management is not taking advantage of the talent that is here.  Slight upgrades get us nothing and bone headed moves keep us running in place.

I need to find other reasons why this has occurred.  Maybe it is the fans, but maybe we are missing something. 

Here is my #1 reason:

Moving back the left field wall.  Might be one of the stupidest decisions in the history of this team.  Our left fielder is a right handed power hitter and slow.  So, what do we do, we make it HARDER for him to hit homeruns and give him MORE ground to cover as well.  Are you kidding me?  This move has prompted Burrell to be replaced in the late innings and has likely hurt this team more than his defense would have.  What could possess this franchise to move the wall back when it clearly benefits their player more than any other.

What else?

LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!!

Chase Utley and Ryan Howard showed glimpses of their former (true?) selves last night, smacking home runs off Space Cadet Vicente Padilla, and the bullpen held on by its fingertips as the Phils won 8-6.

Tonight we have Rangers rookie Eric Hurley squaring off against former Texas Ranger Jamie Moyer.  Hurley was 3 years old when Moyer joined the Rangers.  Moyer is coming off a game last week against Oakland where he struck out nine batters in under seven innings, but lost 5-2 after a seventh inning meltdown.

Hopefully the Phils' lineup can feast on Hurley, a righty who has surrendered three home runs in 17 innings pitched this season.  And by me typing that, I have condemned us to a thrilling 7 inning, 4 hit, 1 ER performance.

Be good, kids.

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A few weeks ago, in my fluke-or-not series, I assessed that Brett Myers’ performance was merely a fluke and that it would probably turn around.  I’m not quite ready to assume that he’s done after all, but his numbers have gotten uglier and I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t more to this.

There are certainly still indicators that he has been unlucky.  His HR/Flyball is still at an impossibly high 20.2%.  I’m pretty sure that the average major league hitter couldn’t do much better than that in a homerun derby.  That number should be lower, and even though Myers’ career HR/Flyball is a very high 15.5%, pitchers supposedly have little control over this statistic, and a pitcher playing half his time at CBP should expect that number to be around 12.5%.  His BABIP is only at .307, which is only .009 higher than his career BABIP.  His K/BB is down to 2.0 now, despite being around 3.0-3.1 for the last three years.  That seems mostly due to a decrease in BB than an increase in K. 

The question of how much of Myers’ ERA can be attributed to luck depends on what you consider luck.  His ERA itself is at 5.84.  There are a couple typical measures of ERA that try to eliminate luck.  One is FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching); the other is QERA (Quick ERA).  FIP uses K/9, BB/9, and HR/9.  By this measure, Myers’ ERA should be 5.84.  That’s exact—no luck according to that measure, just terrible pitching.  QERA uses K%, UIBB%, and GB%.  According to this measure, Myers’ ERA should be 4.38.  According to that measure, his decline has mostly been due to luck.  The key difference is whether pitchers control HR/FB.  So, does Myers control his?

 

The conversation throughout much of this season has been whether Myers is throwing slower.  Fangraphs.com now keeps track of pitch speed.  Myers has been averaging 89.9 MPH on his fastball this year, down from 91.4 MPH during 2005 and 2006, the last two years that he has been starter.  That is a statistically significant difference, no matter how I calculate it.  Some have said that maybe he is hurt, which certainly is possible—he’s been hurt before—but Dubee was quoted in the paper a month or two ago saying that he thought the problem was that Myers wasn’t throwing long toss between starts.  Magically, Myers’ speed went up significantly the next start.  It does seem from looking at Gameday during games that his speed varies a lot from fastball to fastball, and so it’s possibly a mechanical issue.  Perhaps he’s hurt, or perhaps it’s mental. 

Certainly, the slower fastball might have something to do with the higher HR/Flyball.  However, I’m not sure if that would make flyballs more likely to leave the park rather than make hitters more likely to hit flyballs.  His groundball rate is at 44.2% this year, definitely lower than his career 47.0% rate, but his rates for 2005-2007 have only been at 46.3%, 45.6%, and 45.8%.  His groundball rate is therefore lower this year, but probably not by a statistically significant amount.

If Myers’ problems are mental, then I would guess that his splits would show this.  There would probably be situations where he is more likely to be vulnerable.

Brett’s ERA is 3.81 at home, and 8.18 on the road this year.  In his career, he has only a 4.23/4.75 disadvantage on the road.  The reason for this does seem to be more than bad luck.  His K% is 13.25% on the road this year, despite a career 18.19% rate.  His K% at home this year is 25.45% and in his career it’s been 20.78%.  He’s also walking more batters on the road than before too—9.40% UIBB this year as compared with 8.14% in his career, but his home UIBB% is also a bit higher than usual (8.48% vs. 7.55% career).  It does seem somewhat notable that he is striking out half as many batters on the road as at home.  The difference of K/BB at home vs. on the road this year really demonstrates the problem: 3.00 at home and 1.41 on the road.  Historically, these ratios have only been 2.75 and 2.24.

Checking Myers’ performance against lefties and righties produced a few interesting results.  He’s walking more lefties than ever (12.89% as compared with 9.98% in his career) and he’s walking fewer righties (5.15% for 2008 vs. 5.88% career).  His homerun rate does seem up on both sides.  He seems to be having trouble striking out righties: only 16.31% this year as compared with 19.45% in his career.  He’s actually striking out more lefties than before by a little bit.

Checking Myers performance with men on vs. when the bases were empty did yield a few significant results.  He is certainly walking more people with the bases empty than before: 8.99% vs. 7.06% in his career, and with men on, he is essentially performing at his career rate.  His K% is way down with men on base this year—only 15.2% as compared with a career 18.2% rate.  His K% with bases empty is 22.1%, even higher than his 20.36% career rate.  His HR rate is up both ways, but a bit more so with bases empty.

The most notable split, outside of perhaps the home/away split, is Myers’ 1^st inning ERA—which is 11.60.  His ERA thereafter is 5.10.  In his career, his ERA is only 0.65 lower after the 1^st inning as compared with before.  His peripherals are consistent with this difference.  He is giving up homeruns at an astronomical rate in the 1^st inning this year: 11.6% of batters are hitting homeruns, and only 3.8% thereafter.  In his career, there has been no difference between his HR% during and after the 1^st inning.  He’s also had trouble striking people out in the 1^st inning.  Only 10.5% of 1^st inning batters strike out—as compared with 16.9% in the 1^st inning in his career.  His post-1^st inning K% this year is 21% as compared with 20% in his career.

Overall, it seems that my main observations are as follows:

1)      Myers’ fastball is about 1.5 MPH slower this year than last time he was a starter

2)      Myers’ home ERA is less than half of his road ERA—inconsistent with his career

3)      Myers’ 1^st inning ERA is 11.60: about 2.5 times as high as his career 1^st inning ERA

4)      After the 1^st inning, his ERA is only 5.10, and his peripherals indicate that should be lower.

5)      His 1^st inning problems seem to be mostly due to an explosively high HR rate and an abnormally low K rate

This seems to indicate something relative to conditioning.  As I only have data on Myers’ average fastball, I don’t know if he is throwing slower all game or just in the 1^st inning, but the higher homerun rate and scarcity of strikeouts seem to indicate that.  His problems on the road seem to suggest he’s doing something different at home as compared with on the road.  The 1^st inning comparisons on the road and at home don’t really have enough data to draw conclusions—but he’s given up 8 runs in 8 1^st innings at home, as compared with 14 runs in 9 1^st innings on the road.

I’m not really sure what to do with him.  His peripherals looked a lot better during his struggles earlier in the year, but as his BABIP has stabilized to a more reasonable level, his peripherals have started to decline enough to keep his ERA high.  It does seem like he’s not getting any better, this is a playoff race, and we’re halfway through the season.  I’m firmly against converting him into a reliever at this point.  I think that his success as a reliever was largely based on small sample sizes.  He was striking out more people and keeping more flyballs in the yard, but I’m pretty sure that his current problems as a starter may be caused by his transformation into a reliever last year.  Myers took a while to turn into a good starter after struggling for a few years and I think he needs to relearn how to start.  Some of this may be an injury, but last season’s transformation into a reliever certainly could have caused that too.  His value at a starter was higher in 2005-2006 than his value as a reliever in 2007—and we already have a lot of options in the bullpen already. 

He may be due to be sent down to the minors for some work, and maybe he can turn things around down there.  I’m not sure I would skip him, since I’d like Hamels to start against the Mets this weekend rather than pushing him up against the Braves on Thursday, but J.A. Happ or someone else from the minors could be an option.  The other option is to give Myers another shot.  If so, he’s going to have to control himself on the road in Atlanta Thursday, especially in the 1^st inning against Chipper Jones and maybe Mark Teixeira.

dajafi's attempt to help the Phils out mojo-wise by flipping the script on our game thread title format has so far been unsuccessful, so I'm just taking it a step further.

So last night was bad.  Like, really bad.  Again. 

Hopefully, with Hamels on the mound tonight, the Phillies can get something going against Our Old Friend and Chris Wheeler Nemesis Vicente Padilla, who is 10-3 this season and has been pitching quite nicely.

The Braves have already lost, and the Mets are behind 3-1 during a rain delay in the 6th inning.  Let's get some mo-men-tum back.

 

 

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Okay, something has to be done.  This team just isn't good enough to keep throwing a struggling turd out there every fifth day.

Every other starter is by and large keeping this team in games except Myers right now.

Promote J.A. Happ, and move Myers back to some late inning role?  Do a Dontrelle and send him back to the minors to straighten his biz out? 

I'm just at a loss here.  The offense finally comes through and Myers didn't even give them a chance.

I'll keep this short and sweet. It's Arlington Ballpark, a soupy Texas night in June, and Kason Gabbard on the mound for the Rangers, and the Werth-leadoff lineup. Hittin' time. Mmmkay, fellas?

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