The Sac Bunt

A Different Way to Evaluate Hitters

BaseballSavant is a valuable resource packed with useful information, but some of the choices they’ve made with which statistics to put foremost on their site leave something to be desired. One of these I encounter frequently is Hard Hit rate, or the rate of batted balls a hitter has at 95+ mph. Or from a pitcher’s perspective, the number of 95+ mph batted balls they allow. There are already valid concerns about the changing denominator involved here – batted balls rather than plate appearances, placing it on a different scale from Strikeout or Walk rate – but in addition to this there’s also a missing element of skill involved. That is to say: a 95 mph ball in the air has a very different value to a hitter than a 95 mph ball on the ground.

This is not a new idea – Connor Kurcon developed a hit rate statistic based on this concept in 2018. But what if we took that concept one step further? I was able to approximate Kurcon’s Dynamic Hard Hit rate as a function of launch angle by producing a curve where the exit velocity threshold to be considered “hard hit” varies depending on the extremity of the launch angle. It was based on the idea of approaching the limits of human ability: hitting a ball extremely hard at an extreme angle is a feat only a few can manage. If we took this idea and married it with baseball-specific skill – in this case spray angle or hit direction – then that could be an even greater skill indicator than DHH. Much like a 95 mph ball on the air is not the same as a 95 mph ball on the ground, a 95 mph line drive to the opposite field is not the same as a 95 mph line drive pulled down the line. EDIT: Alex Chamberlain explored this same idea in his own article in July 2021.

Intuitively, it stands to reason that since hitters generate more power to their pull side we would expect them to also generate higher exit velocities on contact to their pull side as well. In turn, this means hitters capable of consistently hitting the ball to the opposite field with authority must have rare pop. Once a hitter demonstrates that ability it shows that he owns that skill, which – if quantified correctly – could help us predict future production.

The first step in finding out how to measure a skill like this is to find a meaningful threshold to denote what was “hard hit”. When I think of a hard or well hit ball, I think of extra base hits. No-doubters that significantly add to a team’s scoring chances. We aren’t chasing results here, but rather looking at the combination of features that show an innate ability to produce those results so we can find those features in hitters. My best guess here was to look for patterns in the exit velocities and hit directions for batted balls from 2016-2021 and their respective wOBA values:

There are clearly 2 bands that contribute significantly here, but the one between ~ 50-75 mph is comprised of mostly singles – not what we’re after, but maybe something interesting enough to examine at a different time since that also could be skill-based. Instead, we will focus on the upper band where all the red is tightly concentrated. It looks like we can fit a curve to match that band:

That bright green line isn’t modeled after the band of red & orange, believe it or not; it’s the 80^th percentile exit velocity at each degree of the spray angle spectrum, from -45 degrees (the pull side foul line) to 45 degrees (the opposite field foul line). It tracks nicely, and there’s a good reason for that: a little more than 4/5 of total wOBA comes from just over 20% of the league’s total batted balls. Conveniently for our purposes, that 80^th percentile exit velocity figure is also “stickier” year-to-year for each hitter than their annual average exit velocity: the measure of correlation (Pearson’s r, for the statistically inclined) is .734 for 80^th percentile EV vs .641 for average EV, where an r of 1 is a perfect linear relationship. This means it is a more reliable, consistent measure of a hitter’s inherent ability. There are stickier measures – generally the higher up one goes in terms of exit velocity threshold, the stickier the figure becomes – but we want to also capture a significant chunk of each hitter’s batted balls to make the number both predictive and descriptive, so we’ll stick to the slightly lower percentile.

This brings us to this simple concept: what percentage of a hitter’s batted balls clear that 80^th percentile threshold at each spray angle? Each batted ball that does is an indicator of power that only a small subset of hitters possess. Stretching the idea further, how many batted balls does that hitter have that clear the same threshold applied to the launch angle spectrum, which is another indicator for rare power (and similar to the idea behind DHH)? Using the clearing of either of those 2 markers as our definition of “hard hit” while limiting the balls counted to those hit in the air – to weed out the mostly harmless grounders hit at higher velocities – we can come up with our own well hit rate and use it as a tool for evaluating player potential. Since this boils down to an attempt to measure a player’s ability to hit for power, we’ll call it Damage Rate.

This is what the 2021 leaderboard for Damage Rate looks like on a per batted ball basis, so as to put it on the same scale as Hard Hit rate or Dynamic Hard Hit rate (min. 50 batted balls):

At first glance, this seems to pass the sniff test. The league leaders are names you would expect near the top of a hard hit/quality of contact leaderboard, but there are some interesting risers like Higashioka, Rooker, and Rogers. Since this measure considers the quality of contact by both launch and spray angle, traditional hard hit rate leaders like Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton find themselves lower down in the leaderboards, though still in very strong positions overall. This is because some of their loudest contact is made on relatively low percentage batted balls, like grounders or popups. For the same reason, these numbers are lower than the hard hit rate numbers you would find on BaseballSavant; the league leader in that statistic is 17 percentage points higher.

Since it seems like it may hold some credence at first glance, the next step here is statistical validation. The returns there also seem encouraging, as it has a higher correlation to both current and next season’s wOBA and wOBACON – in addition to any of the other advanced power metrics – than DHH%, wOBACON itself, and HH%. Additionally, it has a stronger relationship with itself year-to-year than any of those statistics bar DHH%:

Pearson’s r with next season statistics

(min. 100 batted balls in both years)

Pearson’s r w/current year wOBAcon:

The statistic has a tougher barrier to entry than hard hit rate does because it measures raw power in addition to the ability to apply that power, so there were no players who “improved” in raw percentage compared to hard hit rate. However, some players were favored more than others by the changes. A few of the biggest gainers in terms of league ranking in damage rate vs hard hit rate were Jordan Luplow, Cody Bellinger, and Gleyber Torres, suggesting that perhaps those players may be due for stronger seasons in 2022 based on the nature of their batted ball profiles in 2021, if the predictive qualities of damage rate are to be trusted.

The most notable drops in league standing came from players considered to have traditionally strong bat-to-ball skills whose hard contact did not ultimately result in many extra base hits. This could be a blind spot on the part of the statistic, and something I suspect has to do with my discarding of hard hit grounders due to their relative inefficiency – ground balls hit at 95+ mph produced only a .331 wOBA in 2021, compared to the .882 mark on fly balls hit at 95+ mph. This is a group of players that includes Nick Gordon, Amed Rosario, Yuli Gurriel, and Michael Brantley. Some average to pretty good hitters, but not ones that produce much in the slugging department.

Here are the biggest gainers and losers by league finish in damage rate compared to league finish in hard hit rate (the rankings_jump column shows how many places were gained/lost between the 2 metrics):

Largest risers

Largest drops

If you’d like to take a look at the leaderboards in damage rate on your own, here is a sheet containing the 2021 season.

In the future I think I will look to create a simple projection system making use of damage rate and examine some of the larger differences in the way the metric values certain players compared to other methods. I also plan on examining the 2^nd band of wOBA values from the first exit velo + spray angle graph since it seems like a sizeable enough portion to hold some significance. Overall, I’m pleased with the outcome of this foray into hitting metrics and look forward to updating the statistic and monitoring its performance in the upcoming season.

The New Zack Wheeler

Zack Wheeler came to Philly with high expectations after signing a 5-year, $118 million deal in the winter of 2019 but managed to live up to them in his first year, posting a 2.92 ERA in 11 starts in the pandemic-shortened season. The way he went about it was somewhat surprising, however, as he registered a career-low 18.4% strikeout rate after having his stuff draw comparisons to K machines Gerrit Cole and Jacob deGrom during his free agency. Instead, Wheeler relied on inducing soft contact on the ground and trusting his fielders.

His second season is off to a similarly impressive start, but with an entirely different approach to getting hitters out. The Wheeler we thought we were going to see last year seems to have arrived, sporting a career-high 26.8% strikeout clip and averaging more than a strikeout per inning for only the second time in his career.

What prompted the sudden change? It’s not like Wheeler suddenly started throwing extra gas or dramatically altered his pitch mix; he still leans heavily on the 97-99 mph 4-seamer to get the majority of his strikes. Perhaps it would be instructive to compare 2 starts from the last 2 seasons and see where the differences lie.

Let’s start by looking at his 9/16/2020 start against his former team, the Mets. It was by all accounts a good performance: Wheeler went 7 1/3 innings and allowed a respectable 3 runs. The number that sticks out in the box score, however, is his strikeout total: Wheeler recorded 22 outs but only 2 came via Ks. For comparison’s sake, in his most recent start – the complete game shutout of the Brewers – he had 8 strikeouts, and already has a 10-K game to his name in 2021 after never reaching that mark in 2020.

The sudden increase in missing bats seems to come from a combination of a reworked slider and a new approach with 2-strikes. Wheeler subtly altered the way his slider spins from last year to this year, which resulted in an increase in active spin percentage – actually the opposite of what’s generally considered good for a slider. Active spin is the amount of spin that contributes to a pitch’s movement. What this change accomplished is reducing the vertical movement on the pitch and allowed him to throw it harder while mostly maintaining the side-to-side movement of the pitch. Somewhat counterintuitively, making his slider move less has resulted in it missing more bats.

The pitch profiles of Zack Wheeler’s stuff. HB is Horizontal Break, VB is Vertical Break, and n is the pitch count.

These are the pitch profiles for the two starts. For our purposes the number that really matters here is IVB, or induced vertical break. Induced vertical break is the difference between where a pitch crosses home plate and where it would have crossed if it had been released in a straight line and only influenced by gravity; it’s kind of like the difference between where a person expects a pitch to be and where it ends up, and it’s caused by the way a pitch spins. Wheeler’s IVB changed from 3.11 inches to 6.61, meaning his slider arrived over 6 inches higher than it would if it were unaffected by spin. This “rise” is a highly coveted trait often sought out in fastballs – there’s punchouts on high heat in every game – but is less common on breaking pitches. Functionally, the changes he’s made have his slider acting more like another fastball than a traditional breaking ball.

Wheeler’s older slider, more of a typical breaking pitch

The new slider with less drop and 4 more mph

This harder, tighter slider is presenting problems for hitters and Wheeler has noticed, using it more frequently than he did last year. He threw it 17 times against the Mets last September and more than doubled that total against the Brewers last week, using the pitch 36 times. He’s especially going to it more often in 2-strike counts, having already thrown 56 sliders with 2-strikes this season compared to 48 a year ago. The results have been good: the putaway rate – the amount of 2-strike pitches that result in a strikeout – on his slider has nearly doubled, jumping from 18.8% in 2020 to 33.9% in 2021.

	mph	Spin-based Movement	Observed Movement	Deviation	Active Spin%	Usage%	2-strike usage%	Putaway%
2020	89.8	11:15	9:30	105	27	15.9	15.5	18.8
2021	91.5	12:00	11:15	-45	40	24.5	23.3	33.9

Comparing the pitch maps from his 2 starts better illustrates his new gameplan:

There’s clearly more emphasis on sliders and sinkers this year at the expense of his changeup and curve, all while still dotting the edges of the zone where hitters can do less damage. He still relies on his 4-seam to do most of the heavy lifting, but once he gets to a situation where it’s time to finish a batter off he goes to the slider for the K or the sinker for the groundout.

What it all adds up to is a version of Zack Wheeler that still induces plenty of weak groundballs, but who now has a plan for getting the punchout when he needs one instead of relying on his fielders to be perfect – probably a good idea considering the state of the Phillies defending these days. Keeping this form up for the rest of the season would go a long ways towards boosting the team’s postseason chances and make their investment in the winter of 2019 look like even more of a bargain than it already is.

Alec Bohm and the Sophomore Slump

Disclaimer: this article talks about launch angle *a lot* and I’m very sorry for it

In 2020 the Phillies entered the season with 2 prospects on most top 100 lists, with Spencer Howard widely regarded as the team’s premier youth product and an ace-to-be and third baseman Alec Bohm heralded as a gifted young hitter, albeit one with more than a few questions about where his glove would fit best on the diamond.

Spencer Howard’s debut season did not go as planned, as an inability to prepare for the season under normal conditions cost him more than 10 pounds and the ability to maintain peak velocity on his fastball, weakening the rest of his arsenal in the process.

Alec Bohm, however, had a stunning rookie season, coming up in August and providing the jolt of several shots of espresso to the lineup. He raked, hitting .338 with a 139 wRC+ and instantly endeared himself to Phillies fans by supplying a steady stream of clutch hits during a playoff race. While the team ultimately came up short, Bohm was not one of the reasons why. Fans were looking forward to experiencing a full 162-game slate from their young hitter in 2021, but his sophomore season hasn’t gone according to plan so far. He’s hardly the first emerging star to deal with a dip in production in his second season in the bigs, but what exactly is going on with the precocious young hitter?

Many of his statcast metrics seem to indicate that he should be better than or at least on par with how he performed last season: he’s hitting the ball harder, making better connection with the ball, barreling it up at a similar rate, and chasing fewer pitches outside the zone. Yet his production hasn’t kept up.

It’s at this point that I’d like to introduce the word distribution to the discussion. Yes, Alec is generally hitting the ball harder in 2021 than in 2020, but not all hard contact is created equal. Let’s take a look at the angles with which he’s hit baseballs this year and last, beginning with 2020:

As you can see, the curve from 2020 is almost (but not quite) distributed normally around a mean, i.e. Alec was consistently hitting balls at roughly the same angles a good percentage of the time. This is the hallmark of a consistent swing and consistent success at the plate. Now compare that to how Bohm has been hitting the ball this year:

There is a clear shift to his batted ball angles this season, with multiple clearly defined peaks present. The second peak is the problem area. 13% of the time this year Bohm has hit a ball at -30 degrees or fewer. He did that just 7% of the time last year. These are the angles that produce balls hit directly into the dirt in front of home plate or turn into easy grounders to a waiting third baseman or shortstop, often for double plays; after having 4 GIDP last year, Bohm already has 3 this year.

His overall groundball rate doesn’t reflect the change – it’s actually decreased from 53% to 48% – but the types of groundballs he’s hitting are very frequently automatic outs. Bohm is also hitting these grounders harder than he did last year, so the increases in his overall average exit velocity and hard hit rate that you see on his baseballsavant page are somewhat deceptive; a healthy chunk of those gains in hit speed is being spiked into the infield grass.

	GB rate	Exit speed on groundballs
2020	53.2	87.6
2021	48.1	91.0

The strategy pitchers are using to force these outcomes on Bohm seems clear: he’s being challenged inside more. This heatmap shows how Alec Bohm was handled by opposing pitchers when they got ahead of him in 2020:

Where Bohm saw pitches when behind in the count last year.

And this shows how he’s been attacked in pitchers’ counts in 2021:

Where Bohm is seeing pitches when behind in the count this year.

He’s seeing fewer pitches on the edge of the plate that he can do damage with going the other way, and instead pitchers are trying – and often succeeding – to jam him in on his hands, producing numerous weak rollovers to the left side of the infield or harmless flares the other way to the second baseman – after not having any infield flies at all last season, 9% of his flies this year haven’t left the infield.

Bohm is a famously tireless worker with a great approach at the plate, so hopefully it’s only a matter of time before he adjusts to this new way that pitchers are attacking him and we see the return of the hitting phenom we saw a season ago. He ended the weekend series with the Mets by notching 4 hits in the final 2 games – including a home run on Saturday – so perhaps he’s already figuring things out. Lord knows the Phillies could certainly use the boost.

The Evolution of Zach Eflin

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After an impressive 7 inning, 1 run, 8 strikeout outing against the Braves, Zach Eflin appears to be cementing his status as the No. 3 starter on the Phillies. Not only that, but according to advanced stats, he ranks as one of the best starters in all of baseball so far in this short season. Among pitchers who have reached 20+ innings pitched he ranks 13th in SIERA, FIP, and xFIP. All of these metrics suggest that his ERA should be closer to 3.00 than the 4.10 he currently has. Is he suddenly a top-15 pitcher in all of baseball or is this yet another false dawn, the same as the impressive stretches he put together in 2019 and 2018 before reverting to his previous inconsistent form? What is he doing differently to spark this change?

To begin with, what we are seeing with Zach may be a pitcher becoming comfortable with who he is. After years of being told how he should pitch according to modern pitching philosophies, i.e. fastballs up paired with breaking balls tunneling off them in pursuit of strikeouts, Eflin has returned to the gameplan that originally made him a talented prospect: he’s a sinkerballer, and he’s embraced this identity to a level we haven’t seen before.

After being told to use his 4-seam fastball more last year, Eflin has abandoned the pitch and almost exclusively leaned on his sinker as his bread-and-butter, only throwing the 4-seam and change against left-handed batters. It is a change we started to see at the end of last season, but not to this extent: in September last year he was throwing his sinker just over 40% of the time. Now, that number is all the way up to 56%. And with that increased sinker usage, Eflin is predictably inducing more groundballs, generating them a career-high 46.9% of the time; the league average is 42.5%. Somewhat less predictably, he is also striking out far more hitters now that he is not trying to blow them away; his K% is sitting at 33.3% after it was only 18.3% last season.

Inducing more of the weakest kind of batted balls while also missing bats nearly twice as much as he did before is a neat trick, and weak contact plus strikeouts is a recipe for many top-of-the-rotation starters. The uptick in Ks is not easily explained: this year he’s getting more swings-and-misses on every pitch in his arsenal except for the slider, so it isn’t as if he’s suddenly developed a wipeout pitch to get the punchout.

What he is doing is living just outside of the zone and forcing hitters to chase more. He’s only thrown 38.7% of his pitches in the strike zone this year, a career-low, but batters have chased his stuff nearly 40% of the time, a career-high. His 39.9% O-swing percentage (the amount of pitches outside the zone that hitters swing at) is 2^nd-best in all of baseball among pitchers with 20 IP, trailing only Ryan Yarbrough and just ahead of Shane Bieber and our own Aaron Nola. Eflin is ringing up batters with precision and movement just off the plate rather than overpowering stuff.

Yet there is the possibility that he could develop that 2-strike putaway weapon, however, and on Saturday he unveiled an approach with promising potential. Against the Braves he threw 19 curves, almost 23% of his total pitches on the day. That is the most Zach has ever leaned on that pitch in his entire career, and they mostly came in 2-strike counts. The results were eye-opening: 5 whiffs and 5 called strikes from 19 pitches, resulting in 6 of his 8 Ks. The Braves did not manage to get on base in any of the plate appearances ending with a curve. Hitters’ inability to square up Eflin’s sinker allows him to get to 2 strikes easily in most situations, now add in a possibly wipeout curve that he uses with confidence and Eflin’s ceiling could be raised even further.

There can be no telling if this revamped version of Eflin will continue. It is, after all, only 5 starts, and he has had stretches of dominance before. He will make 5 or 6 more starts this season and the best we can hope for are more consistent performances like the one we saw on Saturday. With Jake Arrieta struggling, this team needs a solid No. 3 behind Nola and Zack Wheeler; so far, at least, Zach Eflin looks like he can be that guy.

Aaron Nola’s Stellar Start

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With the Phillies officially one-third of the way through this abbreviated season, their horse at the top of the rotation appears to be having a career year and pitching at a level reserved for the very best aces in the sport. After four starts Aaron Nola has a 2.05 ERA, a career high 12.6 K/9 and he’s reminding fans of his Cy Young-caliber 2018 season. What is driving the Phillies No. 1 to these new heights?

When most people think of Aaron Nola, the first thing that comes to mind is his disgusting curveball. I mean, just look at this thing render 2019’s home run leader completely helpless:

Anyone that sees a pitch like that would want him to throw it as often as possible and that’s exactly what the strategy was in 2019: he threw it as much as his fastball, opting for the curve with more than a third of his total pitches. He had mixed results leaning so heavily on the pitch, as his 2019 was something of a mixed bag with stretches of ace-level pitching often followed by a string of poor starts in which he struggled with opposing lineups the third time through the order.

It’s been a different story in 2020. Nola has been completely dominant, setting down the dangerous lineups of the Yankees, Braves, and Mets in his last 3 starts and holding each of them to 3 or fewer hits in 7+ innings. Something has clearly clicked for him that wasn’t there last season.

That something appears to be a drastically increased reliance on his changeup. In 2019 he used it 18.9% of the time, a distant third behind his 4-seam and curve, both of which he threw over 35% of the time. Enter Bryan Price as pitching coach, a man with a reputation for encouraging his pitchers to throw changeups. Now Nola is throwing that pitch at a 31.7% clip, which makes it his most-used pitch so far.

How good has that changeup been? According to fangraphs’ Pitch Values, it’s been the 5^th-best changepiece in the league among qualified pitchers. When batters swing at the change they miss it nearly half the time, whiffing at a 47.5% rate. The pitch is so effective because its tailing movement is almost identical to his 4-seam fastball’s, except it comes in 7-10 mph slower and falls off the table in the strike zone:

	Horizontal Movement	Vertical Movement	Velocity
4-seam Fastball	14 inches of break	20.2 inches of drop	92.3
Changeup	14.2 inches of break	35.2 inches of drop	85.1

This deception has benefited both pitches; his fastball has been the 13^th-best in the league among qualified pitchers by that same Pitch Values statistic, a dramatic improvement from last season when it ranked 54^th. Hitters last year had a .376 WOBA against his 4-seam, which means they hit like Josh Donaldson or DJ LeMahieu against it. This year that number has plummeted to a microscopic .054, which is roughly equivalent to how AL pitchers hit when they visited NL parks last year.

Nola has also noticeably changed his approach against left-handed hitters, substituting his changeup for his curveball as his favored secondary offering. Last year the 4-seam and curve made up 67% of his pitches against southpaws; this year the 4-seam and change are being thrown 70% of the time in those plate appearances. He’s essentially swapped the change and curve in usage, now only breaking out the hook to get strikeouts, and it’s working: he’s holding left-handed batters to a .263 OPS in 2020, a clear improvement from 2019’s .727 OPS. And when he can do this with it, who can blame him:

Interestingly, throwing the curve less has made his premium pitch even more devastating, perhaps because hitters are seeing it less than before and consequently are not prepared for it. It has become a truly elite out pitch: a 41.6% whiff rate and a staggering 57.6% putaway rate, meaning when Nola throws the curve in a 2-strike count he gets the K well over half the time. When it comes to his curve, less appears to be more.

Put it all together and you have a pitcher with improved command (he’s walking batters at a career-low 1.37 per 9 clip), 3 elite pitches, and a better plan for attacking hitters and going deeper into games by keeping hitters off balance with a less predictable approach. 2018 Nola was special, as evidenced by the 3^rd place finish in Cy Young voting, but the pitcher we’re seeing in 2020 might be even better.

Appreciating the pre-Bryce Right Fielders

Phillies fan are more than content with their current right fielder, but Bryce Harper is far from the first high profile player to don the red pinstripes in that corner of the outfield. His two most notable predecessors spent several seasons putting up gaudy numbers while patrolling the outfields at Veterans Stadium and Citizens Bank Park, but these two do not always get the recognition that their play warranted. The two players, of course, are Jayson Werth and Bobby Abreu, who combined to man the position nearly uninterrupted from 1998-2010, with Werth’s signing in 2007 representing a direct replacement for Abreu once the latter was traded in the middle of the 2006 season.

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It’s common knowledge that Jayson Werth was very good for the Phils from 2007-2010, but people may not be aware of just how good he was: during this time he accumulated 18.0 fWAR, a total that ranked 19^th out of 290 qualified players in all of MLB in this period and 2^nd-best among right fielders, only outpaced by Ichiro Suzuki. Werth was just behind future Hall of Famer and MVP Miguel Cabrera and on par with former MVP Dustin Pedroia. Other notable players Werth outperformed in this stretch include Troy Tulowitzki and Derek Jeter.

That level of production compares favorably with Bryce Harper, believe it or not: over his last 4 seasons Bryce has totaled 15.7 fWAR. The comparison reaches beyond the production, too: Werth had a similarly disciplined approach at the plate, power to spare, and a cannon arm, all hallmarks of Bryce’s game. While Harper’s ceiling is unquestionably higher – look no further than his otherworldly 2015 season – Werth was steadfast and consistent, and the results were similar: Werth’s slash line in Philadelphia was .282/.380/.506, with a 133 wRC+. Bryce’s slash line in his last 4 seasons: .265/.386/.507 with a 130 wRC+.

The core of that championship-winning 2008 team is often considered to be Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins – with Cole Hamels the ace pitcher on the staff – but in some respects Werth’s contributions that season and in the following two years were as pivotal as any of theirs. There is even an argument that he was the 2^nd-most productive player on the team during his stay, something that was almost never stated at the time.

As can be seen in the plot, the only Phillie who was more productive by fWAR in this time was Chase Utley, who possessed the same quiet excellence in all facets of the game that was Werth’s calling card (and who was only outdone by Albert Pujols). fWAR is not an end-all, be-all statistic, but for players like Utley and Werth whose games were built on being the complete package, it does a reasonable job of quantifying their overall contributions. It’s very possible that Werth would have been far more appreciated as an advanced stats darling today than he was in the late 2000s.

Werth’s bat was obviously very good – his 133 wRC+ with the team was even better than Ryan Howard’s 131 wRC+ in the same stretch – but what made him such an important contributor was the well-rounded nature of his game. He was a heady baserunner who posed a constant and dangerous threat on the bases despite never being considered one of the game’s premier burners. He went an impressive 60-of-68 on stolen base attempts as a Phillie, good for an 88% success rate.

He was also, by traditional or advanced measures, a top-7 defensive outfielder in baseball during his time in Philadelphia:

	Total	Rank among OF
Assists	37	7th
Defensive Runs Saved	26	7th
UZR/150	9.4	6th

All this goes to show that Werth was a complete package who could provide power, timely hitting, a threat on the basepaths, and excellent defense in the outfield wherever needed, even filling in at centerfield occasionally.

All those impressive statistics are only for the regular season, where Werth was merely very good. In the postseason, however, Werth stepped it up and constantly delivered. During the team’s back-to-back trips to the World Series, Werth was arguably their most consistent playoff performer. He led the team in hits, average, OPS, and steals in the 2008 postseason run, then followed that up by again leading the team in postseason OPS in 2009 while also hitting the most playoff home runs of any Phillie that year.

	Postseason OPS
	2008	2009
Jayson Werth	.969	1.129
Chase Utley	.851	1.072
Ryan Howard	.897	.968
Jimmy Rollins	.692	.587

He may not have had the gaudy counting stats of a Ryan Howard or the exciting flamboyance that was Jimmy Rollins’ trademark, but a winning team needs players like Jayson Werth and perhaps nothing demonstrated his true significance to that winning run more than the offensive dip that occurred after he left. In 2010, his final season in red pinstripes, the team had a .742 OPS. After he left, the team posted a .718 OPS in 2011, and the offense went missing over the final 4 games of their disappointing loss to the Cardinals in the NLDS.

The man Werth replaced in right field may have been even more impressive in terms of overall production. From 1998-2005 – each full season he played in Philadelphia – Bobby Abreu accumulated an astounding 45.3 fWAR. This number was 4^th in all of baseball, behind only Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and Andruw Jones, all players who have Hall of Fame-worthy credentials. Yet Abreu is not revered to the extent those players are in large part because of a perceived lack of hustle, and to this day has a reputation as something of a stat-padder who did not play much defense and never contributed to a winning team.

First, the defense. Abreu won a Gold Glove in 2005, his final full season in Philly, yet it’s true that he was largely average in the field; 34^th among OF with -2 DRS and 44^th with -4.1 UZR/150. The commonly held belief that he was nonexistent in the outfield is not exactly true, however, since he was able to rack up 84 outfield assists in that period, 4^th among all outfielders. Abreu was probably more just below league average as a right fielder, but the potency of his bat made his qualities in the field an afterthought. This wasn’t where Abreu made his money.

That bat was one of the toughest outs in baseball. Abreu’s calling card was his excellent patience at the plate combined with the power and speed needed to have multiple 30 HR/30 steal seasons. His proficiency at the plate and on the basepaths made him an offensive force worthy of HOF consideration – he only earned 5.5% in his first entry on the ballot, but his lifetime .870 OPS ranks ahead of such luminaries as Wade Boggs and George Brett, and his 400 career steals would be one of the 30 highest tallies in the Hall. His lifetime OBP of .395 would place him just behind Joe Dimaggio, at .398, and the newly-inducted Larry Walker, whose lifetime OBP was .400.

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His contributions are somewhat overlooked because the Phillies did not make the playoffs in his tenure, but Abreu hardly shoulders much of the blame for that. The team averaged 80.4 wins a season from 1998-2005, but their inability to get over the hump had more to do with an exceedingly mediocre pitching staff that ranked 15^th in ERA, 18^th in FIP, and 20^th in fWAR over those 8 seasons. Some of the numbers he accumulated in his stay in Philly are worthy of more attention:

Abreu’s 139 wRC+ as a Phil is the 8^th-best in franchise history (Werth is 15^th with a 133 wRC+). For comparison’s sake, the best player in team history, Mike Schmidt, had a career wRC+ of 147. This is not the only statistic in which Abreu ranks very highly in the Phillies record books:

	Total as a Phillie	Franchise rank
wRC+	139	8th
fWAR	47.2	6th
OBP	.416	t-3rd
SB	254	4th
BB %	16.1	3rd
OPS	.928	4th

By most statistical measures, Abreu was one the best hitters in franchise history. The only players that he ranks behind in these categories are the usual suspects: Mike Schmidt, Chase Utley, etc., although Abreu left the Phillies with a higher career OPS than Schmidt, surprisingly enough.

Bryce Harper would do well to have as successful a stay in Philadelphia as either of Werth or Abreu. Werth got the elusive championship and October glory that Harper seeks, while Abreu had the Hall of Fame-caliber production. Bryce will be hoping for both. One thing that is certain is that Harper will receive more local and national attention than either of these two players had in their time as Phillies.

Zack Wheeler and Making the Leap

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Wednesday brought the exciting news of Zack Wheeler’s 5 year, $118 million signing with the Philadelphia Phillies, and with it a multitude of pieces comparing his stuff to the very best pitchers in the game today: Gerrit Cole and Jake deGrom. These are the 2 most prominent aces in the league; comparisons to them should not be taken lightly. Yet Wheeler warrants them, as his stuff is that good and he’s flashed that level of ability throughout his career.

First, the stuff: he had the 4^th highest average fastball velocity in all of MLB last season, behind only Cole, deGrom, and his other former teammate Noah Syndergaard. His slider velocity is topped only by deGrom’s. He has great control, walking a career-low 6% of opposing batters last year compared to deGrom’s 5.5% and Cole’s 5.9%. He doesn’t serve up home runs, sporting a HR/FB% of 10.9% in 2019; Cole was 16.9% and deGrom was 11.7%. He was in the 90^th percentile of pitchers in average exit velocity allowed and the 82^nd percentile in hard contact against. deGrom was in the 93^rd and 88^th percentiles, respectively, while Cole was in the 66^th and 57^th.

	Average fastball velocity	BB%	HR/FB%	Average exit velocity against percentile	Hard contact against percentile
deGrom	96.9	5.5	11.7	93rd	88th
Cole	97.2	5.9	16.9	66th	57th
Wheeler	96.8	6.0	10.9	90th	82nd

Zack Wheeler, then, has pitch ability on par with the best 2 pitchers in MLB, walks roughly the same amount of batters, surrenders home runs at an equal or better rate than those 2, and induces weak contact at a similar level to deGrom and a superior level to Cole. So why hasn’t Wheeler’s overall performance placed him in the same tier of pitcher? He’s currently thought of as a very good #3 starter or a solid #2 starter; why isn’t he an ace? What does he need to do to make The Leap^TM and join the ranks of the elite pitchers that his skill set seems to indicate he should?

To answer these questions it may be helpful to examine how Gerrit Cole and Jake deGrom became Gerrit Cole and Jake deGrom. Before Houston acquired him, Gerrit Cole was a talented and largely very good pitcher for the Pirates, even making the All-Star team and finishing 4^th in NL Cy Young voting in 2015. However, he wasn’t the Gerrit Cole we know today, the fire-breathing leviathan sent to take the souls of hitters everywhere and strike out 300 batters a year. The most obvious change that Cole made once the Astros pitching coaches got their hands on him is that he mostly abandoned his sinker and primarily became a 3-pitch pitcher with his 4-seam, curve, and slider making up over 90% of his pitches in 2019. Compare this to 2017, his final year in Pittsburgh, when he threw all 5 of his offerings at least 10% of the time. It’s also worth noting that Gerrit Cole’s K rate and walk rate from his last year with the Pirates line up nearly exactly with Wheeler’s K rate and walk rate from 2019 with the Mets:

2017 Gerrit Cole K%: 23.1 BB%: 6.5

2019 Zack Wheeler K%: 23.6 BB%: 6.0

The other major change Gerrit Cole made when he joined the Astros was that he began to attack hitters at the top of the strike zone far more aggressively, particularly using his 4-seamer to devastating effect. This has become his biggest weapon, and when you think of Gerrit Cole the image that you probably conjure is a hitter striking out by missing a 99-mph fastball at the top of the zone. In 2017, Cole threw his 4-seam 410 times in 2-strike counts; by 2019, that number had increased to 656. Wheeler threw 548 such pitches in 2019, so pitch selection isn’t necessarily the issue here. Where he placed those fastballs in 2-strike counts, however, could make all the difference.

As mentioned before, Wheeler placed in the 90^th percentile in average exit velocity against this past season. This means that he was exceptional at inducing weak contact, often by throwing his pitches lower in the zone when he was ahead in the count. Here is his 4-seam fastball placement in 2-strike counts, courtesy of Brooksbaseball.net:

Wheeler’s fastballs are in the middle-to-lower half of the plate.

And here is Gerrit Cole’s fastball placement in the same situation:

Cole blew hitters away at the top of the zone.

As you can see, there is a vast difference in the pitchers’ approaches. Cole looked to finish batters off by “climbing the ladder” and overwhelming them with the pure speed and rise on his fastball. Wheeler, by contrast, looked to induce soft contact by pitching in the lower half of the zone. This strategy is fine on its own but renders the pitcher more vulnerable to bad luck on balls hit in play and makes the pitcher’s performance more dependent on the ability of the fielders behind him. Both factors likely hurt Wheeler last season when opposing hitters had a .311 BABIP against him and he played in front of a Mets defense that ranked in the bottom 5 in nearly every defensive metric. To become more consistently dominant, Wheeler should emulate Cole and trade some of that weaker contact for more whiffs at the top of the zone, becoming a more traditional power pitcher. “Throw high fastballs” is not a recipe for success for everybody, but when a pitcher can touch triple digits like Wheeler can it becomes a tool to blow away even the best hitters. Wheeler has done this before, but never consistently. Here’s an example of how overpowering this high heat can be, against the Phillies’ very own Roman Quinn:

Given the Phillies’ organizational emphasis on this philosophy in 2019 – even to the detriment of some of the younger pitchers, one might argue – it feels safe to assume that Wheeler will be adding this arrow to his quiver in the years to come to a much larger extent than he has thus far in his career.

Jacob deGrom is the other ace that Wheeler has drawn comparisons with, and for good reason; deGrom and Wheeler both feature heaters that routinely hit 97+ and they boast the 2 fastest sliders in the game. It’s a natural comparison to make, especially given that they’ve worn the same uniforms for their entire careers to this point. How did Wheeler’s ex-teammate make the final leap from very, very good to back-to-back Cy Young winner, and can Wheeler glean any lessons from it?

deGrom was a very good pitcher before the 2018 season, having won NL Rookie of the Year in 2014 and making the All-Star team in 2015. But in 2018, he reached an entirely new level, having one of the most dominant seasons of all-time while posting a 1.70 ERA over 217 innings and winning the Cy Young award. He then followed that up with another Cy season, pitching to the tune of a 2.43 ERA despite the offensive explosion across baseball caused by the juiced ball.

Much like Cole, deGrom’s ascension can be directly correlated to him consolidating his pitch usage to his 3 best pitches; in his case, he became a 4-seam, slider, and changeup pitcher and eschewed his sinker and curve to an increasing extent in 2018 and 2019. After throwing those 2 pitches a combined 816 times in 2017, he dropped to 550 times in 2018 and finally just 127 times this past season. He increased his slider usage over these 2 seasons, to the point where he threw the pitch 32% of the time last year. Hitters were helpless against the devastating breaking pitch, hitting only .192 against it with a .222 WOBA.

Wheeler’s slider is not quite as lethal, but still limited batters to a .275 WOBA. He also doesn’t generate quite as many whiffs with his slider as deGrom does, once again mostly inducing weak contact with it more often than not. He does have a breaking pitch that generates a similar percentage of swings-and-misses to deGrom’s slider, however: his curve. This is Wheeler’s most under-used pitch; he only threw it 10% of the time in 2019. Yet it’s the pitch that batters consistently whiff on whenever Wheeler chooses to use it. Look at the whiffs per swing that he’s generated with the pitch throughout his career and how that compares to deGrom’s slider in his career:

Wheeler degrom side by side — Both pitchers’ breaking pitches consistently miss bats outside the zone.

Those rates at the bottom of the zone rival exactly what deGrom can do with his slider: consistently generate swings-and-misses with his best breaking pitch. The obvious difference is that deGrom uses his slider a lot more. Wheeler should consider doing the same with his curve, which is far too good of a pitch for him to only use 10% of the time, as he did in 2019 and 2018. Look at how devastating this pitch can be:

ZackCurve — Just have to tip your cap, Neil.

This new plan would have the added benefit of tunneling nicely with the high fastball approach that he can take from Cole, giving hitters even more to think about when facing him. Having the threat of the curve on their mind makes it even more difficult to catch up to 99 at the top of the zone.

Zack Wheeler is already very good. He has been worth 4.7 and 4.2 fWAR the last 2 seasons. That combined total of 8.9 WAR is tied with the Phillies’ own ace of the staff, Aaron Nola, and is the 10^th most in all of baseball. If he doesn’t make a single change to his approach and pitches the same as he has, he’ll still be worth the contract given to him and be a solid #2 starter. But perhaps by throwing more high heat at the top of the zone and increasing how much he throws what could prove to be a wipeout curve (and subsequently throwing his sinker somewhat less) Wheeler could improve and join the ranks of the truly elite pitchers at the top of the game. If he can add to his 2019 K rate of 23.6% and get closer to deGrom’s 31.7% – never mind Cole’s record 39.8% – then he can become a dominant pitcher and form a 2-headed monster at the top of the rotation with Nola. All the ingredients of an ace power pitcher are there, he just needs to take the last step.

Two Under-the-Radar Trade Targets for the Phillies

The Phillies have a problem. They are desperate for quality starting pitching and while many would love to see them splash out huge money on one of the top free agent aces available – Gerrit Cole, Stephen Strasburg, or Zack Wheeler – there is very little precedent for a team handing out enormous contracts in free agency in consecutive off-seasons. This, obviously, would be the case if the Phillies were to shell out another $25-35 million per year contract, which is what it would take to net one of these prized starters, just one year after the mega-contract that Bryce Harper received last winter.

While John Middleton isn’t strapped for cash, he has uttered statements in recent press conferences to the effect of “we won’t go over the luxury tax threshold to be a wild card team”. Having 2 huge annual salaries on the books like Harper and Cole, for example, plus the impending extension for JT Realmuto – which is sure to exceed $20 million per year – would mean that filling out the rest of the roster would become a challenge that even the best GMs might struggle to handle.

The crop of second-tier free agent starters in free agency includes such prominent names as Hyun-Jin Ryu, Cole Hamels, Madison Bumgarner, and Rick Porcello, but each of these presents red flags of their own, whether it be durability for Ryu, age for Hamels, workload for Bumgarner, and consistency for Porcello. All these pitchers would demand sizable commitments, both in terms of years and money, for what would likely be diminishing returns over the life of their contracts.

What, then, can the pitching-challenged Phillies do to upgrade their rotation while preserving some semblance of financial flexibility for future free agents such as Mookie Betts, Marcus Semien, and George Springer, or for trades for superstars that may be on the outs with their current teams, like Kris Bryant? There’s also the matter of extensions necessary for the few players that have come through the farm system, most notably Rhys Hoskins.

The pitching trade market has been relatively quiet, but there are a couple of names that may be available and could represent excellent value for the Phillies, providing both control for future seasons at reasonable salaries and production ranging from decent to excellent, depending on their development.

The Orioles are working to trade RHP Dylan Bundy, according to a source. No deal is imminent, but one appears to be getting close. The 27-year-old went 7-14 with a 4.79 ERA last season, and he's entering the second of three arbitration-eligible seasons.
— Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) November 27, 2019

First, Dylan Bundy, 27-year-old starter for the Orioles. Once the 4^th overall selection in the 2011 draft, Bundy has performed admirably for a franchise that’s endured one of the worst 2 season stretches in MLB history. Last season the 6’1” right-hander made 30 starts and struck out 23.1% of opposing batters while only walking 8.1%, both respectable figures. On the surface, he appears to be a back-end starter, with a career ERA of 4.75, but some underlying metrics suggest that he could have some untapped upside that may allow him to provide production along the lines of a solid #3 starter. For starters, opposing hitters have a difficult time making hard contact against him, as he ranked in the 86^th percentile in average exit velocity against, and only allowed 5.9% of his pitches to be barreled up. That figure ranks 19^th best in all of baseball amongst qualified starters, and is the same number that a certain Gerrit Cole posted during the 2019 season. The concern with Bundy is that his fastball has consistently been abused by opposing batters – 17 of the 29 home runs he allowed in 2019 came against the pitch – but there is reason to think this could be a solvable problem, since the pitch has excellent movement both horizontally and vertically. The home runs came as a result of Bundy missing his spot and leaving fastballs middle-middle, which suggests it could be a mechanical problem.

Bundy brings to mind another pitcher who struggled with command of his plus-movement pitches in Baltimore before finding success elsewhere – a young Jake Arrieta. Perhaps with the help of a new pitch mix relying less on the fastball and more on his other offerings, Bundy could develop into something more like Arrieta did in Chicago. His slider, in particular, has the makings of one of the league’s best pitches – last year opposing batters hit .152 with a .265 SLG against the pitch, and the expected stats were even better: .154 xBA and .238 xSLG. Pitchers such as Lance McCullers Jr. and Patrick Corbin have had breakout seasons by adapting to lean heavily on their devastating breaking pitches, and Bundy could be next in line for a similar improvement by utilizing his slider more. Leaving the hitter-friendly confines of Camden Yards may also help his overall numbers, as the Baltimore ballpark was the 4^th-most homer-prone park in all of MLB in 2019.

Bundy is in his 2^nd season of arbitration and due to earn around $5.7 million in 2020, then he’ll have another year of arbitration before hitting free agency in 2021. As a starter with a consistent if not elite track record and 2 years of control, the prospect cost for a trade for him should not induce sticker shock. The Orioles are staring at a long, daunting rebuild, so they can and should be looking to flip any veterans they have with value for as many prospects as possible. Maybe a pair of the Phillies’ lower-end top-10 prospects and a lottery ticket such as former top international signing Jhailyn Ortiz could entice the Baltimore front office into getting the deal done.

The other intriguing name for the Phillies to look at is Joe Musgrove, the 26-year old right-hander for the Pirates who came to Pittsburgh as one of the centerpieces of the Gerrit Cole trade. Musgrove – who will be 27 at the start of the 2020 season – is already a very solid starter and would have been the Phillies’ 2^nd-best pitcher by some distance last season, having posted 171.1 innings with a 4.44 ERA over the course of 31 starts. Some advanced metrics, such as FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) and xWOBA (expected weighted on-base percentage) even have his 2019 performance rated as superior to Aaron Nola’s 2019. Musgrove has excellent control, as evidenced by his 5.4% and 4.7% walk rates in the last 2 seasons, and he isn’t susceptible to the long ball, giving up only 33 in total in 2019 and 2018 combined. He’s also one of the few pitches that can boast an arsenal of 6 pitches, which further adds to his upside in keeping hitters off balance.

There are recent instances of pitchers leaving Pittsburgh and blossoming – Gerrit Cole and Tyler Glasnow chief among them – and Musgrove could be next on the list. Former Pittsburgh pitching coach Ray Searage stressed the importance of inducing soft contact via 2-seamers and sinkers to his pitchers, but this strategy has not been as effective in recent seasons as it was when the Pirates won 98 games in 2015. The sinker has been the worst pitch in Musgrove’s repertoire in 2 of the last 3 seasons, so, like Cole before him, Musgrove may benefit from relying less on that pitch and more on his excellent slider, fastball, and underused curve and increasing his strikeout totals in the process. His fastball already features some of the best vertical movement among fastballs in the majors – 7^th best vertical drop and 15^th best spin rate among qualified starters’ 4-seamers – so the sinker appears to be just a worse version of the same pitch. In addition, Musgrove’s slider is nearly as devastating as Bundy’s, as opposing hitters managed only a .173 average and .238 slugging percentage against the pitch in 2019. There are the ingredients for a more effective power pitcher found within Musgrove’s stuff.

Joe Musgrove is just now entering his 1^st season of arbitration and is set to make around $3.4 million next year. Because he has 3 years of control left and he’s already an established solid starter, the Pirates won’t be eager to move him, but team owner Bob Nutting has said that no player is off limits. Under newly-hired GM Ben Cherington, the Pirates will be looking to restock their farm system. Musgrove would almost certainly cost more than Bundy, but he is also more of a proven product. Given that the Pirates may be looking to move Starling Marte for prospects, a package centered around Adam Haseley as a young, talented replacement in centerfield could be a solid starting point were the Phillies to look to acquire Musgrove.