Next Up: The Philadelphia Phillies

Yes, the cross-state rivals are 22-39, the worst record in baseball. But the Brewers had the worst record in baseball going into their series with the Bucs, and took two of three. The Phillies split a four-game series with the Pirates in Philadelphia on May 11-14.

How Are They Doing Lately? Over the past 30 days, the Phillies are 11-16, tied with the Brewers for the worst record in the league. Only the 10-17 Marlins have been worse.

What's Going Right? In the 15-team National League, the Phillies' starters have a 4.45 ERA over the past 30 days, exactly in the middle of the pack. The relievers' ERA of 3.62 is lower, but that's actually the sixth worst in the league. ve a 2.92 ERA, fourth best in the league over the past 30 days. Considering that their starting pitchers (keep reading) have forced the bullpen to throw 83.1 innings, fourth most in the league, that's pretty good.

What's Going Wrong? The team's batting average of .252 is eighth in the league over the past 30 days, but the .298 on base percentage is 12th and the .384 slugging percentage tenth. What that means: Lots of doubles (59, most in the league) but a dearth of homers (18, second to last) and walks (59, tied for second fewest). They're not scoring runs (98, fourth fewest) because they're not getting on base enough nor hitting enough homers.

Who's Hot? Rookie Maikel Franco has taken over at third base and has been the club's best run producer, with a .286 batting average, .320 on base percentage, and .551 slugging percentage (with six homers, a third of the team's total) over the past 30 days. He's also struck out in only 15% of his plate appearances, way below the NL average of 21%. Leadoff hitter Ben Revere's hit .292 with a .330 on base percentage over the past 30 days, enabling him to steal six bases. Ryan Howard almost never walks (2 walks in the past month) and strikes out a lot (29% of plate appearances) but has managed to hit five balls out of the park, giving him a .510 slugging percentage of late. Lefthanded starter Cole Hamels, the Phillies' most prized trade chip, has improved his value, with a 2.70 ERA and 45 strikeouts in 43.1 innings over his last six starts. In the bullpen, closer Jonathan Papelbon and fellow reliever Jeanmar Gonzalez both have sub-1.00 ERAs over the past 30 days.

Who's Not? The last time the teams met, shortstop Freddy Galvis was the Phillies' hottest hitter. He sure isn't anymore: .170/.223/.182 slash line over the past 30 days. The outfielders other than Revere have been mostly a mess. Other than Papelbon and Gonzalez, the bullpen's got a 4.80 ERA and the Phillies' rotation after Hamels and fellow trade bait Aaron Harang (3.82 ERA over the past 30 days) has been bad, with a 5.72 ERA. The Pirates face Hamels on Sunday.

What's the Outlook? The Phillies aren't a good team, though their starters' ERA over the past 30 days, 4.45, is better than that of the Brewers starters (4.72), against whom the Pirates mustered only three runs over 19.1 innings. If the Pirates can score runs in the early innings, they should be fine. If they can't, Papelbon's going to make bottom-of-the-ninth rallies pretty hard.

The Risk of Giancarlo Stanton

The Miami Marlins have signed their star right fielder, Giancarlo Stanton, to the longest and richest contract in baseball history: 13 years, $325 million. The 25-year-old Stanton can opt out of the deal after the 2020 season. We don't know the details of the contract, i.e. how the dollars are spread around over the years, but I'll go out on a limb and say that at an average value of $25 million per year, he's going to be paid a lot of money every season. Stanton, who turned 25 earlier this month, was an All-Star and finished second in MVP balloting in 2014, leading the National League in home runs (37), total bases (299), slugging percentage (.555), and, in a statement both of his talent and that of the Marlins lineup surrounding him, intentional walks (24). He's tied for tenth all time in home runs through age 24:

Rk	Player	HR	From	To	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
1	Eddie Mathews	190	1952	1956	732	3141	2634	497	735	119	24	492	471	443	.279	.388	.559	.947
2	Alex Rodriguez	189	1994	2000	790	3515	3126	627	966	194	13	595	310	616	.309	.374	.561	.934
3	Mel Ott	176	1926	1933	983	3978	3367	680	1059	195	31	711	537	258	.315	.412	.548	.959
4	Jimmie Foxx	174	1925	1932	810	3270	2750	612	923	159	57	667	460	377	.336	.432	.625	1.056
5	Mickey Mantle	173	1951	1956	808	3491	2944	642	907	136	43	575	524	578	.308	.412	.560	.972
6	Ken Griffey	172	1989	1994	845	3606	3180	518	972	194	19	543	374	477	.306	.379	.541	.920
7	Frank Robinson	165	1956	1960	735	3155	2741	501	818	145	27	449	321	427	.298	.380	.552	.932
8	Albert Pujols	160	2001	2004	629	2728	2363	500	787	189	9	504	304	279	.333	.413	.624	1.037
9	Orlando Cepeda	157	1958	1962	764	3220	2987	471	922	163	16	553	172	463	.309	.350	.532	.881
10	Giancarlo Stanton	154	2010	2014	634	2640	2288	350	619	138	8	399	318	742	.271	.364	.540	.903
11	Johnny Bench	154	1967	1972	782	3229	2887	421	781	142	12	512	288	470	.271	.334	.488	.822

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used

Generated 11/18/2014.

As you can see, he got there in fewer plate appearances than anyone on the list (among players with 100 or more homers through age 24, only Mathews, Pujols, Bob Horner, and Willie Mays went deep more often than Stanton's 5.8% of plate appearances), and he's also struck out more than the others. 

The contract has resulted in predictable reactions.

• It's too much money. Yes, it's the biggest contract in baseball history in total dollars, but not in average annual value. Miguel Cabrera, Clayton Kershaw, Alex Rodriguez, and Justin Verlander are in contracts that pay them more than an average of $25 million per year, and the $25 million average equals the current contracts of Ryan Howard, Josh Hamilton, and Felix Hernandez. There are players whom one might view as more valuable than Stanton (Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen, to name two), but Stanton's contract isn't out of line with those of the players on the $25 million-plus list.
• No, I mean, it's too much money for a player. Sports Illustrated's Joe Sheehan has pointed out that the share of baseball revenues going to player salaries has steadily declined since the turn of the century. Given that no teams were going bankrupt in 2000, and that fans would probably rather watch Stanton hit than watch his owner, Jeffrey Loria, count money, I can't see a problem with the players getting a bigger slice of the pie.
• No, seriously, we can pay a baseball player that much and we can't pay schoolteachers and firefighters? This argument will make sense when kids walk around wearing their teachers' replica jerseys and firefighters negotiate with regional sports networks to televise their rescues.
• Thirteen years is too long. There's no question that's a risk. But Stanton will be 38 when his contract ends. Cabrera's will pay him at least through age 40, possibly a couple years longer, depending on options that vest based on his MVP vote. Rodriguez is under contract through age 41. Same with Albert Pujols. It's a long contract, but not ridiculously long. 
• He won't age well. Stanton is 6'6", 240. One could easily see him slowing down as he ages, moving from right to left to, eventually, first. He's in the National League, so he can't become a DH. But here's the thing: Historically, players with "old player skills" (home runs, walks, strikeouts) tend to flame out relatively early. Stanton last year was first in the National League in homers, second in walks, and sixth in strikeouts. On the other hand, Stanton is a good athlete. He grades out as an above-average right fielder and was 13-for-14 as a basestealer in 2014. He's not just a slugger.
• His owner's crazy. Well, that's true. He's "the most hated man in Major League Baseball." The Marlins' payroll last year was $42.4 million, last in the majors. The average annual value of Stanton's contract equals nearly 60% of that total. It doesn't make sense to pay that much to one guy while doing everything else on the cheap. Is this indicative of a willingness to spend? If so, the Marlins, who have a lot of promising young players, could contend. But we've been down this road before with Loria, when he added players after the 2011 season only to unload them after a disappointing 2012. But say this for Loria: His sins have consistently been of being penny-pinching, not profligate.

Rather, there are two things that I worry about with Stanton:

• Durability. Stanton's first full year in the majors was 2011. He played 150 games that year. He hasn't matched that total since. In 2012, he missed 39 games due to knee pain that required surgery in July. He also had oblique and shoulder injuries that year. He missed 46 games in 2013 due primarily to a strained hamstring but also with shoulder soreness and an ankle sprain. Last year he was healthy until September 12, when he was hit in the face by a Mike Fiers fastball in one of those can't-watch-it injuries, suffering multiple facial fractures. Hard tissue injuries (bones) tend to fully heal and are as much bad luck as anything. Soft tissue injuries (muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage) can be recurring. Toronto shortstop Jose Reyes, for example, has been on the disabled list five times, and day-to-day several other times, with hamstring problems. Stanton's been on the DL only twice in is career (the hit-by-pitch last year was in September, when teams don't bother disabling players), and he had a healthy 2014 until the Brewers' Fiers beaned him, but his record isn't scot-free. (All injury data from Baseball Prospectus.)
• Sustainability of revenues. The reason baseball revenues have grown dramatically in this century is television. With the proliferation of DVRs, consumers can record the programs they like and watch them when they want, fast-fowarding through the commercials. Sports are one of the few events consumers watch live. So they see the ads for beer and trucks and insurance while watching a game that they skip while watching sitcoms. That has made sports programming particularly valuable to advertisers and, therefore, for the networks that carry them. Additionally, TV broadcasting has shifted from national networks to regional sports networks (RSNs), like NESN in New England, YES and SNY in New York, and MASN in Baltimore/Washington. Teams have national contracts with ESPN and FOX, but they also have local contracts with RSNs that can dwarf the national contracts. Cable subscribers pay to have RSNs bundled with other channels. However, there's been a move to "unbundle" cable, letting consumers pick and choose the channels they want rather than the average of 189 that they receive now. Will your great aunt want ESPN, much less the RSNs, if she could pick her channels? And if she doesn't, and many others don't, what will happen to RSN revenues? The prospects for unbundling, as well as the savings it might yield, are unclear. But Stanton's contract assumes a stable economic model in baseball. In my role as a financial analyst, I've often said that Wall Street has a penchant for seeing a point and drawing a line through it. Baseball's doing the same thing with its current revenue mix. What works today may not in 2027, the last year of Stanton's contract.

Overall, I can't get too excited over Stanton's contract. Baseball's rolling in dough; might as well give it to a marquee player. I question what the Marlins have in mind longer term, and I worry about his injury risk, but the focus here's on the field of play anyway.

Reality Check: Defensive Shifts

Tom Verducci writes about baseball for Sports Illustrated and talks about on the MLB Network. He's a smart guy and a great writer. He's passionate about the game as well, writing on occasion about ways it could be better. He did so last week, proposing that baseball do something to limit defensive shifts: moving fielders to one side or the other of second base in order to take advantage of hitters' tendencies to hit the ball there. You know, like this:

Verducci cites the situation pictured above in particular, when the player at the plate is lefthanded, he tends to hit balls to the right side of the infield, and, in addition, he's slow. (I can't speak to the speed of the guy at the plate in this picture; I can't make him out.) He cites slow left-handed batters who pull having down years: Chris Davis, Ryan Howard, Jay Bruce, Adam Dunn, Brian McCann, Shin-Soo Choo, David Ortiz, and Adrian Gonzalez, among others. He has a pretty convincing table: batting average on balls in play (i.e., excluding at bats that result in strikeouts or home runs) for left-handed hitters when they hit the ball to the right side of the infield:
   2005   .379
   2006   .386
   2007   .353
   2008   .358
   2009   .350
   2010   .351
   2011   .332
   2012   .313
   2013   .323
   2014   .301

Verducci:

In 2010, Howard, McCann, Ortiz, Bruce, Dunn, Choo, Curtis Granderson and Adam LaRoche all were among the best lefthanded hitters in the game. None of them were All-Stars this year. Fewer hits to the pull field – into the shift – is one reason. Throw in former All-Stars Mark Teixeira and Carlos Beltran, two more slow-footed sluggers (and using only their numbers batting lefthanded), and you can see how the shift is harming lefthanders...

Ignore that some of those guys haven't been good for years. His point, that the shift's affected lefties since the Tampa Bay Rays started becoming shift-happy in 2008, seems to be borne out by the numbers above. His solution: That baseball should look into establishing an "illegal defense rule" that'd limit the number of infielders on either side of second base to two. 

Verducci's proposal met with a fair amount of criticism on the Internet, partly because he's proposing a pretty significant change to the rules of the game. I don't really buy that. The rules of baseball aren't inviolable; we added replay and removed home plate collisions this year. If there's a problem in the game, let's address it.

The problem I have is that I'm not sure the response Verducci's proposing--limiting defensive shifts--will address the problem of a decline in offense, simply because there's not a lot of evidence I can see that shifts are the culprit. I'm going to show you a somewhat busy table, so let me explain the columns. The first one, Year, is self-explanatory. BABIP is the batting average on balls in play--that is, the batting average when the batter puts the ball in play (doesn't strike out, walk, get hit by the pitch, etc.) and doesn't hit a home run. Ground is the batting average on ground balls. L vs. L is the batting average for left-handed hitters--the focus of Verducci's research--against left-handed pitchers. L vs. R is the batting average for left-handed hitters against right-handed pitchers. If defensive shifts are hurting offenses, particularly with lefties at the plate, we should see all of these batting averages decline with time, as shifted fielders turn what used to be hits into outs. Here's the table:
   Year    BABIP  Ground  L vs. L  L vs. R
   2005    .295    .233    .295     .299
   2006    .301    .236    .294     .302
   2007    .303    .239    .301     .312
   2008    .300    .237    .298     .302
   2009    .299    .232    .286     .299
   2010    .297    .234    .299     .298
   2011    .295    .231    .291     .301
   2012    .297    .234    .287     .299
   2013    .297    .232    .293     .300
   2014    .299    .237    .297     .307

Do you see any evidence from those number that defensive shifts--which have grown in popularity especially in the last couple years--have hampered offense? I can't. As of today, the batting average on balls in play at its highest level since 2009. The batting average on grounders is the highest it's been since 2008. Left-handed hitters are hitting better against lefties than any year since 2010 and against righties since 2007. Offense is surely down, but it's not because defensive shifts are resulting in plummeting batting averages. So I don't see a need to legislate against shifts.

As to why offense if down: batters are striking out in 20.3% of plate appearances, the most in history--the rate's risen for nine straight years--the walk rate's declined for five straight years and is now at its lowest level since 1968, batters are hitting balls on the ground,  which produce a lower OPS than balls hit in the air, at the highest rate since stats became available in 2002, and the percentage of fly balls leaving the park has declined for two years, to the lowest level since 2011. That's why. Sounds like a problem of good pitching rather than innovative defense.

Reality Check: Ruben Amaro

Now that we've got actual baseball games, and actual baseball people talking about other actual baseball people, I'm going to initiate a feature called "Reality Check." I'm going to take things I hear or read and test them, where I can, to see if they're true. This is not going to be a "gotcha" feature. If someone calls something correctly, I'll give credit. I remember last summer hearing Barry Larkin say on Baseball Tonight that the Seattle Mariners hit a lot of home runs. I thought, "Yeah, they pulled the fences in, but still, the Mariners aren't a home run team." Well, there's a reason Larkin does what he does and I do what I do: The Mariners wound up finishing second in the AL in homers, well behind the Orioles but in a tight grouping with Oakland and Toronto that was clearly well ahead of the rest.

Anyway, here goes. Over the weekend I heard an interview of Phillies GM Ruben Amaro on Sirius XM. I was driving, so I couldn't write down his exact quote, but the gist of it was that with free agents A.J. Burnett and Roberto Hernandez joining the club, the Phils have two of the top ground ball pitchers in the game. He said the team (which has been notoriously hostile to statistical analysis), is going to use analytics to shift infielders around to better get all those grounders, as the Pirates did last year.

Burnett first. There were 43 NL starting pitchers who qualified for the ERA title (162 innings pitched). Of them, Burnett got grounders on 56.5% of batted balls, most in the NL. Score one for Amaro. 

Now, Hernandez. He's the guy who used to be called Fausto Carmona. Anyway, he didn't quite qualify for the ERA title with Tampa Bay last year. He pitched 151 innings. Of the 48 AL pitchers with 150+ innings, Hernandez got grounders on 53.2% of batted balls, fifth in the league. Despite all those ground balls, he managed to give up the home runs at the fourth highest rate in the league, as nearly 21% of the fly balls he allowed left the park, the highest proportion in the league. That's crazy high and isn't likely to persist, though the move to Citizens Bank Park won't help much.

Anyway, Ruben was right. By adding Burnett and Hernandez, the Phillies pitchers' ground ball percentage of 44.5% last year, tenth in the league, is going to rise. My concern about the Phillies is whether they'll embrace infield shifts enough to take advantage of all those grounders, and whether their aging infielders (shortstop Jimmy Rollins and second baseman Chase Utley are 35, first baseman Ryan Howard is 34) have the range to get at them.