Phillies Nation

Jimmy Rollins’ almost certain trip to the 15-day DL would be a brutal setback for a lineup destined to dominate. The first six games of the season went so well, so overwhelmingly in favor of the Phillies on both sides of the ball, that one had to wonder what could possibly happen to derail such momentum.

We’ve got our answer.

After lineups were announced Monday, but before the first pitch was thrown, Rollins took a few extra wind sprints in the outfield. During the warmup, he strained his right calf and immediately left the field. You knew it had to be something significant to keep the Phillies’ spotlight-loving patriarch from performing in the team’s home opener, and sure enough, it was.

An MRI is scheduled for Tuesday, but according to Baseball Prospectus’ injury expert, Will Carroll, Rollins has suffered a strained gastroc, which will require 2-4 weeks of down-time if it turns out to be the Grade 2 sprain it looked like.

A Refined Young James

The Phillies, as a unit, will not go from scoring seven runs per game to two runs per game just because their ignitor will miss a few weeks, but this injury – no matter how early in the season – could prove costly for a player currently so incredibly focused.

Keep in mind that Jimmy has never been disciplined at the plate. Throughout his exciting career, the constant knock has always been his lack of exemplification of a true leadoff hitter.

In the ten seasons prior to 2010, the league average walk percentage ranged from 8.2%-to-9.6%, signifying that a batter walked in that respective percentage of his total at-bats. Jimmy’s walk rate was lower than average every single year except 2008, the one season he missed significant time.

The average on-base percentage for a leadoff hitter hovers between .340 and .350 in a typical year. Jimmy’s career OBP is .330.

Something changed between Game Six of the 2009 World Series and Game One of the 2010 Major League season, though. Jimmy Rollins, a free-swinging 32-year-old, developed plate discipline.

In this particular case, the small sample size of 31 plate appearances is irrelevant. For Jimmy, seven walks (a plateau he did not reach until May 15 last year,) in six contests is as eye-popping as the game in which Pedro Feliz walked four times, but not as unsustainable. It was extremely unlikely for Jimmy, a player who had accrued success by doing it his way, to lay off of junk and accept free passes, but that is what happened.

In his career, Jimmy has swung at over 43% of the pitches he sees. This year, that number was 38%, a number flirted with only by his injury-shortened, patience-enhanced 2008 season.

In 31 plate appearances, Jimmy has seen 51 balls and 57 strikes, but considering 9 of those 57 strikes were hits, it can be said that he has seen more balls than strikes.

Normally, a person familiar with stats would immediately disregard these numbers or conclusions due to an extremely low number of games played and plate appearances. But on top of being educated baseball fans, many of us have watched the Phillies on a daily basis for years, and have never seen Jimmy lay off an outside fastball (that he pops up,) or a high fastball (that he swings through or pops up,) or a breaking ball low and inside with two strikes.

So, in addition to being backed up by numbers – no matter how small the sample size – this passes the eye-test. If I were to give you the same numbers and draw a conclusion about Nolan Reimold of the Orioles, for example, criticism would be deserved because nobody in Philadelphia has seen Reimold bat outside of last year’s series or the occasional glance at MLB’s Extra Innings package.

Jimmy, though, we’ve watched for ten years. And for ten years, we’ve watched him go after terrible pitches and swing at the first offering of an inning. For whatever reason, he has always seemed to go up to the plate with the mindset that the count is 0-1 or 1-2. In these six games, though, it was a complete 180. It was as if he finally understood that the Phillies’ lineup was so potent that he was not required to hit a double on the game’s first pitch.

The Power of Polanco

I credit the turnaround to the signing of Placido Polanco, a player that I screamed for the day after the 2009 postseason ended, due to the added dimension he would bring to an already destructive lineup.

With Polanco hitting behind him, perhaps Jimmy finally realized that the odds of him reaching scoring position after a simple walk were more likely than not. Polanco doesn’t strike out and, even in cold streaks, makes the bat do as he pleases. Shane Victorino was no Willie Harris out of the two-hole, but he wasn’t the prototypical second batter Polanco is.

Setback

As previously stated, the Phillies offense will not fall off a cliff if Jimmy Rollins misses two-to-four weeks. It is a blow, but due to so much lineup depth, it is not devastating to the unit as a whole.

It is, however, devastating to Jimmy as an individual player because he could very well never again be as locked in as he was these first six games. Even in 2007, when he slugged his way to a MVP award, Jimmy didn’t let the game come to him as he has done this year. In 2007, the shortstop took charge of the offense and acted like a cleanup batter in the leadoff spot. He did everything Willie Mays Hayes would have gotten benched for.

Contagious Discipline

Another notoriously anxious Phillie-turned-patient hitter is Ryan Howard. Only four of Howard’s thirty-four plate appearances have ended in strikeouts this year. He is on pace to strike out 13 times this April (in 22 games,) compared to 20 punch outs in two fewer games last April, or 32 whiffs through the first twenty-two games of 2008.

Howard has notoriously swung at a ton of pitches outside the strike zone, exceeding the league average by multiple percentage points every year. After reading that sentence, I’m sure many of you are thinking about the low breaking balls he has never been able to lay off of, or the high fastballs that he never seems to put in play.

This year, his swing percentage at pitches out of the zone is right at league average, but more importantly, he is making contact with these pitches. Since 2006, the major league average contact rate at pitches outside the zone has ranged from 57%-to-62%. In that time, Howard’s annual contact rates at pitches outside the zone has been, well, downright awful: 35%, 39%, 41%, and 42%. In limited time this year, it has been 59%.

Now, I previously dismissed the sample size argument for Jimmy Rollins’ patience based on the eye-test, but only a fool would expect Howard to sustain that absurd contact rate out of the zone. Regardless, the numbers show that he has increased his ability to put borderline balls in play each year since 2006. For a player with a career .328 BABIP (batting average on balls in play,) this is a good skill to improve upon. I don’t know if you were aware of this, but good things happen when Ryan Howard makes contact.

Barry Bonds, Hitting Instructor?

As Pat Gallen reported earlier Tuesday, Howard worked with Barry Bonds this past offseason, a player who, despite steroids, public opinion, shurnken testicles, and enlarged heads, displayed more patience at the plate in his career than any other player in major league history.

One year, Bonds’ on-base percentage was .609, meaning his “not-on-base percentage” was .391. That year, only ten other NL players had an OBP as high as .391, meaning that Bonds’ “not-on-base-percentage” was higher than every NL player’s on-base percentage, save for the league’s second through tenth best OBP guys. Staggering.

One would hope Ryan Howard doesn’t start hitting the town with Barry Bonds, but if Bonds wants to throw a few tips Howard’s way, there are no complaints here. Who knows, maybe he worked with Jimmy, too.

Watch out, Milt Thompson!