Phillies Nation

The Phillies will have to wait about 15 more hours if they want their 10th straight winning season.

The Phils fell to the Nationals 4-2 in Game 161 of the 2012 season. Darin Ruf accounted for both runs with a pair of solo homers. He’s been a bright spot over the last week, hitting in eight straight games and slugging .774 with two doubles, a triple and two homers in his 11-game major-league career. Of the 7 runs the Phillies have scored in the past three games against the Nationals, Ruf has driven in all 7.

B.J. Rosenberg started for the Phillies and allowed just one run over four solid innings. Josh Lindblom was roughed up in the sixth, he allowed two runs on a solo homer, two other hits, a walk and a hit-by-pitch. The rest of the bullpen filled in the gaps with Antonio Bastardo giving up a Nats insurance run in the eighth.

Kevin Frandsen hit two doubles to raise his batting average to .337 from the lead-off spot tonight. For all of the warranted talk of Frandsen not being an everyday third baseman, he never slowed down over the final two months with the Phillies.

The season ends tomorrow afternoon as Cliff Lee (6-8, 3.12) takes on Edwin Jackson (9-11, 4.13) at 1:05 p.m.

I addressed this in the comments section of my last post, but feel that it’s become such a popular blogosphere topic that it deserves its own post.

Carlos Ruiz should not be batting first. Or second.

It is true that you want a high on-base percentage out of your leadoff batter. It is also true that Chooch has a .381 OBP. But a .381 OBP in the seven- or eight-hole is not easily translatable to the leadoff spot.

Why?

Well, first, keep in mind that Chooch has six intentional walks this year, all of which have been the means to the end of pitching to a pitcher, or to Wilson Valdez. Then factor in his two unpredictable hit-by-pitches, which also contribute to OBP.

Subtract those eight instances, and Ruiz’ OBP goes from .381 to .364. This is still impressive, but you must also recognize that Carlos has received a good amount of unintentional-intentional walks this season, i.e. plate appearances in which he sees nothing but junk.

Chooch would certainly stop seeing as much junk if batting first or second, so even with exceptional plate discipline, his walk rate would decline. If you figure that there is a 10 or 15 point dropoff in OBP from batting 7 or 8 to batting 1 or 2, were looking at about a .350 OBP from Ruiz.

Even with all of his recent struggles, Jimmy Rollins has still maintained a .340 on-base percentage, a figure nearly 100 points higher than his batting average.

So, if the debate is between a slow guy with a .350 OBP and a fast guy with a .340 OBP and years of experience in the leadoff spot, wouldn’t you choose the latter?

Why does this happen every June?

Since 2007 ushered in this current era of over-the-hump, successful Phillie-dom, the inaugural summer month has been one to forget.

In ’07, they entered the month two games under .500 and left one game over. But they floundered in the middle of the month and spent the last three days of June getting beat by the Mets.

Last season, the Phillies suffered their only sub-.500 month in June, going 12-15 and struggling to do anything offensively after a 20-2 victory in St. Louis on June 13.

This June? How about four straight wins followed by back-to-back crushing blown saves that possibly derailed the Phillies from running away with the NL East very early in the season. Due to poor play and devastating injuries, the Mets could have been deemed irrelevant had the Phillies not slowed down to take a detour.

Obviously, the one commonality every June is interleague play.

We all know the Phillies have struggled in recent years when facing the junior circuit. But do we really know just how awful they have been?

Can’t Hit

Excluding the series at Yankee Stadium in May, the Phillies are 1-8 against the AL, averaging four runs a game while giving up close to seven.

Their team batting average, OBP, and slugging percentage in June are all lower than April and May, and the Phillies already have more strikeouts at the plate this month (142) than they did in all of April (118.)

Four regulars have compiled on-base percentages under .300 in June (Rollins, Feliz, Ruiz, Ibanez.) No Phillie has walked more than he has struck out in the month. Jimmy Rollins is hitting .205 with one stolen base and three GIDP’s.

While these may seem like cherry-picked numbers, atrocious plate discipline and lack of production from the leadoff spot have been two key factors during this pathetic run of losing winnable game after winnable game.

Can’t Pitch

Let’s not place all the blame on the recent woes of the starting lineup, though, because that would be unfair to the pitching staff.

Four guys have pitched well this month: Cole Hamels, Joe Blanton, J.C. Romero, and Chan Ho Park. That’s it. Hamels and Blanton have been the only starters to man the mound past the sixth inning twice in June.

Romero continues to get himself in and out of jams with consistency and Park has finally gotten accustomed to the bullpen by using his plethora of movement to confuse hitters.

But the compliments end there.

J.A. Happ is starting to look human (14 BB in his last 17 IP) and Jamie Moyer continues to show that he is just as capable of giving up six runs in three innings as he is of giving up three in six.

Antonio Bastardo followed his first poor outing with a decent one against the Orioles, mixing in more offspeed pitches and throwing many more strikes, but took the L due to a lackluster offense.

With the starting rotation struggling to get deep into games, the bullpen has been taxed. Injuries and ineffectiveness have been the results. Clay Condrey has come crashing back to Earth, which could have been expected. Chad Durbin and his middling stuff haven’t been able to secure the late-inning role vacated by Ryan Madson, who, after pitching brilliantly for the first three months of the season, has hit a snag in the closer’s role.

Why the June Swoon?

In trying to figure out why the Phillies play so poorly in June, you must first understand that all three June’s are completely independent of one another.

In 2007, the Phillies were 6-6 against the AL in June. They lost two of three to the Tigers, Indians, and the lowly Royals. But that team struggled out of the gate and sputtered until mid-August. They did not yet have the confidence or swagger of a playoff team, nor the identity that developed in the later months.

Last June, the interleague struggles were mainly offensive, as the entire lineup stopped hitting at the same time. They batted .232 for the month, a season low, with less homers and total bases than any other month. And as it usually goes, once a team starts to struggle at the plate, bad luck rears its ugly head. The Phils’ .266 BABIP in June was seventeen points lower than its season average.

This year, it’s been a combination of injuries and players regressing to their true skill set (Happ, Condrey, Durbin.) Entering June, the Phillies were the least injured team in all of baseball, with Brett Myers being the lone Phillie injured for an extended period of time and Carlos Ruiz being the only regular to take a trip to the 15-day DL.

Then June hit, and two big pieces of the bullpen went down, as did Raul Ibanez. Then Ryan Howard went down for two games of the Orioles series. When a team not known for manufacturing runs is forced to play without its two biggest power threats, the results are not pretty. Since Ibanez went down, the Phillies are 0-4 with a .223 BA and .297 OBP.

But the Phils haven’t been merely beating themselves, they’ve been facing viable competition.

AL Beast

To the common observer, the Blue Jays and Orioles are inferior to the Phillies. The Jays lack a big-time power threat and have been ravaged by injuries to the starting rotation. The Orioles have the third-worst ERA in baseball and only Texas, Washington, and Pittsburgh have struck out fewer batters.

But the flaws of these teams are enhanced by the fact that the Blue Jays and Orioles play in the best division of the superior league. The Orioles have already faced the Yankees nine times this season. Think their high ERA/low strikeout numbers have anything to do with that? Think those numbers would look any different if they played four series’ with the Nationals?

On its standings page, Baseball Prospectus features a stat called Hit-List Rank, which ranks teams 1-30 based on a combination of three different Pythagorean formulas that help to determine the overall quality of a team:

1. Runs scored vs. runs allowed
2. Equivalent Runs scored vs. allowed (this takes stats such as hits, walks, total bases, stolen bases, etc. to determine how many runs scored and allowed a team SHOULD have.) This also factors in the dimensions of stadiums and league scoring levels.
3. Adjusted Equivalent Runs scored vs. allowed (this is the same as #2, except it includes strength of schedule.)

The Red Sox, Rays, Blue Jays, and Yankees rank 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively. Enough said.

Last year, the blame was on the Phillies. They couldn’t hit and lost two of three to the A’s and Rangers, teams they were clearly superior to.

This June, it was moreso the timing of injuries and unsustainable effectiveness of members of the pitching staff.

Or just blame it on the AL East.

Before the rain, Antonio Bastardo and the Phillies spotted the Red Sox a 5-0 lead. That proved to be the difference in an 11-6 loss.

Raul Ibanez socked his 22nd home run, and Pedro Feliz hit another in a fourth-inning rally, but poor pitching from the back end of the Phillies bullpen plagued them. Jack Taschner gave up three runs on five innings in an inning; Sergio Escalona surrendered two runs in an inning.

Jayson Werth went 3-for-4 with 2 RBI after being moved down to the six-hole. Jimmy Rollins, still in the leadoff spot, went 0-for-5.

Just two quick questions I’d hope our manager can answer.

1. Why is the bench so weak? Currently the bench includes Matt Stairs (who has been great), Greg Dobbs (who needs more at bats but is struggling), Eric Bruntlett (a far below-average offensive player and average-at-best defensive player), Chris Coste (standard fare for a backup catcher) and Paul Bako (really?). And what about that whole “We’ll give Big John the chance to prove himself” talk?

2. Why can’t Jimmy Rollins hit? Or, if I should be so accurate, why the heck did you move him back to the leadoff spot? That was stupid, wasn’t it? He was productive in the six-hole. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. No, but you fixed it, and suddenly Rollins is slumping again. What the heck is wrong with him? Whatever the case, move him back to the six-hole. Do it now.

If you remember, fair reader, I addressed Manuel with three questions a week ago. Now that the Lidge problem is bunk, I only have two questions. As you’ll see, they’re almost the same as the ones I asked before, but with small tweaks.

Yes, it’s like playing a broken record.

Actually, here’s a third: Why is Kyle Kendrick on the roster? But that’s not really a question for Manuel, is it?