Yesterday I pointed out that Shane Victorino isn’t doing much at all with the bat in road games this season. The Phillies have been miserable just about everywhere in 2012, but a little more miserable at home than on the road. They’re 20-23 away from home and a hide-your-eyes bad 17-27 at home.

Overall, the Phillies have allowed too many runs no matter where they’ve played this year. When it comes to scoring runs, though, they’ve been just fine on the road and miserable at home.

at Home NL Rank Away NL Rank
Runs allowed per game 4.39 11 4.72 11
Scored per game 3.77 11 4.70 3

That’s just ugly. The Phillies are kind of the gang that can’t shoot straight. They can’t prevent runs at home or away and they can’t score enough runs at home. What they have done is scored runs on the road.

So far in 2012, only two teams have allowed more runs than the 396 the Phils have given up. Houston has allowed 416 and Colorado has allowed 479.

Offensively they’re in the middle of the pack in the NL. The 368 runs they’ve scored is seventh-best.

Here’s the thing that seems odd, though. The overall offensive numbers for the Phillies at home and on the road are nearly identical:

PA AVG OBP SLG ISO
Home 1622 260 316 401 141
Away 1702 264 316 405 141

So hitting 260/316/401 with an isolated power of .141 at home has the Phillies at eleventh in the NL in runs scored per game at home. Hitting a very similar 264/316/405 with an isolated power of .141 on the road has them third in the NL in their games away from home. And on the road they’ve scored nearly a run more a game.

So. Huh?

Not completely sure what’s going on with that. Two thoughts, though.

The first one’s a guess and I can’t tell if it’s right or not without double-split data. But I would guess the situational hitting for the Phillies on the road has been better than it has at home.

The bigger one is that teams hit better at home. So if the Phillies don’t hit better at home, then their numbers are going to slump at home relative to the rest of the league.

Of the 16 NL teams, eight of them have scored more runs per game in their away games for the season than they have for their home games for the season (joining the Phils are Atlanta, New York, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco, St Louis and Washington). As you would expect, though, the splits overall for NL hitters are better at home than they are away:

AVG OBP SLG
Home 259 326 413
Away 248 310 391

So if, on average, everyone is a little better offensively at home than they are on the road and the Phillies stay the same at home and on the road, their numbers relative to the rest of the NL are going to be much better away than they are at home. And they are.

It’s just surprising to me if the difference in this case is the difference in being third in the league in runs scored and eleventh. I don’t think it can be, so there must be more going on.

(Side note on this: I would expect that the overall league split would usually be better at home than away. What I found was that it always, or very close to always, is. I took a quick look and couldn’t find an example of the OPS for the NL being better on the road than at home for any year after 1918, which is when I stopped looking. This hurts my brain and I don’t quite get it. I would not have guessed that the rules give enough of an edge to the home team to make this the case. As I mentioned in the post, so far this year in the NL eight of the 16 teams have scored more runs per game away from home than they have at home. In 2011, NL teams scored an average of 4.12 runs per game at home and an average of 4.14 runs per game away, but with a better OPS at home).

Halladay gave up a run on three hits over three innings for Clearwater last night.

I added a section to the bottom of the blue band in the Start Log that shows the needed winning percentage the Phillies would have to play to in their remaining games in order to get to various win marks. Also shows their projected win total for the year if they play to their existing winning percentage over their remaining games. Right now they’re on pace to go 69-93, which could be better.