Philliesflow.com

Ben Revere walked in 5.2% of his plate appearances in 2012. Here’s that 5.2% walk rate in the context of Phillies hitters with at least 100 plate appearances in 2012:

Revere just tops Pierre, walking in 5.244% of his ’12 plate appearances compared to 5.239% for Pierre. Again, it feels like it’s a good time to point out that Pierre and Revere are kind of similar offensive players, except that Pierre has more power.

Also, Kevin Frandsen deserves mention for walking in just nine of his 210 plate appearances in 2012, giving him a walk rate below a lot of the guys you would normally put on the suspect list of people who never walk. 4.3% is low even for him, but he’s not a guy who takes walks. He’s walked in about 5.4% of his plate appearances over his career. So if he wants to on-base .383 again, he should make sure to remember to hit .338 or so.

Also catching your eye has to be Ruiz, who on-based .394 thanks to hitting .325, but despite a walk rate well below league average. After walking in at least ten percentage of his plate appearances for the last four years, Ruiz’s walk rate dropped to 6.9% in 2012.

This suggests the chances that Josh Hamilton will stay in Texas have increased in recent days.

The last post suggested that if Ben Revere is going to continue to hit for (almost literally) no power, he’s going to need to dramatically improve his walk rate if he’s ever going to post a wOBA above league average. He could also try hitting like .340 or so, but let’s just assume that’s not going to happen.

There are, though, guys who walk at the rate Ben Revere has, 5.2% of his plate appearances in 2011 and about 5.4% in 2012, and still post a wOBA better than league average.

Here’s the list of the guys over the past five seasons who have gotten enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title and walked in between 5.2% and 5.4% of their plate appearances as well as their FanGraph‘s calculated wOBAs.

So there are 16 instances over the past five seasons of a player with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title who also walked in 5.2% to 5.4% of his plate appearances (like Ben Revere).

Of those 16, seven had a year in which their wOBA was league average or better.

If you’re never going to walk, or walk about 5.4% of the time or so, the two most likely ways to do that are to hit for a monster average or hit with monster power. Or a combination of the two.

Adrian Beltre, who does not appear on the table above, is the king of posting huge wOBA numbers with a low walk rate. He does both. In 2012, Beltre was ninth among the 143 qualified players across both leagues with a .388 wOBA despite a walk rate of just 5.5%. He hit .321 with 33 doubles and 36 home runs. In 2011 he walked in just 4.8% of his plate appearances but was 22nd across both leagues in wOBA, thanks to hitting .296 with 32 homers.

Ben Revere is never, ever going to hit for monster power.

Of the seven guys who got to average or better, five of them did it showing very good isolated power. Those five are: Pierzynski in 2012, Viciedo in ’12, Soriano in ’11, Guerrero in 2010 and Marlon Byrd in 2009. Of that group of five, the worse isolated power mark is Dayan Viciedo’s .188 in 2012 — he hit 25 home runs in 543 plate appearances for the White Sox last year. The best isolated power mark of that group of five is the .225 for Soriano in 2011.

The other two guys who fill out the list are Placido Polanco in 2010 and Erick Aybar in 2009. Those guys made it to league average or better (although just barely in Polanco’s case) for wOBA despite not walking and not hitting for power.

Polanco hit 298/339/386 that year with an isolated power of .088. Revere can hit .298 and can even on-base .339. We’ll have to wait and see, but an isolated power of .088 seems like it might require a little wishful thinking. Polanco didn’t steal any bases in 2010, just five for the year. So that’s an element Revere could bring to his wOBA to deliver a ’10 Polanco-like year without as much power if he does not improve his walk rate.

Aybar hit .312 in ’09, posting a 312/353/423 line with a .340 wOBA that put him well above league average. His isolated power of .111 for the year was even better than Polanco’s and seems well out of reach for Revere.

So, if Revere’s going to get to league average or better in wOBA, it looks like there’s a bunch of things he’s going to have to do in combination to have a chance to get there — hit for a real high average, steal a whole lot of bases without getting caught hardly at all, increase his walk rate and do as much as possible to deliver some more power. The power from year to year is probably going to be a fluke — you’re not going to see him hit the ball out of the yard ten or five or probably even three times in a season. What you might see is a bunch of weird bounces that give him five or seven doubles in a year that turn into triples, which would do good things for his isolated power.

Recent Phillie rumors include 1) the Phillies are interested in Alfonso Soriano and may have offered Domonic Brown straight up for him and 2) the Phillies have offered Josh Hamilton a three-year deal.

The linked article points out that if Josh Hamilton was willing to take a three-year deal there would be a whole lot of teams interested in giving him one.

The White Sox got Jeff Keppinger on a three-year, $12 million deal.

This article mentions Joe Saunders, Chris Young, Carl Pavano, Derek Lowe, John Lannan, Jair Jurrjens, Kevin Millwood, and Chien-Ming Wang as the type of player the Phillies might target to fill out their rotation. Both Pavano and Jurrjens were awful in 2012, but they seem to me to be the guys on the list with the biggest upside for 2013.

Either that or find some power.

At this point in his career, Ben Revere has 1,064 career plate appearances and an isolated power of .045. He has hit to a .278 average with a .323 slugging percentage (.323 minus .278 gives you .045, his isolated power).

As I mentioned in the previous post, that’s really an alarming lack of power.

So. Is it possible to be an above average offensive player with an isolated power that low? Below .050?

Yes. It just doesn’t happen very often. And when it does happen, it happens to guys who walk a lot more than Revere has to this point.

The table below shows the players who have put up an isolated power of .050 or worse of the past eight seasons over at least 400 plate appearances, their wOBA as calculated by FanGraphs and average wOBA for that season.

So the table lists 20 seasons for players over the last eight years in which the player has gotten 400 plate appearances with an isolated power of .050 or worse. Of those 20 seasons, there are only two in which the player had a wOBA for that year that was better than average. Jamey Carroll had an isolated power of .048 in 2010 with a .327 wOBA in 2010. Luis Castillo had an .044 isolated power in 2009 with a wOBA of .334.

Carroll hit .291 for the Dodgers in 2010. Castillo hit .302 for the Mets in 2009. Revere hit .294 for the Twins last year, and .326 in the minors. So .291 or .302 in 2013 is certainly possible. We know from their isolated power marks that Carroll and Castillo didn’t hit for power in those seasons. The way they got their wOBA up above average was by walking more.

But how much more?

So, for example, in 2010, Jamey Carroll got 414 plate appearances in which he put up a 291/379/339 line. He had .088 points of on-base percentage if you subtract his .379 on-base percentage from his .291 average. He walked 51 times, which was 12.3% of his plate appearances.

As you can see, for each of those years, the percentage of plate appearances in which Castillo and Carroll walked was more than twice as high as it was in either of Ben Revere’s last two seasons with the Twinkies.

Also notable is that for both Carroll and Castillo, their walk rate for the given year (’10 for Carroll or ’09 for Castillo) is higher than their walk rate for their career. Carroll drew walks in 12.3% of his plate appearances, which was higher than his 9.9% for his career. Castillo’s 11.9% is higher than his career mark of 10.7%.

This article suggests that Manuel downplayed the notion of needing a late-inning defensive replacement for Young and might also avoid hitting lefties Revere, Utley and Howard all in a row in his lineup.

The table below shows how Revere’s numbers compare to the numbers of fellow left-handed speedsters Juan Pierre and Michael Bourn in their age 23 and 24 seasons. Also included are the numbers for Pierre and Bourn for their next two years as well as what they did in 2011 and 2012 (Revere’s age 23 and 24 seasons).

For wOBA, it’s important to remember that the average wOBA changes from year to year. So, for example, the 2011 wOBA line for Revere means that his actual wOBA for 2011 was .278 and that .278 was .038 lower than the average wOBA for the year of .316.

You can see the constants that FanGraphs uses for calculating wOBA here.

Bourn barely played at all when he was 23 or 24. Pierre was better offensively than Revere in his 23 and 24-year-old seasons, but not as good defensively, at least by UZR/150 in all outfield positions combined.

If you total up the WAR for Revere and Pierre for their age 23 and 24 seasons, Revere is at 3.1 bWAR and Pierre 3.3. By fWAR, Revere tops Pierre 5.4 to 4.9. Important to remember is that Pierre got a lot more chances to play and accumulate WAR in his age 23 and 24 seasons, getting 289 more plate appearances in the two years combined and playing 468 1/3 more innings in the outfield.

Bourn, notably, got just 144 plate appearances through his age 24 seasons and then was terrible in his age 25 season before putting up a big year with the Astros at age 26 (285/354/384 with 61 stolen bases).

Revere has displayed no power to date, even relative to the light-hitting Pierre and Bourn, and almost surely never will.

His isolated power in 2011 was .042. That was 175 of 175 players across both leagues with 450 or more plate appearances. Pierre was 174th on that list at .049.

In 2012, Revere was at .049. That was 114th of 114 players across both leagues with 550 or more plate appearances. Nobody else with 550 or more PA came close to showing that little power last year. Yunel Escobar was 113th of 114 and his isolated power was .091.

If you remove the 2006 season for Bourn in which he got 11 plate appearances, there are 13 seasons between Pierre, Bourn and Revere on the table above. Revere’s best mark for isolated power over the last two seasons is .049. There’s only one season in which either Pierre or Bourn has an isolated power worse than .049 — Pierre put up an .049 in 2011 on his way to a miserable, negative WAR season.

Bourn’s isolated power in 2012 was .117, which is the highest mark for any of the 13 seasons. Between both leagues, there were 148 players who got at least 500 plate appearances in 2012. Bourn’s isolated power of .117 was 122nd best of the 148.

The Phillies traded relievers Josh Lindblom and Lisalverto Bonilla to Texas for Michael Young. The linked article also suggests that the Rangers will pay about $10 million of Young’s 2012 salary, leaving $6 million for the Phillies to pay. It also suggests the Phillies paid Young $1.2 million to waive his no-trade clause and will give him a new no-trade clause.

Young was terrible in 2012. If he’s that bad again in 2013, that’s not going to work out for the Phillies. I like the deal, though, cause he still has upside and willing be playing for his next contract. Linblom’s numbers out of Dodger Stadium were never real impressive.

This article says that after the trade of Worley, the Phillies are looking for a low-risk, high-reward type guy to help fill out the rotation and mentions John Lannan, Dallas Braden, Carlos Zambrano and Roy Oswalt.

Quick — across both leagues, who’s the player who has hurt his team the most on the bases over the past three seasons? Hint: if you’re a Phillies fan, you probably saw him hobbling around the bases quite a bit in 2012.

The bad news is he wasn’t coming off of a major achilles injury in 2010 or 2011.

Here are Ryan Howard’s base running runs above average as calculated by FanGraphs over the past three seasons:

Howard’s -5.6 in 2012 was his best mark of the three years, but it’s hard to see that as a mark of much hope. Howard got just 292 plate appearances in ’12 — less than half of what he got in ’10 or ’11. If he accumulated base running runs above (below) average at his 2012 rate over 600 plate appearances, he would have been at about -11.5 for the year.

No doubt about it that Howard was coming off of a major injury in 2012. Less sure about how much that injury could have been impacting him in 2010 and 2011.

Over the last three years, there have only been five players whose total base running runs below average has been worse than -15.8 overall — David Ortiz (-19.7), Billy Butler (-19.7), Prince Fielder (-19.8), Paul Konerko (-21.5) and Howard (-22.0).

Even with only about half a season of plate appearances in 2012, Howard’s base running from 2010 to 2012 is still worse than Phillie-poster-boy-for-bad-on-the-bases Pat Burrell’s horrendous base running during Burrell’s worst years.

At the height of his base running suck, 2005 to 2007, Burrell got 1,834 plate appearances with a total base running runs below average of -18.3. Over the last three years, Howard has 1,556 plate appearances and a base running runs below average of -22.0.

There’s not a whole ton of silver lining on the Ryan Howard base running front, but there are guys who have been worse on the bases than he has in recent history. Looking at three-year periods going back to 2000, here’s the player who had the best and worst base running runs above average as calculated by FanGraphs:

So from 2008 to 2010, Prince Fielder (-23.4) was worse than Howard (-22.0) ’10 to ’12. Prior to that, you’ve got to go back to Alex Gonzalez (the other one) from ’03 to ’05 to find a three-year period where someone out-worsened Howard’s ’10 to ’12 over a three-year period. Gonzalez also did it ’02 to ’04. Alex Gonzalez had a whole bunch of problems trying to steal bases from 2000 to 2005, playing for five different teams and getting caught 24 times, picked off nine and stealing just 34 bases.

At least Howard doesn’t get caught stealing. He’s got 12 stolen bases for his career and has been caught just four times (picked off three).

On the other side of the table, Jimmy Rollins was the best running in baseball by base running runs above average from 2007 to 2009 with 26.6. And again, Michael Bourn demonstrates that he brings a lot of value with what he does with his defense and on the bases as he appears atop the list for 2008 to 2010, 2009 to 2011 and 2010 to 2012.

From 2008 to 2012, Bourn’s base running runs above average is 44.7. That leads all players across both leagues and nobody else is close. Ian Kinsler is second at 32.5 and Victorino third at 31.0.

Todd Zolecki suggests the chances the Phillies will land Josh Hamilton are pretty slim.

In the same piece, he also suggests the Rangers would have traded young third baseman Mike Olt for Hamels last year, but that he’s not sure they would trade him for Cliff Lee at this point.

The deadline for setting the 40-man roster ahead of the Rule V draft was last night. Matt Gelb speculated on who the Phillies might protect in this article.

The Phillies added four players to their 40-man roster in advance of the December 6 Rule V draft, including outfielder Zach Collier and pitchers Trevor May, Ethan Martin and Jonathan Pettibone. They now have 38 players on their 40-man roster, including six outfielders, five of which are left-handed.

This suggests the Phillies may have interest in free agent Koji Uehara. The 37-year-old right-handed reliever threw to a 1.75 ERA with an 0.64 ratio for Texas in 2012, striking out 43 in 36 innings. He missed about two months last year with a problem with his right lat. He returned at the end of August and made 17 appearances between that time and the end of the season, throwing to a 1.23 ERA over 14 2/3 innings while striking out 21 and holding opponents to a .160 on-base percentage.

Last week’s posts were about things the Phillies used to be great at, outfield defense and outfield offense, and suddenly aren’t. Today’s is about base running — something the Phillies have been great at in recent history, but were just pretty good at in 2012.

Here’s the base running total (runs above average) for the Phillies over the past six years as calculated by FanGraphs and how it compares to the other MLB teams (base running includes stolen bases and caught stealing, while UBR does not):

So the Phils were best in baseball at the statistic in 2007 and 2008. They had dropped to the middle of the pack in 2011, but came back a little to eleventh across both leagues in 2012.

In 2007, across all players in both leagues, the Phillies had two players in the top 20 in base running. Rollins was second at 11.2 and Victorino was 18th at 6.9.

In 2008, they led the league again in the category with two guys in the top ten. Rollins was third at 10.5 and Victorino ninth at 8.4.

Victorino isn’t on the team anymore, but Jimmy Rollins can’t shoulder much of the blame for the Phillies’s drop from their spot as the best team in baseball in the category. In 2012, Rollins’s 8.3 base running runs above average was second best among all players in baseball, behind only Mike Trout of the Angels.

Juan Pierre appears to be headed to the Marlins on a one-year, $1.6 million deal.

Darin Ruf homered yesterday, giving him ten home runs in 120 at-bats in Venezuela. This article suggests he probably won’t hit ten more to tie the league record, cause he’s headed back to the US later this week and probably won’t return to the league for the second half.

This suggests that BJ Upton, who has already visited the Phillies and Braves, will also visit at least three other teams, which may include the Nationals and Giants. Rotoworld suggests Upton is likely to get about five years and $75 million. If he gets it from the Phillies, let’s hope he proves to be a whole lot better than Shane Victorino, who seems likely to get a lot less than five years, $75 million.