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The final point I’d like to make on Utley and Howard related to having them hitting back-to-back is that in 2008, both Utley and Howard didn’t fare well against relief pitching. This is a change from recent years when, by OPS, they had both put up very good numbers against relievers and numbers that were much closer to their overall OPS for the season.

There were 12 hitters that got at least 200 plate appearances for the Phillies in 2008. Of those, four put up a higher OPS in their plate appearances against relief pitchers than they did in their plate appearances against starting pitchers. Here they are, ordered by the difference between the OPS they put up against starters and relievers:

So by OPS, Ruiz was better against relief pitchers than he was against starting pitchers, but just by a tiny bit. Victorino at the top of the list was better against them also, but by a wider margin.

And then there’s a longer list of players who were better against starters. Here they are, again with the players with the largest difference between what they did against relievers and starters at the top:

Utley and Howard are at the top of that list, and the difference in what they did against relievers and starters is larger than the difference for any of the players in either group.

Even while the difference between their total OPS and OPS against relievers is very large, it’s important to realize that Utley and Howard still hit relief pitching well compared to the other guys on the team. For example, they both have a bigger difference between their total OPS and OPS against relievers than Bruntlett, who hit a miserable 158/252/232 against relief pitching in ’08, but that’s because they had a lot further to drop. Utley’s .763 OPS against relievers is still better than anybody on the team except for three guys on the top list who hit relievers better than starters, Burrell, Rollins and Victorino.

The huge drop off in numbers against relievers in 2008 is something new for Utley and Howard.

Looking back at 2006 and 2007, in 2006 Utley was about as good against relievers as he was overall. In 2007 he put up an OPS against relief pitchers that was better than his OPS overall. But 2008 was a different story:

For Howard, his OPS against relievers wasn’t quite as good as his overall OPS in ’06 and ’07. But he was still hitting them hard, putting up an OPS of over .900 against relief pitching in both years. And then it dropped way down in 2008:

All of Howard’s OPS-related numbers were down in 2008, but his numbers against relievers were down by even more.

The why of all this is the hard part. I don’t know. It’s tempting to suggest that the two lefties hitting back-to-back is the problem in that it allows a team to bring in its best left-handed reliever to deal with both of them. The problem with that is that the Phils hit Utley and Howard back-to-back in the three and four holes regularly in 2007 and both players pounded relief pitching.

I still think I’d be looking to put a right-handed hitter in-between Utley and Howard. I don’t think the Phillies will, though, based on what they’ve done in the past and the issues they have with the right-handed hitters in the lineup for 2009.

Utley says he likes the balance of the offense in terms of lefties, righties and switch-hitters. I agree that the three righties, three lefties and two switch-hitters is nice — I think the issue is that of the three righties, two of them (Feliz and Ruiz) are players whose value comes a lot from their defense rather than what they do with the bat.

This suggests that Utley could return to game action before the end of March.

Article about Mike Koplove’s ties to Philadelphia here.

Yesterday’s point was that both Utley and Howard are facing lefties more regularly than other elite left-handed hitters in baseball. Today’s is that this is a bigger deal for Utley than it is for Howard. By OPS, over the last three years the difference between what the two did against right-handed and left-handed pitching has been much more dramatic for Howard than it has been for Utley. Over the last two years, Utley has been the better hitter against lefties by a wide margin while Howard has struggled.

Here’s Howard’s total OPS, his OPS against righties and against lefties over the past three years:

First of all, just wow. That’s pretty much what you would hope that chart wouldn’t look like. That said, though, the focus of this post is the difference between what Howard does against right-handed pitching, the purple line, and what he does against left-handed pitching, the orange line. Over the three years they have been separated by between 220 points (in 2008 he put up an .746 OPS against lefties and a .966 OPS against righties) and 246 points (in ’07 he was 1.072 against righties and .826 against lefties).

The other point is that the .746 OPS against lefties, Howard put up a 224/294/451 line against them in ’08, isn’t good.

For Utley, the difference between what he’s done against righties and lefties is much smaller. His OPS against left-handed hitting has been better than Howard’s by at least a hundred points for each of the past two seasons:

Over the past three seasons, the biggest difference between the OPS that Utley posted against lefties and righties came in 2007. His OPS against righties was just seventy-seven points higher in that season (for Howard the smallest difference over the past two years has been two hundred and twenty points).

In 2007, Utley put up an .927 OPS against lefties, which was more than hundred points higher than the .826 put up by Howard. Utley’s .888 against lefties in ’08 was 142 points higher than Howard’s .746.

This suggests that Utley may be more ready for opening day than Feliz.

Long SI article about Cole Hamels and family.

Off the Mets now and on to the lineup and whether or not it’s a big deal that the Phils hit Utley and Howard back-to-back as well as the general problem with the lack of right-handed hitters on the team. Three related points coming in this and upcoming posts: 1) (today!) Utley and Howard get a higher percentage of their plate appearances against left-handed pitching than many of the other elite left-handed hitters in baseball 2) this is a bigger deal for Howard than it is for Utley and 3) whether it’s because they hit back-to-back or not, in 2008 Utley and Howard both had numbers against relief pitchers that were a) bad and b) worse than they had been in recent years.

Pretty much I’m thinking that a lineup that goes Utley-Howard-Ibanez 3-4-5 isn’t the way to go (or the way the Phillies will go).

Today’s point is that Utley and Howard get more of their plate appearances against left-handed hitting than many of the other best left-handed hitters in baseball.

In 2008, Howard and Utley each got about 38% of their plate appearances against left-handed pitching. By OPS, Utley was the best left-handed hitter (.915) in the NL in ’08 and Howard was fifth best (.881). If you compare the percentage of their plate appearances that came against lefties for 2008 to the percentage of plate appearances that came against lefties for the four other top hitters in the NL, Utley and Howard faced lefties more often.

The chart below presents, for the six left-handed NL hitters with at least 500 plate appearances in 2008 who posted the best OPS, the percentage of their plate appearances that have come against left-handed pitchers in 2008 and in ’06 and ’07:

In 2006, Adam Dunn got 32.8% of his plate appearances against lefties while Howard got 32.0% of his plate appearances against lefties. Since then, though, none of the rest of the group has gotten as high a percentage of their plate appearances against lefties. That adds up to a lot of plate appearances. Brian McCann, for example, has had 1,617 total plate appearances over the past three years and 480 (29.7%) have come against lefties. Utley has had 2,059 total plate appearances and 752 of them, 36.5%, of them have come against lefties. So Utley has had 442 more total plate appearances, but 272 of them have come against left-handed pitching.

Utley and Howard are also getting a higher percentage of their plate appearances against lefties than the top left-handed hitters in the American League. By OPS, here are the top six left-handed hitters in the AL from 2008 and the percentage of their plate appearances that have come against lefties over the past three years:

The highest mark for that group for the last three years is the 35.5% of Justin Morneau’s plate appearances that came against left-handed pitchers in 2008. Utley and Howard have both faced a higher percentage of lefties in each of the last two seasons.

It should also be noted that, like Utley and Howard, in 2008 Morneau hit almost exclusively behind another very good left-handed hitter. The Twins lineup regularly featured Joe Mauer hitting third and Morneau in the cleanup slot.

Interesting Q&A with Pat Gillick here in which he suggests the Phillies might have been willing to bring Burrell back but the length of the contract that Burrell was looking for was a problem. I also find it fascinating given how regularly Gillick wins the World Series that when asked why he pushed for the Ibanez signing the first thing he mentions is that Ibanez will be a positive influence in the clubhouse. Gillick also suggests that Ibanez may hit for more power at Citizens Bank Park and that he hits left-handed pitching well.

In this article, Charlie Manuel says that Ibanez has hit lefties well for the last few years. Ibanez smoked lefties to the tune of 305/368/497 in 2008, but hit 256/294/356 against them in 2007 and 243/301/362 against them in ’06.

This article says that Feliz hasn’t swung a bat since his surgery in November. Also says that Feliz expects to be ready for the start of the season.

The Phillies outscored the Mets 892 to 804 in 2007, a difference of 88 runs. That difference disappeared completely in 2008 as both teams scored an identical 799 runs. Offense was down across the league last year, but the Mets seemed less bothered than most teams. They scored five fewer runs than they had the year before while the Phillies scored 93 fewer.

There were injuries for the Phillies, most notably to Jimmy Rollins. Let’s hope that was it. Let’s hope what was not it is that the idea that the Mets are built around a pair of young stars in Reyes and Wright while the Phillies are built around a pair of young stars in Utley and Howard just isn’t as true as we’d like it to be. All four are definitely stars, part of baseball’s elite, but some of them are younger than others. Utley is 30 already and Howard turns 30 in November. Reyes won’t be 26 till June and Wright turns 27 in December. Utley and Howard, and Rollins for that matter, who turns 31 in November, are all going to start to get worse sooner than the younger Mets stars. I’m not saying that it’s started already, I don’t think it has. But it will, and when you look at some pairings of Mets and Phillies players over the past three years there are some concerning trends that help shed some light on how the difference in runs scored closed so dramatically in ’08.

Here’s the runs created, as calculated by Baseball-Reference, for Rollins and Reyes over the past three seasons:

Rollins was hurt for a lot of 2008, which will mess up your runs created, but even when he wasn’t Reyes outhit him. Reyes hit 297/358/475 for the year while Rollins hit 277/349/437.

Here’s Utley and Wright:

After being outhit by Utley in 2006, Wright has been better in 2007 and 2008. It should also be noted that there were only four NL players whose runs created were better than the 130 that Utley put up in 2008 — Wright just happens to be one of them.

This one might be the most disturbing of all, comparing Howard and Delgado:

Carlos Delgado isn’t the offensive player that Ryan Howard is, let’s not get silly here. But the similarity in the amount of offense they produced in 2008 is alarming. Even more alarming than the fact suggestion that Delgado and Howard created a similar amount of offense in 2008 is how dramatically Howard’s output has dropped since 2006 — for 169 in ’06 to 113 in ’08.

Finally, this one isn’t a natural pairing at all, but Carlos Beltran produced more offense than Burrell consistently over the past three seasons and widened the gap in 2008:

The two were very close in 2007. Both created more runs in 2008 than they had the year before, but Beltran had greater improvement between the two seasons.

Ryan Howard is 7-for-his-last-23 and has his batting average up to .214 for the season. A whole lot of things have gone wrong for Howard this season, but on Sunday he drove in three runs with a pair of doubles that he hit on the first pitch of his at-bat. Coming into Sunday’s game, Howard was hitting 214/214/357 for the season in his plate appearances that ended after one pitch.

When you compare his numbers to what he has done over the last two seasons, I think you can make the case that the poor results Howard has had when he puts the ball in play on the first pitch of his at-bat have been among the most significant differences between what he’s done so far in 2008 and what he did in 2007 and 2006.

For the last three years, here’s how many plate appearances he’s had, how many of those plate appearances ended after just one pitch, the percentage of his plate appearances that ended after one pitch, his OPS when he puts the ball in play after one pitch and his OPS overall for the season:

First of all, Howard is putting the ball in play on the first pitch of his at-bat in 2008 at about the same rate as he did over the last two years. If you combine 2006 and 2007, he had 140 one pitch plate appearances in 1,352 total plate appearances. That’s about 10.4 percent of the time his plate appearance ended after one pitch compared to 10.8 this season.

In 2006, though, he hit .375 when he put the ball in play on the first pitch of his plate appearance. In 2007, .463. After Sunday’s big day he’s hitting .267 in 2008 when he puts the ball in play on the first pitch of his plate appearance.

Obviously by total OPS he’s down across the board in 2008. But in both 2006 and 2007 his OPS when he put the ball in play on the first pitch of his plate appearance was significantly better than his overall OPS for the season. In 2008, it’s about the same.

And he’s also hitting fewer home runs on the first pitch of his plate appearance. Of course, so far he’s hitting fewer home runs overall, but even as a percentage of the total home runs he’s hit for the season the number he’s hitting on the first pitch of his plate appearance is down in ’08:

Those numbers are obviously very fragile. For example, if Howard had hit two of his 15 home runs on the season on his first pitch instead of one, that would be 13.3 percent. Still, even if it’s a coincidence that the percentage of his home runs he’s hit on the first pitch has gone down since 2006, it’s an interesting one.

If your plate appearance doesn’t end on the first pitch there’s pretty much only two things that can happen. You can be down 0-1 or up 1-0 in the count. When you compare his OPS in those situations to his total OPS for the year the numbers for 2008 are much more similar to his ’07 and ’06 numbers than what he’s doing on plate appearances that end in one pitch:

By a very small margin, Howard is getting behind 0-1 this season more than he did in the previous two seasons. Overall, however, the numbers when he gets behind 0-1 or ahead 1-0 compared to his OPS for the season are a lot more similar than what’s happening when he puts the ball in play on the first pitch.

Brett Myers (3-7, 5.13) faces righty Ricky Nolasco (5-4, 5.05) tonight in Florida. Nolasco faced the Phillies in Philadelphia on May 31 and held them to two runs on four hits over 6 2/3 innings. He’s made one start since and was blasted by the Braves on Thursday, allowing seven runs in 5 2/3 innings. He’s been very strong against righties this season — they are hitting just .224 against him and have hit just one home run. Lefties are another story. They’re hitting .324 against him and have hit 11 of the 12 bombs he has allowed. The Phillies have lost seven of the last eight games that Myers has started despite the fact that Myers has been very solid in his last four starts. Over his last four outings Myers has allowed 11 earned runs in 27 1/3 innings (3.62 ERA). The Phillies have gone 1-3. Over those 27 1/3 innings Myers hasn’t allowed a home run. Excluding those innings he’s allowed 15 in 53 1/3 innings on the season. Righties are hitting .305 against him for the season. He has made one start against Florida this season and was good, holding the Fish to three runs on six hits over eight innings on May 30 (the Phils won the game 12-3, their only win in his last eight starts).

Here’s what the players that saw the most time at first base and second base for each of the teams in the NL East did last season with the bat:

The Phils’ dynamic duo of Utley and Howard were the class of the group. Nobody else was real close. When looking at the overall numbers for the pairs you should remember that the numbers for the Mets are skewed towards Delgado because he got so many more at-bats than Castillo. Ditto for Kelly Johnson with the Braves given the number of at-bats for Scott Thorman.

Notably absent is Mark Teixeira, of course, who got less time at first for Atlanta than Thorman in ’07. Here’s what the numbers for Johnson and Teixeira look like (includes Teixeira’s numbers with both teams, not just the Braves):

And here is what the numbers look like if you use all of the players that got at-bats as first baseman and second baseman rather than just the players that saw the most time at the position:

Thanks to Teixeira, Atlanta’s numbers surge up to second best in the division.

For the Phillies it’s interesting to note that the non-Utley guys who played second, led by Iguchi, outpaced the non-Howard guys who played first (hence the second basemen were better offensively overall using OPS as the measure despite the fact that Utley and Howard hit to the same .976).

For the Nationals, the guys other than Young and Belliard who manned first and second, Robert Fick and Felipe Lopez especially, were much worse and brought the numbers for the team down overall.

The Marlins numbers overall were pretty close to what their primary guys did. Ditto for the Mets, who saw Valentin, Easley and Gotay all get a lot of time at second base.

As you look to 2008, Utley and Howard seemingly guarantee the Phils will lead the pack. I’d guess Teixeira and Johnson will have Atlanta second. The other three teams were closely packed last season and it looks like there’s a good chance they will be again this season. The Nationals add Nick Johnson to the mix at first, which could be a significant boost, but the group went Flordia-New York-Washington last year and I think there’s a good chance they go that way again.

The Phils did not play yesterday. Chad Durbin pitched in a minor league game and allowed two runs on six hits and a walk over three innings.

Scott Mathieson was not actually demoted to the Phils minor league camp in the first big wave of moves. The Phils tried to demote him but were prevented from doing so because of his injury status during the 2007 season.