May 26, 2010

Phil Watch: Fish In The Barrel


Gotta clean out the closet.

Here's a few nuggets from Phil's "Morning Phil" entries from the past week.

Let's get started.

1. Alfonso Soriano's contract is what it is -- a careless bit of flinging money at the wall. It's going to haunt the Cubs before it's over. But this might not be the year.

Soriano's performance in May (.362-6-16 in 20 games with a 1.160 OPS) suggests he may have a good season in him at the plate. The best thing about his totals is that he's put them up while getting frequent rests, and never once was he on one of those extended white-hot tears that helped carry the Cubs to the playoffs in 2007 and '08.

So..."extended white-hot tears" by definition here is 76 plate appearances in 20 games with six homers, 16 rbi and an 1.160 OPS.

Good? Good.

First 19 games and 91 plate appearances of 2009: .313/.396/.650 (1.046 OPS) with seven homers and 14 rbi.

12 games and 54 plate appearances at the end of July in 2009: .404/.462/.787 for a 1.249 OPS with five homers and 15 rbi. Cubs went 9-3 and gained 2.5 games on the Cards, leaving them 1/2 game back.

Much of May in 2008: 94 PAs - .356/.383/.759 for a 1.142 OPS, nine homers, 23 rbi. Team went 12-9.

Stretch run in 2008: 89 PAs - .325/.393/.650 for a 1.043 OPS, seven homers, 10 rbi. Team went 11-8.

And the famous June tear in '07: 105 PAs - .354/.400/.792 for a 1.192 OPS, 10 homers and 16 rbi. Team went 13-9.

I don't really get the reasoning here. "Never once was he on one of those extended hot tears that helped carry the Cubs to the playoffs in 2007 and 2008"? He's been on tears before. Soriano is a pretty good definition of a 'hot or cold' player. We've seen it firsthand here in Chicago. And the Cubs are 10-10 during Soriano's recent 'hot tear'. How is this tear any different than past tears? What's Phil's reasoning here? Why is this any different?

Hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo is doing a good job with Soriano, and his left knee has come all the way back after surgery.

OH! It was a reason to tell us for the 84,975th time that Rudy Jaramillo is a genius.

Is Jaramillo some sort of shaman that magically healed Soriano's knee or did Soriano's knee have some time to heal itself and that's led to a little more confidence in the knee?

Seems to me the knee healed itself as...well...any body part that gets some time to heal tend to strengthen over time and then good things are more apt to happen after that.

Soriano is chasing fewer of those breaking balls too far off the plate to hit, forcing pitchers to more often throw him strikes. He always has been a good hitter when he locked in on the strike zone, and Jaramillo has him there.

Pretty much wrong. We have data on this type of stuff. The only really dramatic difference between Soriano this year and the Soriano of past years is that he's swinging and making contact on pitches OUTSIDE the strike zone (66.2% compared to a career 50.9%) with a little help from pitchers not throwing him first-pitch strikes (50.9% this year compared to a career 59.7%). And this is too small of a sample size to make any real judgment given the bad teams (thereby bad pitchers) the Cubs have played this year (4th-easiest strength of schedule in all of baseball so far in 2010).

But yes, Doctor Jaramillo is the reason Soriano is better this year. But it's not his fault that Soto's hitting .179 in May. And Theriot is OPSing .527 in May. Or that the team overall has a 328 OBP in May, good for 19th in baseball.

Can't have it both times. If Jaramillo gets the credit for Soriano, he gets the blame for the craptastic stuff as well.

But in reality, all sane individuals in the world understand that the hitting coach does little for grown-ass adults trying to work through the season. It's another set of eyes and maybe a few tweaks here and there. Nothing more.

1. It didn't take long for Roy Oswalt's friendship with Jake Peavy to cause the White Sox to enter speculation about a new home for Oswalt. It was raised by former Astros manager Phil Garner in an interview with FOX Sports' J.P. Morosi, possibly proving that Garner isn't going to move into the front office any time soon.

What? Like the time Phil thought the Rays should sign Barry Bonds because it would be neat to see him play in New York and Boston? Like that?

Or maybe like the time Phil thought the team that signed the most veterans, no matter how terrible and/or old they are, while losing the least won the off-season? It was Phil-Math and it was wonderful. Like that?

Given the White Sox's all-veteran rotation and standing as the fifth puniest lineup in the big leagues -- not to mention the stronghold on the 2010 race by Minnesota and Detroit -- Oswalt makes zero sense for the White Sox. If anything, Peavy's 5.74 ERA has to cut down Ken Williams' interest in any National League pitcher and hurt Oswalt's value with 13 other AL clubs. If Peavy could get treated so rudely, couldn't Oswalt?

Oh, Holy Hell! They are two different pitchers!

Peavy was a fly-ball pitcher (career 38.7% FB rate) prone to the long ball, something that was suppressed by the canyon that is Petco. Minute Maid, by contrast, is a long ball haven and Oswalt found a way to work with it while being more of a groundball pitcher (career 47.6% GB rate). There's a 10% difference between Peavy and Oswalt's FB/GB rate for their careers and in three-year splits. That 10% is the difference between being an overall good pitcher and someone who might be prone to bad things happening in tighter environments.

But again. Yes. Because Peavy was in the National League before, that means Kenny (or any other AL GM!) would not be inclined to pick up another National League pitcher.

I had a couple more but I'm done. This is just a stupid waste of time.

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