2022 Phillies Post-Season Campaign Discussion

zambonir 2022-10-18 14:21:53 UTC #182

The Champions League is certainly much more of a "World Series."

And, similarly, die-hard US soccer fans get excited about CONCACAF but that is probably more because they've been watching for years as fans of Mexican and other soccer than because of MLS's participation in it (but they are getting there).

el-pietro 2022-10-18 16:47:40 UTC #183

The Super League was widely rejected by European football, though I don't know if its dead. I would hate that, and I already hate the current format of the Champions League. These systems are designed to funnel money to the biggest teams and are creating a huge disparity in various leagues. More and more often we're seeing the same teams winning the individual leagues for long stretches, and this trend continues down into the medium and smaller leagues.
Th eone exception is in England where the tv rights are so rich that even the teams at the bottom of the table can complete financially with the bigger teams in other big leagues.
If you want true parity then you need a closed system like the US leagues, but that takes the sport away from local communities and makes it more of a tv event, which I understand the appeal of but I would hate.
For example, London has a population of about 9 million people which is comparable to NYC but has at least 13 professional soccer teams. There are about 2.8M in greater Manchester and 7 professional teams. If you were to redesign European football to be more like a North American league then London would have maybe 2 teams (and the Super League planned to have 3 London sides) and 1 in Manchester (2 in the Super League).
If we were lucky Ireland would get one team, and I'd be expected to support a team based in Dublin which is a ~3 hour journey each way but the Cork Dublin relationship is such that I would pretty much never support a Dublin team. Instead my local professional football team is a 15 minute walk from my house and has over the years played Bayern Munich, Galatasary, Genk, Legia Warsaw and others in competitive European play, and I'd hate to lose that.
To get an idea of how soccer is different to North American sports leagues I can't recommend the Hulu show Welcome To Wrexham highly enough. Wrexham play in the 5th tier of English football (despite being Welsh) and are owned by Ryan Reynolds and Philadelphia native Rob McElhenny from Its Always Sunny fame. It gives a good idea of how important these teams are to communities and will hopefully go a long way to showing why a Super League type system wouldn't work. Also Jeffrie Lurie and Nick Sirianni have both shown up in it so far.

I've gone way off topic. Lets go Phils!

el-pietro 2022-10-18 16:50:13 UTC #184

I think if US teams compete in the CONCACAF Champions League and start to win it it will take on more and more prestige among US fans. There is significant progress being made in MLS in recent years. At current rates I'd expect MLS to become one of the higher quality leagues in world football, but one of the big problems it faces is the pay to play system at grass roots levels. While that exists some of the best potential players in the US will never get a chance, and other countries invest heavily in grass roots football in underprivileged areas and this will remain a big advantage.

andyb 2022-10-18 17:28:57 UTC #185

Back to the Phillies. No word on Robertson yet. Assume he would slot in for Nelson (or perhaps Gibson) and be the only roster change assuming they stick with Guthrie over Maton (better outfield defense and faster pinch runner).

And Robertson is back for Nelson. Only change.

el-pietro 2022-10-18 18:33:13 UTC #186

https://twitter.com/Phillies/status/1582423999111233537

Official confirmation that Robertson is back. The Padres roster is unchanged.

Aquapong 2022-10-19 02:11:58 UTC #187

Poor Stubbs. Maybe he’ll get to play tomorrow or Sunday during a day game.

Aquapong 2022-10-19 02:57:41 UTC #188

The Astros worry me. The Padres and Yankees don’t.

zambonir 2022-10-19 03:23:09 UTC #189

Easy there tiger

(I'm glad the Yankees won though, if it happens, would be insane.)

zambonir 2022-10-19 13:39:45 UTC #190

Basically a celebration of FIP and XBA (and an indictment of the defense). I was not familiar with "Deserved Run Average."

And, another fun one from Stark (as ever, if anyone wants a 30-day pass message me).

ROAD WARRIOR ALERT — Finally, have I mentioned lately that the greatest thing about baseball is, it makes no sense? Which brings us to the Phillies.

They’ve won three straight Game 1’s on the road in this postseason. No Phillies team in history has ever pulled that off in a single postseason. And only two teams, period, have ever won three series openers on the road in a single postseason — Madison Bumgarner’s 2014 Giants (who won four of them) and Kirk Rueter’s 2002 Giants (who won three).

But that’s not even the Weird and Wild part. The Weird and Wild part is that the Phillies are now 4-1 in this postseason on the road. And isn’t that supposed to be hard?

“Yeah, it’s supposed to be hard,” Rhys Hoskins said. “But we’ve just got a lot of guys in here who believe.”

OK, that’s undoubtedly helpful. Then again, those same guys just finished doing this over the last three months of the season:

Phillies road record versus winning teams from July on: 5-12

Phillies road record (obviously vs. winning teams) in this postseason: 4-1

VoteForKalas 2022-10-19 15:36:21 UTC #191

Winning on the road is where the value and investment in quality starting pitching pays off...it settles the team down, keeps them in the game, kills the home crowd and provides the offense multiple chances to put runs on the board. That SD crowd was dead for most of the game last night, silence has never sounded so good

andyb 2022-10-19 15:54:05 UTC #192

In general I am not a huge fan of FIP when used to show if a pitcher is great or not. It does not measure the quality of contact and clearly Nola has given up some runs with bad pitches and not all of them are just bad luck. Nola was very good this year. Clearly top 10. Just not willing to say he was the best based on a synthetic calculation.

FIP is a good predictor of future performance though. It is probably saying we should extend Nola this winter rather than just picking up his last option.

allentown 2022-10-19 16:29:33 UTC #193

Undoubtedly Nola gets a uniquely positive FIP boost, because he walks very few batters. Still, the FIP data is just another piece of evidence that Nola is a legit star. A big plus for him, not recognized by FIP is that he is one of the few pitchers in baseball who can spare the pen by giving his team 200 IP. This season, not counting playoffs: 32 starts, 205 IP, 0.96 WHIP. Any way you choose to look at it, those are the numbers of an elite pitcher.

Doesn't guarantee a quality start tonight. As I conceded to, I forget whom I had the back-and-forth with a few weeks ago regarding his comment that Nola always lets the Phillies down in big games, Nola does have a tendency to have off games following throwing too many pitches in the prior game or two. In recent years, Nola has consistently been among the leaders in IP. That alone is a big plus.

The big improvement over recent seasons is that Nola has significantly lowered his HR-rate this season.

zambonir 2022-10-19 16:37:44 UTC #194

My gut feeling is that Nola had a Cy Young season but the occasional bad inning. He'd also had issues with two strikes, though perhaps more last year. So I just wonder how much of those things also fall on bad luck and bad defense.

Philsmania 2022-10-19 16:45:56 UTC #195

I am not a fan of FIP because it only measures the Three True Outcomes which is but one snapshot of the game. Plus, with the new rules likely to lead to more baserunning and balls hit in play next year, I can't help but wonder if it will fall into desuetude.

Pivetta's, Velasquez's and Eflin's good 2018 FIP's didn't exactly predict 2019 success.

allentown 2022-10-19 17:28:58 UTC #196

I'm also not a huge fan of FIP for the same reason. To have a truer measure, even for this season, would at least need to work something like average exit velocity into the formula. I see it as a statistician's conceit to assume that pitchers have no control over what happens to balls in play. It may have been a necessary simplification for model creation, but it is a large simplification.

By my memory, you can claim first use of desuetude of this forum. I think you are correct on the new pickoff rule. It will make both pitchers who help to hold runners and strong-armed catchers with quick release more valuable.

I don't buy into this part:

"Pivetta's, Velasquez's and Eflin's good 2018 FIP's didn't exactly predict 2019 success."

First, I think it a stretch to expect that the next year success is strongly predicted by FIP. Injuries factor in. Pivetta has had a lower ERA every year in Boston than he had in Philly in 2018. Despite gimpy knees, Eflin has had a better ERA every year after 2018. Velasquez is the one among the three who was never as good again as he was -- and that wasn't terribly good -- in 2018.

andyb 2022-10-19 17:40:09 UTC #197

Not sure I would go that far. FIP is predictive because it normalizes the luck. So it is probably more predictive of what happens next year than ERA. I'd still use ERA when picking Cy Young awards though because luck counts in those outcomes.

Statistics that are easy to calculate and/or understand are used all the time like OPS. A true indicator of value of the 2 pieces of OPS would be OBP*1.4 + SLG. So we undervalue the OBP side of the equation but still use OPS because it is easy to calculate and gets closer to identifying the best players than most other stats that are easy to calculate (stats like WAR and wRC+ are by definition very difficult to calculate).

allentown 2022-10-19 17:48:33 UTC #198

But does it truly normalize the luck? A double off the wall or hit sharply down the line is not luck. Is a ground ball pitcher or a pitcher who induces weak contact consistently simply lucky? Wheeler stayed in the game as long as he did yesterday, because after a shaky first inning with a ton of pitches, he had some innings with very few pitches, as in 5 pitches. That requires skill and isn't something you can do with Ks.

andyb 2022-10-19 17:55:23 UTC #199

Some of luck, not all of it I guess. I did note that quality of contact was not part of those calculations and that is important.

But luck is also part of it. Some line drives find holes. Some don't. Some fly balls like Harper's last night go out, some don't. FIP is directionally accurate. It just doesn't measure everything. Striking out hitters and not walking them are both pretty important. Even Pivetta has been better with the Red Sox than with the Phillies (though he still is just average).

BostonRoss 2022-10-19 19:49:17 UTC #200

I'm not sure I ever heard the 2002 Giants referred to as "Kirk Rueter's" before!

But I guess that's why we love Stark (besides his hometown).

gmwannabe 2022-10-20 12:21:12 UTC #201

will the baseball gods give us a different ending? the last time the Phils gave up a 4-0 lead in a play off game they went down the tubes. and then last night another dreaded 4-0 lead was given up by a top pitcher. we took our daughter in law out for her birthday early last evening. when I left it was 4-0 and thought this was in the bag (same way I thought when Lee was pitching). I find myself not really upset. from now on the rest is gravy. I never thought they would make it this far. Excited to see the fans again now that the Phils are coming home. I don't like this pitching match up for Friday though. I hope the Phils can at least win 1 more game at home to see the crowd reaction.
gm