Kuzul

Jamie Moyer is still an effective major league pitcher.

And it’s still perfectly clear that National League lineups aren’t even close to catching up to the 47-year-old craftsman.

But over Moyer’s past three starts, it seems that the law of averages certainly has…

Jamie is suddenly losing games that he has pitched well enough to win. The incredible, coincidental run support that Moyer has received every fifth day from August 2006 through mid-May 2010 in Philadelphia simply isn’t there anymore.

The Phils have been shut out in each of Moyer’s past three games.

In Moyer’s three starts between May 2 and May 14, the Phillies scored a ridiculous 26 runs in his 21 innings on the mound (Moyer won each of those starts). Now, the Phillies haven’t scored in his last 21 innings.

But Jamie’s not the only Phillies pitcher dealing with a lack of offensive support these days. For example, Roy Halladay has received just two runs in his last 24 innings (and one of those runs was unearned).

It’s logical to think that receiving run support has come naturally for all Phillies pitchers over the past several seasons—that, in the long run, all pitchers receive roughly the same offensive backing.

However, the numbers seem to indicate that Moyer has been granted way more than his fair share of support since joining the club in 2006.

For example, Moyer has a 52-36 record with a 4.49 ERA in 113 games as a Phillie. Yet teammate Cole Hamels has an almost identical 53-37 record and a 3.68 ERA with the Phillies in 126 games.

Hamels has virtually the same Phillies career record as Moyer despite an ERA that is over three-quarters of a run lower.

Moyer is still virtually the same pitcher he was back in 2004, except he’s pitching for a much, much better team. In his 90 starts for the Seattle Mariners between ’04 and ’06, Jamie had a 4.64 ERA and a sub-.500 record of just 26-32.

Yet Moyer is 16 games over .500 with the Phillies, despite a very similar ERA of 4.49.  

Another comparison of Moyer and Hamels’ statistics reveals more of the same. In seven of his 32 starts in 2009, Hamels gave up three runs or fewer but did not get a win. Moyer had only two such games during his 25 starts last season.

In ’08, Hamels pitched a remarkable 10 games where he gave up two earned runs or fewer and DID NOT get a win. Yet his record was still 14-10.

In 2010, the Phillies have scored seven or more runs in all five of Moyer’s wins. Again, the Phillies have scored just two runs or fewer in three of Halladay’s seven wins.

Of course, the usually dependable run support for Jamie Moyer has been nowhere to be found in his past three starts. The lefty has pitched very well over that span but has seen his record fall to 5-5.

Bummer…

Guess all good things really do come to an end.

***Below is a list of the winningest pitchers since the start of 2007 (complete through May 31, 2010). Moyer is the only pitcher on this list to have an ERA above 4.00. His ERA is over 4.50. Jamie’s in some pretty good company…

Roy Halladay               60-31   2.96

CC Sabathia                 59-28   3.18

Justin Verlander          53-37   3.93

Adam Wainwright        51-26   3.04

Dan Haren                  50-31   3.40

Josh Beckett               50-24   3.97

Johan Santana            48-31   2.98

Derek Lowe                48-39   4.00

John Lackey               47-25   3.61

A.J. Burnett                47-29   3.90

Jamie Moyer             47-34   4.51

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

In 2010, the Philadelphia Phillies fully anticipate making the playoffs for the fourth straight year, and for many Philadelphians anything less than a World Series appearance would be a disappointment.

The Phillies have gotten to this point, in part, on the basis of the best left-handed hitting in the National League.

There was a time, however, when dominant left-handed hitting by the Philadelphia Phillies was incredibly deceptive and actually masked severe deficiencies in the Phillies’ lineup.

In fact, for an entire generation—from 1890 to 1938—if it appeared that a Phillies batter was an elite hitter, there was one question that you could ask to determine if he was truly great or if it was a facade.

Did he hit left-handed?

In essence, if a Phillies batter hit left-handed during this period, his numbers were almost certainly inflated as a result of having played in the Baker Bowl.

You see, the Baker Bowl had a relatively conservative left field (335-341.5 feet down the line, 408 feet to center) but right-center and right field in the Baker Bowl were ridiculous (300 feet to right center, 272-280.5 feet down the line). Because the stadium was designed to fit within the city grid, the stadium had an absurdly small right and right-center field, which made hitting a small task for left-handed hitters.

So up until 1938, when the Phils left for Shibe Park, the stats of left-handed hitting Philadelphia Phillies are incredibly unreliable as indications of overall hitting abilities.

This means you, Lefty O’Doul, Chuck Klein, Cy Williams, Sam Thompson, and Billy Hamilton. This means you too, Gavvy Cravath, with your crafty opposite-field right-handed hitting.

Chuck Klein

The effect of the Baker Bowl is particularly vivid with respect to Chuck Klein’s career statistics. From 1928 to 1933, Klein played in one of the friendliest hitting contexts of all time—he was a left-handed hitter in one of the smallest ballparks in baseball history, and he was hitting in the most explosive era in National League history.

During those years, Klein had 200 hits, 100 runs, 120 RBI, and 28 or more home runs every season. He twice hit 50 doubles, hit no lower than .337 in any one season, and had only one year in which his OBP dropped below .400 and his SLG dropped below .500. He won the MVP in 1932 and finished second in 1931 and 1933, while taking the Triple Crown in 1933. 

Then in 1934, as the offensively explosive era was coming to a close, Klein left the Phillies and joined the Cubs, who played in Wrigley Field, a bigger park, though by no means a pitcher’s park (how small is your park when moving to Wrigley Field represents a disadvantage?!).

He enjoyed (or did not enjoy, rather) two injury-plagued seasons during which his batting average fell precipitously (from .368 in 1933 to .301 and then .293), and his OPS numbers stayed respectable but were less than incredible.

Klein returned to the Phillies midway through 1936 and in 1937 hit .325, though again in limited play.

In 1938, a season in which the Phillies switched mid-year to Shibe Park, Klein was awful, hitting less than .200 with an OPS of .673 in 25 games before being released and then signing with the Pirates. Klein enjoyed a renaissance with the Pirates, hitting .300 with an OPS of .872 in 85 games in Forbes Field with its 300-foot right foul line.

Back with the Phils in 1940, Klein hit .218, and his career was effectively over.

So, Klein sucked?

Whenever I think of players whose performance was skewed positively by their home ballpark, I think of guys like Jim Rice and Vinny Castilla. But Chuck Klein was not just very good from 1928 to 1933—his unadjusted numbers were easily the best in the National League over that period, and he was a dominant offensive player.

Thus, I am less capable of dismissing him out of hand as I would if I were comparing him to Rice or Castilla. Playing in the Baker Bowl didn’t just make Klein good; it made him one of the best players in his league for six seasons. I have a hard time taking that from him without concrete split stats to back it up.

Thus, I think of him as more of a Sammy Sosa or Todd Helton-type player than a Jim Rice-type player. Cy Williams, Lefty O’Doul, et al. fall in line behind him from there.

For fun, here’s some other conspicuous performances by left-handed hitters in the Baker Bowl.

Cy Williams

Cy Williams is an exciting player when you first see his stats. In truth, you think you’ve stumbled upon the National League’s Babe Ruth—he led the league in home runs four times from 1916 to 1927 and finished in the top three 11 times during that period.

Williams actually played in Wrigley Field in 1916 and 1917 and led the NL with 12 home runs in 1916. But his truly dominant era would come in Philly; he peaked with 41 home runs in just 136 games in 1923.

Fred Luderus

A left-handed hitter, he finished in the top 10 in home runs in the NL eight times in nine years with the Phillies from 1911 to 1919, including 1911, when he finished second with 16 behind Wildfire Schulte, and 1915, when he hit 18 and finished second behind Cravath, who had 19. That year, three of the top four home run hitters in the National League were Cravath, Luderus, and Sherry Magee (a Phillies right-hander).

Beals Becker

In 1913, Beals Becker was a left-handed-hitting outfielder with the Cincinnati Reds with 15 career home runs in five seasons. After 30 games, Beals had zero home runs and was traded to the Phillies. In 88 games with the Phillies that year, Becker hit nine home runs, good enough to finish sixth in the National League. The following year, he hit nine more and set career highs with a .325 average and .370 on-base percentage.

In 1915, he would hit 11 home runs in 112 games, good enough to finish fourth in the National League behind Cravath and Cy Williams and Wildfire Schulte of the Cubs. It would be Becker’s final season.

Dave Bancroft

Bancroft was a switch hitter. In 1915, as a rookie, Bancroft hit seven home runs, good enough for sixth in the league. In 15 remaining seasons played with the Phillies, Giants, Braves, and Dodgers, Bancroft would only hit 25 more home runs.

Elmer Flick

In 1900, the 24-year-old, left-handed-hitting Flick finished second in the National League with 11 home runs. In 1902 he joined the American League and never hit more than six again.

George Harper

In 1924, the lefty-hitting George Harper had five career home runs in 350-plus games with the Tigers and Reds, and none 28 games into that season. Harper was traded to the Phillies and hit 16 home runs in 109 games with Philadelphia in the remainder of 1924.

Don Hurst

Hurst was a lefty scorcher for the Phillies who benefited not only from his ballpark, but also his era; he was the lesser Chuck Klein. He debuted at the age of 22 in 1928 and hit 19 home runs in 107 games. He then hit 31 bombs with 125 RBI and 100 runs in 1929 and hit 24 home runs with 143 RBI in 1932.

In 1933, with the offensive explosion era coming to a close, he hit only eight home runs in 550 at-bats, and he was out of baseball in 1934 at the age of 28.

Lefty O’Doul

O’Doul failed to make it as a pitcher in the early part of the ’20s and disappeared from 1924 to 1927. He re-emerged in 1928, but by the end of that season, he’d hit only eight home runs in 190 career games.

In 1929, at the age of 32, he joined the Phillies and hit 32 home runs with 122 RBI, amassed 254 hits, scored 152 runs, and finished with a .398 average and an OPS of 1.087. He had 202 hits the following season and 22 more home runs. In 1931 he left Philly and joined the Dodgers, whose ballpark itself was quite the hitter’s park, and his numbers fell off dramatically.

Johnny Moore

From 1928 to 1933, Johnny Moore was a nobody with the Chicago Cubs, having enjoyed brief success in 1932 when he hit .305 with 13 home runs. The Reds acquired him in 1934 but traded him to the Phillies after he hit .190 with a .506 OPS through 16 games.

In the remainder of the 1934 season, Moore hit 11 home runs with a .343 average. In 1935 he hit 19 home runs with a .323 average, and in 1936 he hit 16 home runs with a .328 average in just 124 games.

Dolph Camilli

Camilli established himself as a slugger for three-plus seasons with the Phillies before joining the Dodgers, with whom he is better known. The two best seasons of his career came with the Phils, when he hit 28 home runs and posted a .315/.441/.577 in 1936 and then hit 27 home runs with a .339/.446/.587 in 1937.

Camilli was saved, in a sense, because when the Phillies switched parks in 1938, Camilli was already in Brooklyn, playing in another park that favored left-handed hitters.

So, what’s the point of all this?

You can rest assured—while we can almost completely write off the performances of left-handed Phillies hitting in the Baker Bowl, today’s left-handed Phillies are earning everything they get. Citizens Bank Park still favors hitters, but it is 330 down the right field line and 329 down the left field line.

No gimmes for Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and company.

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com .

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Phillies closer Brad Lidge, who has been on the disabled list with inflammation in his right elbow since May 15, said he will throw in the bullpen both today and Thursday while the Phillies visit the Mets at Citi Field.

Yesterday, Lidge received a cortisone injection for the second time in 2010 in hopes of easing the pain of his ailing right elbow. The Phillies hope Lidge can return to the Phillies’ bullpen early next week.

“It feels like it is,” said Lidge, asked if he feels the inflammation is gone. “The key is keeping it out. But I think we’ve figured out some things I can do to keep it out.”

Whether or not Lidge can keep the pain out is a big question—but not the only one facing the Phillies. It’s uncertain whether the Phillies will make Lidge their closer once he returns.

The Phils bullpen has a 3.69 ERA so far the year, the exact same ERA as their starting pitching staff. But that’s misleading. While the Phillies rotation has collectively been excellent through the first seven weeks of 2010, the bullpen has been anything but impressive in close games.

Jose Contreras, the Phillies’ current closer, has been sensational. The 38-year-old has allowed just one run in 14.2 innings this season. The opposition is hitting .163 against him, while he’s walked just two and struck out 20.

With Contreras pitching so well, it’s likely the Phillies will welcome Lidge back with a few appearances in semi-lopsided, no-pressure games.

If Brad is effective in those situations, he could be used as the club’s setup man in place of either Chad Durbin or Danys Baez. Ryan Madson, the most ineffective pitcher in the Phillies bullpen this season, is not expected to return from his broken toe until the end of June.

Lidge made his first major league appearance of the season in a 9-1 loss to the Mets back on April 30 at Citizens Bank Park, where he gave up a home run to the first batter he faced (former Phillie catcher Rod Barajas). Lidge only recorded one out before being removed from the game.

Two weeks later, after pitching in three other games, Brad was back on the DL.

Manager Charlie Manuel will no doubt be very careful not to overwork Lidge when he returns from the DL, whether he’s being used as closer, setup man, or mop-up man.

Decisions, decisions for the Phillies.

But the Phillies’ only goal for right now is to get Lidge healthy for the first time in 13 months (thanks again for your honesty this time, Brad).

Getting Jimmy Rollins back in the lineup would be nice too…

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

When Cole Hamels won the World Series MVP award at the tender age of 24, few doubted that he had a very promising career ahead of him. 

He was the toast of Philadelphia, the unquestioned staff ace, and the heir to Steve “Lefty” Carlton. 

The only problem was that reality intervened, and the last two years have been riddled with speed bumps for the young Hamels.

In 2009 he was plagued by injuries, bad luck, and the occasional verbal gaffe. He went from dominating postseason ace to struggling third starter behind the rejuvenated Pedro Martinez and the cutter-throwing, Southern-talking, easygoing, dyed-in-the-wool season savior, Cliff Lee.

When Lee was traded in the following offseason, the scrutiny of Hamels only grew. 

During the 2010 preseason, the Phillies camp was filled with stories of Hamels’ work ethic. He had improved his arm strength, solidified his curveball, and added a new cutter.

The ace was back.

But so far, the early results from the 2010 season have been inconclusive. 

He has continued to struggle, and Phillies fans have become increasingly restless. 

Hamels’ latest outing, last night’s game against the St. Louis Cardinals, seems to be a pretty good representation of his young career as a whole.

Through eight innings, Hamels was dealing. 

He had given up only six hits and allowed no runs while striking out eight. But then, in the top of the ninth inning, after an ill-timed distraction by a fan, Hamels allowed two straight doubles to tie the game. 

The effort was solid and looked pretty good on paper, but the end result left you wanting just a little bit more. 

But if you take a closer look, there is little reason to doubt that Hamels will figure it out this season and at the very least remain a very solid No. 2 starter behind Roy Halladay.

Hamels currently has a 4.42 ERA, good for 34th among National League starters.

Now if you see that number alone, you are understandably very worried. 

But if there is one thing that the new era of baseball has taught us, it is that some statistics can be very misleading.

Instead of using ERA to condemn Hamels, we should instead look into exactly why that number is so high.

Expected Fielding Independent Pitching, or xFIP, attempts to quantify only the things that pitcher himself can control. It ignores park factors and defense while accounting for strikeouts and walks. It normalizes a pitcher’s HR/fly ball rate and quantifies this on an ERA scale. 

Hamels’ xFIP is 3.31, good for seventh among National League starters.

Now this does not mean that Cole Hamels is the seventh best pitcher in the NL, but what it does show us is that Hamels has actually pitched quite solidly. His biggest weakness is that the majority of the fly balls he has given up have turned into home runs.

If you look at his Batting Average on Balls in Play, or BABIP, which is an unusually high .356, it shows that Hamels has also been unlucky on ground balls and line drives that have come from his hits allowed.

These two numbers suggest that Hamels has actually pitched much better than his ERA reveals, and that number should decline significantly over the course of the year. 

Factor in his very solid K/9 rate of 10.24, and it is not inconceivable that Hamels could turn out to be one of the best No. 2 starters in MLB this year.

So do not fret, Phillies fans. The numbers show that although the utterly dominating Cole Hamels of the 2008 postseason might not be back, the 2010 version should be more than serviceable. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

It was a different world back in 1987.

No one had a cell phone. The Internet had not been invented. GM wasn’t broke. Barry Bonds had a normal-sized head.

And that’s when I learned to hate baseball mascots.

Some buds and I had tickets to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates play the Metsies. Now, mind you, getting a Buccos ticket back then was not the hardest row to hoe…the team was having trouble drawing in cavernous Three Rivers Stadium, which had all the charm of a Soviet era housing complex.

But these seats were behind the dugout…way past the budget of me and my Iron City brew drinking cohorts, who went to nearly every game that season in nose bleed nirvana. However, we had scored them for free from one of my customers at the bar I worked at back then while slogging through grad school.

The Bucs had put together a young, good club that later went on to win three straight division championships starting in ’88 under manager Jim Leyland. The team had the aforementioned Bonds with a normal noggin, along with Bobby Bo, Andy Van Slyke, Sid Bream, and Doug Drabek.

Plus, we were all looking forward to a Mets team that was just off of an ’86 series championship, what with Mookie, Hernandez, Daryl, and Dwight in their heyday. 

So we sat down to watch the game…and the friggin’ Pirate mascot got up on the dugout in front of us. Again…and again…and again. We spent a good portion of the game trying to peer around some schmoe who thought he was being cute and entertaining.

Siddown, will ya!?

Mascots are part of the dumbass side of baseball. The marketing stuff that teams engage in to “spice it up” and make it “jazzy” for a generation of fans who can’t enjoy life without the Ritalin they grew up ingesting.

They got started with the Philly Phantic and San Diego Chicken (what the heck a chicken has to do with a man of the cloth is anyone’s guess). Like fire ants and kudzu, which are also annoying, the trend seems to have spread through the majors unchecked.

Now, I’m a big fan of minor league ball. And somehow, the schmaltzy marketing crap doesn’t bother me as much at that level. It is the minors; after all…I expect some sideshow carney stuff. 

But the majors? 

Have some standards. It’s The Show.

Here’s my list of things that make a major league game…less major. Signs of the continued decline of our civilization.

Mascots

I love you, you love me, we’re a dysfunctional family…if you want to watch big furry things, watch Barney on TC. What’s next, free teething ring night?

“We Will Rock You”…

…and a bakers dozen of other really, really bad rock tunes played over and over and over again at the ball park. 

At DC-10 volume. 

What the heck ever happened to the organ, and conversing about the game during play? Nah. Let’s listen to some dead guy from England who wouldn’t have known a bunt from a swizzle stick back before he took the big dirt nap tell us how he’s gonna “rock us” whenever it’s rally-cap time. Bleeech.

Same goes for the stupid “Hey” song, sung by a guy who was convicted of pedophilia. Can it. Bring back the organ.

Different-Colored Jerseys

I’m watching the Rangers play the White Sox, and I can’t tell which team is the home squad! Why? Because the Rangers have on bright-red jerseys, and the Sox, for God knows why, blue.

They look like a couple of softball teams…I kinda expected to see “Dizzy’s Tavern” or something like that emblazoned across the front. 

The absolute WORST is the Red Sox wearing green…it’s just plain wrong.

Keep the classic uniforms classic. Home in white, away in gray.

Yeah, I know that other teams have created uniform visual assaults in the past…the Chi Sox in shorts, Pirates in the ’70s with those goofy-ass hats, and the old Astros’ LSD-inspired togs come to mind…but aren’t we supposed to learn from our mistakes instead of perpetuating them?

The Wave…

…is stupid. 

It was invented by drunk, stupid people in Seattle for the purpose of creating something to do during pro football television timeouts. Encouraging people to do it at baseball is also a dumb thing.

Dot Races…

…or any variant thereof. 

Is three-card Monte really so exciting? Watching people cheer to see the red dot beat the blue dot beat the green dot on a computer-animated scoreboard is, at best, an appalling demonstration of how the educational system in America has completely and utterly failed our society.

I mean…they’re friggin’ dots…on a friggin’ scoreboard…that a friggin’ computer generated. Mental masturbation without the orgasm. Go home and stare at some test patterns or something.

A Member from Every Team on the All-Star Squad

Classic case of the marketing guys overwhelming the common-sense nodes of the brains that run the game.

Sometimes a team sucks and really doesn’t deserve to have a member on the team. Like the Pirates. It’s not little league soccer, where everyone wins and we don’t want to hurt anyone’s self esteem. Best players should be on it. End of story.

No Beer After the Seventh Inning

This one is always marketed as “family-friendly.”

The mommy state strikes again. If someone is drunk and disorderly, toss ’em. Otherwise, allow us grownups to drink beer until the end of the game if we choose to. Unless we’re moving to Sharia law here in the states.

Instant Replay

Brought to you by the robotic, control-freak NFL where everything must be controlled by Big Brother.

Except, you know what? Surprise—replay isn’t perfect.

But at least when it was just the umps, it didn’t take five minutes to call it. Can the replay. Nothing can guarantee 100 percent accuracy, but that thing pretty much does guarantee there will be a long delay.

I wouldn’t mind, however, for some brave marketing person to do a re-run of that mother of all baseball promos gone bad, disco demolition night. 

Just to see some stuff git blowed up.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com