Phillies Offseason Thread

[Munson]

So Vic will take a hometonw discount but wants a 5 year deal.

5-50?

[Rome]

The Phils are on MLB Network at 1:00 for the outta towners.

I was going to go but the weather looked iffy in the late afternoon.  The last thing I want is a three hour drive back that turns into six because of dipshteins crashing everywhere on the interstate.

[MDS]

great to see wheeler again

i missed him so much

[ice grillin you]

carts too

[Geowhizzer]

Qualls sucks.

[Rome]

Cut him.

[ice grillin you]

never been more proud to be a phils fan...

Inside the Phillies: Who needs sabermetrics?

Phillies evaluate players the old-fashioned way.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - VORP. BABIP. PERA.

They sound like intergalactic words once uttered by Leonard Nimoy on Star Trek. In truth, they are a trio of acronyms created by the sabermetricians of the baseball world.

VORP means value over replacement player. BABIP stands for batting average on balls in play. PERA is the acronym for peripheral ERA.

The most devout sabermetricians will try to tell you that there is no better way in the world to evaluate players than through their convoluted equations.

WAR - wins above replacement. What is it good for?

The Phillies will not tell you "absolutely nothing," but when it comes to evaluating talent, they are much more inclined to rely on human eyes than sabermetric calculations.

"We do utilize some of the information," general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said during a recent workout at the Carpenter Complex. "There are times when I think maybe we should use it some more, but, frankly, I have a great deal of confidence in the people that we have hired to help us make some of the scouting and personnel decisions. I err on that side probably because I believe in our people."

The man in charge of number-crunching for the Phillies is baseball information analyst Jay McLaughlin, and he is often assisted by baseball operations representative Chris Cashman. All the sabermetric equations are available to Amaro and his assistants, but they are just not that enamored with a player's WAR, PERA, or BABIP.

"I honestly can't tell you the last time WAR or VORP or any of those things were brought up in a conversation," assistant GM Scott Proefrock said. "We're aware of them, and we understand what they are. It's just not something we find relevant."

Proefrock said the Phillies' primary use for sabermetrics is in determining how other teams may view players.

"From our perspective, it is important that we are aware of those things because there are other clubs that value them more than we do and look at them more than we do," Proefrock said. "So that can give us an indication of what they may think of some of our players and what guys they value maybe even more than we do because of the metrics."

OPS - on-base percentage plus slugging percentage - is the sabermetric equation that has been most embraced by the traditional baseball community. In many places, it has become as common as RBI and batting average.

[Eagles_Legendz]

without opening this whole can of worms again, I think it's important to parse out some of the statistics from others.  For example, OPS is hardly the same as VORP.  OPS is a really effective and instrumental way to look at how a power hitter performs.  On base % + slugging is relatively crucial.  BABIP has its place too but for different reasons -- if a dude is hitting more line drives, BABIP means little, but if someone has a high batting average but is hitting a lot of ground balls and getting lucky, BABIP shows that there is probably going to be a regression to the mean.  But again, BABIP and OPS can be seen and understood by people opposed to sabermetrics and they make perfect common sense.  Same thing with WHIP etc.  Makes sense that pitcher who gives up less base runners is going to be more effective.  VORP and whatever the farg PERA is are different animals.

[Rome]

Pence has started off nicely.

[Geowhizzer]

Everytime I get a reminder that Roy F. Halladay is a Phillies, I smile a little.

[Rome]

It's a beautiful day for a game.  Definitely should have gone today, Geo...

[Geowhizzer]

It's a beautiful day for a game.  Definitely should have gone today, Geo...

It did turn into a nice day.  Was raining like a bitch down south this morning, but is nice and reasonably cool right now.  Would have been nice.

[Don Ho]

Fatty looked pretty good today.  2 innings, 2 H, 1 K.  JRoll 2-2/walk, P"0"lanco 2-3, Thome 2-3, Mikey Mart 2 run homer.  Brown had diving attempt at a well hit ball by Gardner that lead to a triple and scored on E4.

I love this shtein.

[Don Ho]

Dontrelle Willis has looked like shtein so far this spring.  Today's line: 0.2 3H 2BB 3ER  21.60 ERA

[MDS]

who cares