THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

It has to do a lot with their scouting profile.  They prefer athletes to baseball players, which can get really frustrating when they draft Anthony Hewitt while Lonnie Chisenhall is just sitting there waiting to fill the organization’s black hole at 3b.  To be fair, pre-draft I wanted them to select Conor Gillaspie (another better option to Hewitt).  However, that scouting profile has worked much better at the near ML-level plunder market netting Victorino and Werth, both able fielders and good base stealers.  They hit a homerun with Chase Utley, that was pure luck.  Thank you Tampa Bay for taking Rocco Baldelli off our draft board. Rollins is a product of the above mentioned ‘profile’ and the rest are the rest.

I don’t question the Phillies scouts abilities when it comes to ML or near ML talent (for non-pitchers at least). I just wonder about the contracts they hand out sometimes…

I was new to Philly and sabremetrics in 1993.  A sabre conscious fan tried to convince me that GM Lee Thomas and manager Jim Fregosi were closet statheads.  Afterall, just look at that offense - loaded with undervalued high BB players.  That 93 Phillies offense was a Moneyball offense long before Billy Beane ever heard of Matt Stairs.

But they weren’t.  They really loved old school, grizzled gamers and as it happened the ones they collected also had really high BB rates.

As those players got hurt and moved on they were replaced by more grizzled gamers except the new ones didn’t draw walks and the team stunk.

In a chat from a few weeks ago, Keith Law said something like, the Phillies don’t have a stats guy in their FO but a lot of the members in management have sabermetric-like leanings (e.g. understanding the value of walks, the importance of defense).

The baserunning should be a credit to one of their coaches, Davey Lopes, who stole 557 bases while being caught 114 times.  Lopes had an amazing late career.  particularly amazing for a guy who had less than 50 career AB entering his age 28 season.

Looking at his career, he was a teammate of Rickey in 1982 when Rickey stole 130 bases.  And he stole 47 bases (4 CS) when he was 40 years old!

I think it has to do more with Lopes sharing his knowledge than drafting/signing fast athletes.  Even Ryan Howard stole 8 out of 9 last year.

It’s a bit of both, actually. They have several very smart, fast and athletic baserunners but working with Lopes took them to a whole… nutha’… level.

Lopes: 557/114 = 83%
Phillies: 701/151 = 82%

Nice!

When did Lopes becomes coach?

Tango:

Lopes became the first base coach in ‘07 i believe. so while they got better under him, it wasn’t remarkably better.  but you can only get so much better when you’re already elite at it.

Tom, here’s his MLB.com bio:
http://philadelphia.phillies.mlb.com/team/coach_staff_bio.jsp?c_id=phi&coachorstaffid=117912

It looks like he’s been with the Phillies for three seasons (2007-2009).

Before the start of the 07 season.

I did a quick-and-dirty WOWY of the SB-CS numbers for the teams where Lopes has been the 1st base coach. 

With Lopes the teams averaged 108 SB and 43 CS, for a 71.3% success rate.  Without Lopes the same teams averaged 90 SB and 39 CS, for a 70.0% success rate.

The “with you” portion is fairly straightforward.  The “without you” portion I calculated by taking the team’s SB-CS for the three years before Lopes took the job and the three years after he left and weighting that contribution to the total “without you” tally by how many years Lopes was with that team.

Davey Lopes 1st-base coach stints:
PHI 2007-2009 Phillies
WAS 2006
SDN 2003-2005
SDN 1995-1999
BAL 1992-1994
TEX 1988-1991

I did not include his managerial stint in Milwaukee.  His teams there did not run very much, which is completely out of character with the teams where he was first base coach.

I suppose the real way to investigate how much difference Lopes makes in SB-CS numbers is too do a real WOWY that accounts for the identity of the basestealers involved.

Right, that last paragraph.  But, having his years coached data is just what was needed.  Where did you get it?

Tom, the link is in Post #8.

Mike, nice, I didn’t realize each coach had his own page.

Bill Baer has an article on the Lopes effect up at BP today:
http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=10134

Perhaps a subscriber could take a look and tell us what his conclusions were.  Did he go more in depth than I did in #10?

They pulled the article for some reason, but I read it earlier today.

Baer only did Phillies pre-Lopes and post-Lopes, and found a statistically significant increase in both base-running agressiveness (more attempts at both 2B and 3B) and in base-running success.

He did not do a player-based pre- and post- analysis.