With Spring Training Around the Corner, Changes in Baseball Should be a Boon for the Phillies

Pitchers and Catchers.

Three words used frequently in baseball conversation, but when said alone, in the winter time, it brings a different feeling. A feeling of excitement. A feeling of anticipation. A feeling of the warm weather being just around the corner, no matter what Punxatawney Phil indicated.

See, that’s because pitchers and catchers, the official start of Spring Training in Major League Baseball, is less than two weeks away. Every team has a different start date, but for the Phillies, the circle is around Feb. 16. That’s when we’ll get our first glimpse of Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, and Ranger Suarez since the World Series. It’s when we’ll see Taijuan Walker, Craig Kimbrel, Gregory Soto, and Matt Strahm in a Phillies jersey for the first time. It’s when all eyes will be on Andrew Painter, considered the top pitching prospect in the sport. It’s when the BCIB, J.T. Realmuto begins to follow up his unofficial Phillies MVP season. It’s when Garrett Stubbs starts formulating a new clubhouse playlist to get thousands of fans geared up for what they hope will be another Red October.

And that’s why this simple tweet got so many fans excited:

This is the beginning of spring. Screw the groundhog.

— Circle Back Pat (@CircleBackPat) February 2, 2023

It’s a different kind of hype video, but a hype video nonetheless. And there’s no doubt, that the city hasn’t been this hyped for the start of a Phillies season in more than a decade.

And yes, there’s still one more football game to get through, and a possible (probable?) parade a few days later, but once that’s done, it’s all eyes on Clearwater, Fla.

(Just a side note, Crossing Broad will be at Spring Training for a portion of the Phillies Cactus League season this year, so look for that as part of our expanded Phillies coverage in 2023). 

As teams around baseball are preparing to kick off the 2023 Grapefruit and Cactus League campaigns, there’s been a lot of talk around the sport about the impending new rules, and how they’ll impact teams, as well as the new schedule, and what teams may benefit the most from those.

In most cases, it’s just trying to come up with something to talk about baseball-wise. In fact, it’s already rehashing a months-old story, especially with the new balanced schedule – because Fangraphs did a deep dive into this back in August. 

But the Phillies are a unique team, in a sense.

See, they were a team that had elevated expectations heading into each of the past five seasons, and not until they had an October to remember last Fall, did they come close to meeting them, even leaving fans skeptical and with a  prove it mentality until, well, they did.

(It’s still fun to go back and relive that month of baseball. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been distracted by highlights of the Phillies run being shared on social media. And if you want some longer-form video to reminisce, I recommend both the Phillies Yearbook: Bedlam at the Bank and the MLB official World Series video – although I can’t find this one online now.. Not sure why. You may have skipped it because there’s more about the Astros winning, but to be honest, they do a great job of presenting the Phillies in a positive light and there is a Houston perspective that shows they recognized just how good the Phillies were and just how tight that series truly was. If you can find it, or once it’s re-released, I do recommend it.)

Anyway… this isn’t about last year. It’s about this year. And as I was saying, before the trip down memory lane, the Phillies are one of those teams where the changes could have a positive impact.

The reason I mentioned their expectations is they couldn’t play up to them until they learned how to win important games. Getting into the playoffs lifted the monkey off their back, and then their fun and loose, yet confident personality carried them to within two wins of a championship.

There’s a vibe within this clubhouse now, and the Phillies had a good offseason adding to it, so the expectations are going to be high again. I mean, the city is going to crave a sequel to the smash hit movie that was the 2022 season.

Can the Phillies meet those expectations? Nothing is guaranteed, especially considering they still have to compete with the Braves and Mets in the N.L. East, both whom still project out to be better than the Phillies in the regular season, although I’m not as bullish on the Mets aging roster, but we’ll save that for a conversation down the road.

The issue we are tackling today is how do these new rules and schedule impact the Phillies.

No more shift

This is a big deal for left-handed hitters across the game. Of the top 100 most shifted-against hitters in MLB in 2022, only six were right-handed. So, lefties, overall, should see an uptick in their batting average,

The player this should impact the most on the Phillies is Kyle Schwarber, who now becomes more than Homer/Walk/Strikeout when he comes to the plate.

According to MLB’s Statcast, Schwarber was shifted on 90.5% of his plate appearances in 2022. That was tied for 17th in all of baseball (for comparison standards, former Phillie Carlos Santana was the most shifted-against hitter in the MLB at 98.1% of his plate appearances).

Schwarber does strike out a lot, and he hits a lot of home runs, so we aren’t talking a ton more hits here, but enough to make an impact.

Consider this:

From one year to the next, batters see batting average fluctuation, either up or down, based solely on luck. A mostly every day player, like Schwarber, can see a batting average move 20 points in either direction just by adding or subtracting 10 hits in a 500-at bat campaign. And that’s not even taking the shift into account.

So, if we’re being optimists here, and why not, it’s almost Spring Training where optimism is at it’s most abundant – Let’s say Schwarber adds 10 hits this season purely on luck. In addition, Statcast concluded that Schwarber would have had 12 additional hits in 2022 that were taken away by him hitting into the shift – the second-most in baseball behind only Cory Seager of Texas.

So, if you add those 12 hits, plus the additional 10 “luck” hits, instead of a .218/.323/.504 slash line with an OPS of .827, Schwarber instead would post a line of .257/.356/.543 with an .899 OPS. By comparison, that would be on par with Ryan Howard’s 2008 season for the Phillies (.251/.339/.543 with an .881 OPS and 48 home runs) which was an MVP runner-up season.

Another player who is expected to see a good chunk of time in the Phillies lineup – at least until Bryce Harper gets back – is Darick Hall. Hall had a limited, but successful, run with the Phillies in 2022, despite being shifted on 87.3% of his 142 plate appearances.

And then there’s Harper himself, who was shifted on 75.5% of his plate appearances and saw a 12-point dip in his weighted on base average (wOBA) from .374 down to .362 when he was being shifted. He too could see an uptick in hits.

Of the righties, Rhys Hoskins was the most-shifted Phillies regular, and like Harper saw a dip in his wOBA (from .353 to .342) when being shifted, which he was 67.4% of the time and Nick Castellanos, who many experts believe will have a bounce back season from a disappointing 2022 offensively, was only shifted on 51.8% of his plate appearances but saw a precipitous drop off in wOBA when he was shifted against (.287) vs. when he wasn’t (.322).

Considering these guys will likely make up the meat of the Phillies lineup (it’s hard to imagine Schwarber staying in the leadoff spot with the addition of Trea Turner, and especially without Harper for at least the first 10 weeks of the season), the shift going away could well provide a huge boost to an already potent Phillies lineup.

Bigger bags/pickoff limit/pitch clock

Baseball is not only trying to speed up the game, but also make speed a part of the game again. The art of the stolen base has been greatly diminished over the years, and in this era of power pitching, and catchers needing good pop times, stealing bases is as risky a proposition as it’s ever been.

But making the bags bigger, limiting the amount of times a pitcher can throw to first and requiring pitches to be delivered quicker from one pitch to the next, is an effort to bring this element of the gam back.

It’s never going to get back to the days of the Running Red Birds and Rickey Henderson setting stolen base records in the 1980s. In fact, Henderson’s individual record of 130 stolen bases was more than every TEAM in the MLB had in 2022. But, there should be more of an effort from teams to steal bases than in previous seasons.

The Phillies were already ahead of the curve here in 2022. Their 105 steals were fifth-most in baseball behind Texas (128), Miami (122), Cleveland (119) and the Chicago Cubs (111). And of those top five teams, only the Guardians (81.5%) and Marlins (80.8%) had a better success rate stealing bags than the Phillies (79.0%).

Adding Turner to the lineup will only make the Phillies that much more likely to run.

Turner was 27-for-30 on steal attempts last season for the Dodgers. The Dodgers as a team only attempted 116 steals.

Turner has led the majors in steals twice – in 2018 and 2021 and not counting the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Turner’s career low in steals was, yep, the 27 last season.

It should be noted that even with that career low, Turner would have still led the Phillies in steals with 27, which is saying something considering the Phillies ranking in swiping bags.

Realmuto led the Phillies with 21 steals, and there’s no reason to think he’s going to slow down this season.

One under the radar guy to watch for a bump in steals is Bryson Stott. He stole 12 bases in 16 tries a season go, but now will have a full season, and should be a better hitter than he was the first half of last season.

So, the Phillies were already a “running team” and they should be more of one thanks to the new rules.

As for these new rules impacting the Phillies when their in the field, I don’t see as great an impact. Realmuto is the biggest reason why – teams just don’t want to tempt fate running on his arm. But not only that, the Phillies pitchers are either already good at pitching with pace and rhythm – among 124 pitchers with at least 20 starts last season, Walker was the third-fastest pitcher in baseball in terms of pace. Suarez was 37th – or they are nasty enough to limit baserunners – like Wheeler and Nola – meaning teams won’t want to often risk what precious few baserunners they get against the Phillies aces.

I’m more of a traditionalist and don’t want to see automatic balls and strikes being called because a pitcher is too slow or a batter isn’t ready to swing quickly enough, and I don’t think games were longer in 2021 and 2022 then in 1977 because of between pitch histrionics. But, I’m willing to see if this brings us back to a better brand of baseball overall with more hits and more running, so I’m not completely opposed to it – but I think for the 2023 Phillies, these rules favor them far more than hurt them.

Balanced schedule

Again, from a traditionalist perspective, this is stupid. We’re eschewing divisional rivalries just so fans can have the opportunity to see every team from the other league once every other season? Dumb.

Yes, the unbalanced schedule would impact wild card races, but the solution to that wasn’t adding more games against teams in the other league. It would have been to create a balanced schedules against the teams you are competing with for a playoff spot.

It’s as dumb as making the extra game in the NFL against a random team in the other conference. Why not add another conference game that has a greater impact on the playoffs?

But, I digress.

Looking at this through the Phillies vacuum, There is a benefit to playing fewer games against the Braves and Mets in 2023. Although, there is a detriment to not having as many games against the Nationals as they did a season ago.

Still, the Phillies are going to transfer more tougher games into more weaker opponents than anyone in baseball except Miami.

Computer projections are just that – projections – but it’s still something to look at from 1000 feet for some perspective. The balanced schedule gave the Phillies a 3.6% increase in odds of making the playoffs in 2023. That’s because the collective winning percentage of their opponents in 2023, determined on a game-by-game basis, dropped from .510 to .505. That .005 drop is only behind the Marlins .006 dip.

Still, because of the division they play in, that .505 winning percentage is tied for the fifth-toughest in baseball. However, heading into 2022, that .510 winning percentage was tied for the second-toughest schedule in the sport.

The balanced schedule just brings the whole league closer to the median. Heading into 2022, the highest winning percentage against was .511 and the lowest was .485, a gap of 26 points. Heading into 2023, that gap has shrunk to 17 points (.509/.492).

So, the Phillies getting an “easier” schedule should help them get past the Harper recovery period and have them playing important games again at the end of the season in hopes of another Red October.

Unlike the 2022 schedule, which saw a brutal May schedule where 24 of 28 games played against eventual playoff teams (and 15 of those 24 on the road), the toughest month for the Phillies (based on last year’s standings) will be September/October where 19 of 28 will be against last season’s playoff teams. Every other month is lighter, with August featuring all of five games against 2022 playoff teams.

All told, the Phillies will play just 64 games against 2022 playoff teams, and 101 against non-playoff teams from last year. That’s five fewer games against those same teams in 2022.

And although September/October features their toughest opponents, 32 of the Phillies final 52 games will be played at  Citizens Bank Park, and it’s almost a sure bet the crowds will be a little bigger and more vibrant than they were down the stretch last season.

So, it’s not a major change in the schedule, but one that on paper looks marginally easier than what they faced a season ago.

And with an easier schedule, more opportunities to run, and some key hitters being given more of a chance to get hits than in 2022, the Phillies appear to be one of the teams that looks to benefit the most by the changes coming to baseball.

 

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