They won’t face many bad pitchers once the playoffs start.
The Phillies offense has been underwhelming on the whole so far this year. Based on most stats it’s around 10th best in MLB, but there is some concern that even this overstates how good it is because it includes games against bad pitching that they wouldn’t see if and when they reach the playoffs.
For example if they feast on bad pitching, then even if they struggle against good pitching more than most contenders do, this wouldn’t be apparent in their overall numbers.
We can take a crack at understanding this better.
Let’s look at all starters who have pitched at least 50 innings so far, so that they can be more reliably categorized based on their ERA to date.
That’s 135 pitchers at the moment, or 4.5 per team. Then let’s pick an ERA cut-off, and categorize them as either “playoff quality”, or not. This is regardless of the team they’re on and whether that team will or won’t make the playoffs.
Picking a nice even 4.00 ERA for that, we get:
- 74 starters with ERAs up to 3.99, i.e. “playoff quality”
- 61 starters with ERAs of 4.00 and above
(all stats are through Wednesday’s games)
The 74 “playoff quality” starters have a combined ERA of 3.03
The 61 other starters have a combined ERA of 4.86
After 80 games through Wednesday, the Phillies’ opposing starters break down like this:
- 34 with ERAs up to 3.99
- 30 with ERAs of 4.00 and above
- 16 others with less than 50 innings pitched
And as expected for any team, they have done much better against bad starters:
Below are total runs scored, per game, depending on how the opposing starter is categorized.
- 34 up to 3.99…… 3.76 runs per game
- 30 at 4.00 plus… 5.47 per game
- 16 others……….. 4.81 per game
Next we can compare this breakdown to other contenders. In the NL, that’s currently this list, all teams either leading a division or within 2 games of a wildcard berth:
All eight of these contenders have done worse when there’s a good opposing starter, no surprise there. Six of the 8 are bunched between 15% and 18% worse than their overall average.
The Cardinals have been slightly better than the rest, at only 11% below their average.
The Padres meanwhile have done much worse, scoring 31% less.
The Phils have done relatively well against pitchers with 4+ ERAs, though that’s offset by not feasting on pitchers with less than 50 starting innings, which might be openers, spot starters, etc.
In summary, yes the Phillies do score fewer runs when faced with a good starter, like every team does.
The extent to which their offense has been limited in those games is about the same as most other contenders.
Now, granted, this is looking at total runs scored, and isn’t looking at performance vs. good or bad relievers, for example, which might be the subject of a future analysis.