Phillies pitchers forcing bad contact and finding success

The Phillies have been the best team at inducing soft contact and not allowing hard contact, and it has led to success this year.

The Phillies have a 23-16 record and sit in second place of the NL East, the best record they have had through 39 games since 2011. Much of this success has had to do with their pitching staff keeping the team in games.

Philadelphia’s pitching staff ranks sixth in the league with 5.3 collective wins above replacement. They rank fifth with a 3.44 ERA and sixth with a 3.67 fielding-independent pitching. Their 1.23 WHIP also ranks sixth.

Surprinsgly, the team doesn’t rank exceptionally high in strikeout or walk rate. Their strikeout rate of 8.85 batters per nine innings is 13th, while they rank 15th-lowest with 3.28 walks per nine. Their strikeout to walk ratio of 2.70 is 12th-highest.

Where Philadelphia truly shines is the amount of soft and hard contact they have allowed. According to Sports Info Solutions, the Phillies allow the least hard contact of any team:

Fangraphs, which uses data from Baseball Info Solutions, also states Philadelphia has the lowest hard contact rate of any team. In addition to having the league-low 25.9 percent hard contact rate, they also have the highest soft-contact rate of 21.8 percent.

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Philadelphia has done a decent job of allowing dangerous types of batted balls as well. They rank eighth-highest in ground-ball rate and eighth-lowest in line-drive rate. Their pitchers have also done a tremendous job at keeping fly balls in the park as they have the second-lowest home run to fly ball rate (10.1 percent) of all teams. Due to all this, the team ranks ninth in batting average on balls in play (.288).

The Phils also rank highly in skill-interactive ERA, a statistic that measures how pitchers should perform based on their batted balls and three true outcomes. Their 3.89 SIERA ranks 10th in the league.

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Specifically, Philadelphia’s starters have done a tremendous job at preventing hard contact. Jake Arrieta and Aaron Nola rank first and second among all qualified pitchers with the lowest hard contact rate. Nick Pivetta ranks fourth, while Vince Velasquez ranks sixth. If Zach Eflin could qualify, his 29 percent hard contact rate would rank 20th.

Nola and Arrieta also rank highly in soft contact rate. Nola ranks 19th with a 22.9 soft contact rate, while Arrieta ranks 30th with a 20.5 percent contact rate.

The team’s relievers also deserve credit for inducing weak contact as they rank second in soft contact rate and have the lowest hard contact rate.

Edubray Ramos and Yacksel Rios have done the best in this regard. Ramos has the second-highest soft contact rate, while Rios ranks 17th at 29.2 percent.

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As long as Philadelphia keeps forcing hitters to make weak contact, their pitchers will continue to succeed. Pitching has been a struggle for this team in recent years, but it is finally becoming a strength.