How do the Phillies stack up against their NL East foes?
The NL East should be the most competitive division in baseball. Where do the Phillies have an edge, and where do they lag behind their competition?
The NL East should be the most competitive division in baseball. Four of the five teams have a realistic chance to win the division, and the Phillies are one of them. Winning the division will be tough, but the Phillies have a good chance to do so. Here’s how the Phils compare to the rest of the division, starting off with last year’s division winners.
Atlanta Braves
Where the Phillies are better: Aces. Mike Foltynewicz had a great season for the Atlanta Braves, posting a 13-10 record with 2.85 ERA and 202 strikeouts, yet he wasn’t even a top three pitcher in the division. Aaron Nola was, finishing third in Cy Young voting with a 17-6 record, a 2.37 ERA and 224 strikeouts.
Jake Arrieta had an up-and-down season for the Phils, but still posted an ERA of 3.96. He had a blazing start to the season but really struggled down the stretch. Some of these struggles can be pinned on his meniscus injury, and it’s fair to question whether he’ll rebound at age 32. He does have a Cy Young and World Series on his resume, and showed last year he can still be a great pitcher. Julio Teheran (3.94) and Sean Newcomb (3.90) both had comparable ERAs, but neither can compare with Arrieta’s resume.
Where the Phillies are worse: Hitting for average. The Phillies team average was .234 last year, second-worst in the National League. On the other hand, the Braves batted .257, good for second-best. Freddie Freeman batted .309, Nick Markakis batted .297 and Ronald Acuna batted .293.
The Phillies highest average belonged to Maikel Franco at .270. As for the rest of Atlanta’s slash line, they had a .324 on-base percentage, and a .417 slugging percentage, both good for fifth in the circuit. The Phillies had an on-base percentage of .314 and a slugging percentage of .393, good for 10th and 11th, respectively. The additions of Jean Segura (.304 average last year) and J.T. Realmuto (.277 average last year) should help narrow the gap, but Atlanta should still get more hits than the Phils this year.
Miami Marlins
Where the Phillies are better: Pitching. You might think Marlins Park would give Miami Marlins pitchers a boost, but you’d be wrong. The Marlins had a 4.76 staff ERA (15th in the NL) last year, allowing 192 homers (13th) and 762 earned runs (15th). The Phillies meanwhile had a staff ERA of 4.14 (11th), allowing 171 homers (fifth) and 665 earned runs (11th).
Despite playing in a much more hitter-friendly ballpark, the Phils staff was much better all around than Miami last year, and have the potential to get even better (looking at you Dallas Keuchel!). Miami did acquire Sixto Sanchez from the Phillies in the J.T. Realmuto deal, they’ll look to him to lead this rotation in the future, but he has a while to go before he makes the majors.
You can’t help but wonder how different Miami’s pitching might be if Jose Fernandez was not taken from us far too soon.
Where the Phillies are worse: Uh… Uh… Defense? Yeah! Defense! Miami ranked fourth in the NL with a .986 fielding percentage, and fifth in errors with 83. The Phils, on the other hand, were 14th in both fielding percentage (.979) and errors (123).
Defense should be the area where the Phillies improve most this season. Jean Segura should be an improvement over Scott Kingery at short, and Rhys Hoskins should be much better at first than he was in left. Meanwhile, Miami may have gotten slightly worse, as they swapped J.T. Realmuto (7 errors, 8 passed balls, .992 fielding %) for Jorge Alfaro (11 errors,10 passed balls, .989 fielding %) behind the plate.
I mentioned four of the five teams have a chance to win the division, Miami is the team that doesn’t.
New York Mets
Where the Phillies are better: Hitting for power. The New York Mets may have renovated Citi Field to make it more homer-friendly, but it’s still no Citizen’s Bank Park. Rhys Hoskins led the Phillies with 34 homers, Carlos Santana had 24, and Maikel Franco and Odubel Herrera both hit 22.
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Yoenis Cespedes–the Mets best thumper–missed a big chunk of the season, and Michael Conforto led the Mets with 28 homers. No one else had 20 or more. The return of Cespedes should give the Mets more pop, and the loss of Santana will hurt the team’s home run totals.
However, the Phillies made some other upgrades, most notably swapping Jorge Alfaro (10 home runs) for J.T. Realmuto (21 home runs).
The balance of home run power could shift even more towards the Phillies if they sign Bryce Harper and his 34 homers from last year.
Where the Phillies are worse: Starting Pitching. Aaron Nola may have finished third in Cy Young voting last year, but Jacob DeGrom (10-9, 1.70 ERA, 269 K) won it, and deservedly so.
Hitting against New York doesn’t get much easier after that, with Zack Wheeler (12-7, 3.31 ERA, 179 K) and Steven Matz (5-11, 3.97 ERA, 152 K) following DeGrom. Oh yeah, and that Noah Syndergaard guy is pretty good too (13-4, 3.03 ERA, 155 K).
The Mets starters combined to post an ERA of 3.54, allowing 387 total runs and 103 homers. By comparison, Phillies starters posted a 4.12 ERA, allowing 438 total runs and 104 homers. While the Phillies have some good arms on their staff, the Mets easily have a top-five rotation in the MLB.
Washington Nationals
Where the Phillies are better: Bullpen. The Washington Nationals have come a long way from the days of Jonathan Papelbon choking people out and have built a pretty solid bullpen. They posted an ERA of 4.05, allowing 247 runs and 81 homers. Sean Doolittle is lights out as a closer, converting 25 of 26 attempts last season.
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The Phillies’ bullpen actually posted worse numbers than Washington last year (4.19 ERA, 290 runs and 67 homers), but the offseason additions of David Robertson, James Pazos, Juan Nicasio, and Jose Alvarez should change that.
This year, Seranthony Dominguez and Robertson should vie for the role of “Guy who comes into the ninth inning with his team leading by three runs or less and records the final three outs” since Gabe Kapler doesn’t believe in closers. Hector Neris and Pat Neshek are also elite relievers at their best, so long as the former doesn’t need another demotion to stay in form all year.
Where are the Phillies worse: Starting Pitching. I know I said the same thing about the Mets, but this is just the nature of this division. Four of the top five Cy Young vote-getters reside in the NL East, and the Nationals have two of them. Max Scherzer went 18-7 last year with a 2.57 ERA and exactly 300 Ks to finish as the Cy Young runner-up. The Nationals also signed Patrick Corbin in the offseason, coming off an 11-7 record, with a 3.15 ERA and 246 strikeouts.
Next. Bryce Harper deal to be done by Monday afternoon. dark
You know your rotation is good when Stephen Strasburg, who was the first pick of the ’09 draft and has a career ERA of pi (3.14) gets lost in the shuffle. Like the Mets, the Nationals also have a top-5 rotation in baseball. It will be interesting to see how the Phillies hitters fare against their division foes this year.