Phillies Have Slight Edge in a Slugfest

The Rockies might be tired after Monday night’s mayhem in their extra-inning win over the Padres, but they’re still one of the hottest teams in baseball — going up against one of the other hottest teams in baseball, the Phillies. Both teams looked like they were out of it only a month ago, and both managed to knock off their divisions’ defending champs to make it into the playoffs, the Phillies as the NL East winners, the Rockies as the senior circuit’s wild card team.LINEUPSThis matchup promises to be a slugfest. Even adjusting for a hitter-friendly home park, the Phillies are the second-best offense in baseball, ranking behind only the Yankees’ .280 in team Equivalent Average (EqA) at .276, which expresses production independent of park and league effects. That also counts having a pitcher hitting instead of a DH; no club in baseball has a better starting eight when it comes to putting runs on the board. With second baseman Chase Utley healthy and back adding to his MVP-caliber season, the Phillies attack teams with their star trio of Utley, first baseman Ryan Howard, and shortstop Jimmy Rollins. Manager Charlie Manuel also has center fielder Aaron Rowand — primed for a huge free agent deal after his first 30-homer season — and left fielder Pat Burrell delivering. Manuel’s valued Burrell’s ability to get on base and kill lefty pitching enough to overlook his occasional problems with a tough right-hander.The Rockies rank a relatively lowly sixth in the NL at .263 in EqA, but that’s a pretty respectable mark that you get after letting the air out of their numbers from playing their home games in Denver’s thin air. More generally, it reflects a homegrown lineup with the talent to play in any environment, a welcome improvement over the days when they counted too heavily on their home park to make players like Dante Bichette briefly resemble star sluggers. With first baseman Todd Helton, right fielder Brad Hawpe, and MVP candidate Matt Holliday in the middle of the lineup, they’ve been able to deliver power in any park, and the Rockies also get a lot of offense from third baseman Garrett Atkins. All of those players have been in place for a couple of seasons (if taking time to develop, especially Holliday), the major difference this year has been the addition of a middle infield that puts runs on the board, with top rookie Troy Tulowitzki coming up from the farm system, and Kaz Matsui being rescued off of the scrapheap once the Mets lost interest in him.STARTING PITCHINGGoing up against these two tough lineups will be a pair of rotations with at least two things in common — they both have lefty aces who will be able to go in the series opener, and they both have ad hoc setups beyond. The Game 1 matchup between the Phillies’ Cole Hamels and Jeff Francis — and perhaps also Game 5 — should have the makings of a great pitcher’s duel, except that they’ll be pitching in one bandbox or another, and against those lineups. Add in that the Phillies have generated a playoff clubs-best .834 OPS against lefty pitching, and that they’ve crushed Francis both times they’ve seen him this year, and you can probably dispense with the hope that there’s going to be even one pitcher’s duel in this series. Hamels seems to have healed up, and as he’s never yet had to face the Rockies, should be a pretty tough assignment for their lineup, with a much more solid shot at overpowering them to give Philly a 1–0 head start in the series.The problems really start from there, as the Rockies have to pick between a pair of hard-throwing rookies — righty Ubaldo Jimenez and lefty Franklin Morales — for the Game 2 assignment, while the Phillies will turn to their own rookie reinforcement, Kyle Kendrick. Kendrick doesn’t have the same caliber of stuff as either Jimenez or Morales, but he’s fit right in with veterans Kyle Lohse and Jamie Moyer as far as delivering good-enough starts that the Phillies’ offense can turn into wins with yet another blowout. The key question here is whether either Jimenez or Morales might be able to surprise the Phillies’ lineup, because the Rockies should be able to score off of Kendrick. When the series moves back to Denver, things will get ugly, as Lohse and Moyer will be hard-pressed to succeed in Coors Field, while the Rockies will go with the other rookie and journeyman mediocrity Josh Fogg.BULLPENThat sounds like a recipe for early exits and a battle between the two teams’ bullpens, where things get a lot more interesting. There, the Phillies might be celebrating their success relying heavily on closer Brett Myers and set-up men J.C. Romero and Flash Gordon, but their decision to only complement them with a ghastly trio of Antonio Alfonseca, Clay Condrey, and Jose Mesa could make for some out-of-control fifth and sixth innings against the Rockies. If the Phillies’ rotation can take leads into the seventh inning, this lack of depth might not be deadly, but if they can’t — and given their limitations, they probably won’t — Philadelphia’s going to lose a ballgame or two in the middle frames.In contrast, the Rockies can help their more unpredictable rotation with a pen that has both more talent and much more depth. Headed up by homegrown flamethrower Manny Corpas, the Rockies have a pen seemingly made up almost entirely of ex-closers, all of whom seem to have adapted reasonably well to pitching at altitude. While Jorge Julio’s control problems will probably keep him out of the really close games, look for Rockies manager Clint Hurdle to play matchup games effectively, especially using lefties Brian Fuentes and Jeremy Affeldt to minimize the damage the sluggers like Utley and Howard can do in the middle innings. Add in that the Rockies may well be one of the best defensive ballclubs in the game today, and they have way to make up for their pitching staff’s limitations.PREDICTIONIn the end, a healthy Hamels is what’s going to make the difference. In what might end up being a pyrrhic victory, the Phillies will win out when Hamels beats the Rockies a second time in Game 5.Ms. Kahrl is a writer for Baseball Prospectus. For more state-of-the-art commentary, visit baseball prospectus.com.

Phillies Have Slight Edge in a Slugfest

Phillies Have Slight Edge in a Slugfest

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