Baseball Musings: Winning Without Abreu

January 17, 2007

Winning Without Abreu

Phil Sheridan likes the attitude of the Phillies this year:

There isn't much chance the Phillies deliberately attempted to add energy and attitude to their roster by emulating the Eagles' mid-season resurgence.
So it's mere coincidence the Phillies traded for Freddy Garcia, claimed Anderson Garcia off waivers and signed Karim Garcia to a minor-league contract during the same one-month span Jeff Garcia was pumping up the local football fans with his fiery presence.

What is not a coincidence, though, is the continuing transformation of the personality of this baseball team. That jumped out at you yesterday, when the Phillies held one of their off-season meet-and-greets for the media at Citizens Bank Park.

From their 2006 everyday lineup, the Phillies last year traded away Bobby Abreu and David Bell. Going into 2007, their replacements will be Shane Victorino in right field and Wes Helms at third base.

Subtract poker-faced, major-league-cool players.

Add high-motor, high-energy, hustling players.

Phil then goes on to bash the number guys who like Abreu.

This issue is best understood by looking at last year's trade of Abreu to the New York Yankees. Well into October, many e-mailers complained that the Phillies would have won the extra couple games needed to reach the playoffs if they hadn't foolishly given Abreu away. But the fact is, the team didn't really start playing well together and winning until Abreu was gone.
You want numbers? The Phillies' record before the deal: 49-54. After the deal: 36-23.

Abreu is, by any measure, a very talented and productive player. He's a perfectly decent guy. And yet the Phillies were a better team without him (or Bell or Cory Lidle) on the roster.

This reminded me of something from early Bill James Baseball Abstracts. Bill published numbers of team records when players appeared in a game. At the time, he thought they were interesting, so I thought I'd look up the Phillies numbers. Abreu's record actually gives more ammunition to Sheridan. In that 49-54 stretch, the Phillies were 44-54 with Abreu in a game, 5-0 without him. Now, I and you should take this with a big grain of salt. For example:

On May 13th, without Abreu, the Phillies won a 2-0 game.
On May 14th, without Abreu, the Phillies won a 2-1 game.

The other three games were blowouts right before the trade happened. So, what difference would Bobby make in those games? The team didn't hit in two of them, and everybody hit in three of them!

Bobby is a good player. Having him in a game should make the team better. The fact that it didn't seems to be more a factor of luck than Bobby not being a hustling player.

Posted by David Pinto at 11:52 AM | Team Evaluation | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Kudo's to Phil Sheridan for making me feel excited about the upcoming year. Kudo's to Dave for printing it.

I loved Abreu, but he just wasnt the clutch player i envisioned. he always looked for a walk, rather than the big hit. that was his only flaw in my mind.

innings 1 thru 5 he was the best. after that, he shyed away.

Posted by: The Gov'Nah at January 17, 2007 01:02 PM

I agree with The Gov'Nah... Bobby is a great player but he never seemed to change his approach at the plate, no matter what the situation was. Sometimes all the Phils needed was a ball put in play to score a run but Abreu would just stand there and take his walk. Even opposing pitchers knew he would so they would give it to him and pitch to the next guy. Since he was often followed in the lineup by "all-or-nothing" type hitters (i.e. Thome, Burrell) who don't necessarily put the ball in play, Abreu's approach occasionally "hurt" his team.

Posted by: Craig at January 17, 2007 02:31 PM

It's true Bobby Abreu was last in the league in Linear Weighted Intangibility Index last year. Oh wait, my bad, Alex Rodriguez was last, Abreu was second.

Anyone who would rather have Shane Voctorino than Bobby Abreu deserves to root for the Phillies.

Posted by: Schteeve at January 17, 2007 02:58 PM

Now that's a stat that I've been hearing way too much about lately. Linear Weighted Intangibility...love the name.

Posted by: Orangeman at January 17, 2007 04:47 PM

Certainly, any team with Bobby Abreu on it should be better than a team with a replacement level player. He has a ridiculously high OBA and has some decent pop, when he swings the bat. I never thought he was a bad defensive player (lazy at times, yes; bad, no); he was a decent base runner with the ability to steal an occasional bag or two as well.

The problem with Abreu on the Phils was that he was the "Veteran Leader" of the team and he is, by all accounts, a pretty quiet guy. Now, I'm not saying that they needed a Larry Bowa-esque spark-plug pumping them up day-in, day-out, but the team did seem to have more jump once Bobby was gone and the team was turning to Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins as the "leaders." I think I even remember seeing an article where Howard said that he didn't feel comfortable being the leader when Bobby was there, but afterwards, he was much more so. I think the players just fed off of the pure grit of Utley and the pure joy of Howard and the team relaxed a bit more, had a bit more fun, while at the same time working harder, which led to a better second half performance.

Of course, the additions of Hamels and Moyer to the starting rotation didn't hurt either.

Posted by: Jordan at January 17, 2007 06:24 PM

i have never understood the "put the ball in play" criticism.

gov-nah, would you please go pull up some stats to explain how many runs are scored when a hitter hits a baseball that is out of the strike zone? i will be happy to settle for BABIP. i would bet it is not even .050 - and i have absolutely NO idea why you and so many fans greatly prefer a GO to the SS/popup/GIDP to a walk.

please educate me here.

i am completely not understanding why you prefer a inferior player who is all "gritty" to a poker faced guy who is actually a much MUCH better player.

Posted by: lisa gray at January 18, 2007 01:22 PM

i deserve to root for the phillies.

Posted by: Tim at January 18, 2007 03:07 PM

Lisa,

I'm not saying that I'd want a whole team of gritty Shane Victorino's. I'm saying I want the players to all put in the effort of Chase Utley (and preferably have his talent). The Phillies with Abreu played the way he did for the most part...fairly lazy. And the team caught fire when he was gone, partly because they played harder. I can't back it up with stats because I simply don't have the time to find ones that would support it, but I can tell you that I watched enough games and listened to enough games (as many as possible from Phoenix) to know that the team had a completely different mentality once the trade was made.

Now if they could've taken on that mentality in April, and followed the leads of Howard and Utley with Abreu, certainly, without a doubt, 150%, I'd rather have Abreu on my team than not. His trade was a complete steal by the Yanks, and I took plenty of crap from friends at work who knew my baseball allegiance for "my team" trading the Yanks the pennant. But if cutting ties with Abreu allowed Utley and Howard to take the reigns of this team and mold them in their image, I'll sacrifice the difference between Abreu and Victorino every day of the season. They are the best right side of the infield in the game (offensively) and I look forward to good things from the Phils this year...us Philly fans need it...

Posted by: Jordan at January 18, 2007 05:29 PM

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