Baseball Prospectus #23 Prospect Austin Hedges

On Monday Night San Diego Padres Catching Prospect Austin Hedges made his major league debut.

2014 Bownan Chrome Fire Die Cut #FDC-AHE Austin Hedges

It was a tough assignment, Hedges first AB was a pinch hitting appearance versus 2014 World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner. The Rookie Struck out on four pitches.

I am sure there are better days ahead for the prospect who will likely get a start soon.

The 23 ranking by Baseball Prospectus may be a bit high as they have consistently ranked Hedges higher than Basemall America (who did not rank Hedges in the top 100 this year) and MLB.com. Perhaps it is because BP ranked Hedges a year earlier then the other sources.

2014 Fire Die Cuts
The FDC cards are inserted into 2014 Bowman Chrome. Apparently they are a common insert as I found this in a dime box. Hedges is found only in the insert set and not on the base checker for 2014 BowChro. 

I may have seen these bizarre cards previously, but don't remember. They look like somebody shrinky-dinked a chrome card. The b-sides with the floating type are an absolute trainwreck

2014 Bownan Chrome #FDC-AHE Austin Hedges (b-side)

Maybe it is the wording, but I had to read this card a few times before I figured out what the author was talking about. The shape of the card on this side doesn't make me think of a prospect on fire, It looks like a the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz Melting, "I'm Melting!!!" . 

Peanut Gallery
This card was covered by the Underdog Card Collector in March - Their analogy for the shape of the card is "cooked in a microwave"

Sources and Links
The Underdog Card Collector
Baseball Cardpedia
Cardboard Connection 
Baseball-ref
MLB
Michaels

WAR Stories: Phillies 2015+ Chase Utley

The 2014 MLB season is drawing to a close and it is time for us baseball fans to face the fact that the long winter and baseball offseaason is nearly upon us. We here at Team Phungo hope to keep the baseball spirit going with a couple of different features. We still need to finish up our 1964 Phillies retrospective, There are a bunch of 2015 HoF candidates I would like to get to and the 1959 Baseball Thrills Subset coverage remains unfinished.

Along with those unfinished items, I would also like to revisit a series we only got four players into in 2014.  Our look at the current Phillies ball club which we dubbed Phillies 2014+

2014 Bowman Chrome #123 Chase Utley

The goal was to project the Phillies Win total by accumulating the rosters WAR totals. I also figured that in addition to gauging our predictions it would give us a chance to examine and consider todays players.

Today we present the first installment of Phillies 2015+ as we discuss the NL All-Star Second Baseman Chase Utley

2014 Utley -A tale of Two Seasons
Chase Utley was an All-Star in 2014 and he earned that distinction with a solid two months of play at the beginning of the season. Utley was so good in early 2014 that he had reestablished himself as a potential future Hall of Fame candidate.

Thru June 10th Utley had played in 58 games and recorded a .318/.373/.498 slash line. After that he batted a truly poor .239/.317/.348. The resulting final totals were a pedestrian .270/.339/.407. That is a 109 OPS+ kids.
 
2015 Phungo Verdict

To project WAR I am going to take a look at the players similarity scores and attempt to figure out how they apply to their upcoming season.

For Chase Utley's 9 of his age 35 comps our beyond their age 36 seasons. Seven of those 9 actually played at age 36. Based on that number Utley has a 78% chance if returning in 2015.  Unfortunately Utley's two biggest comps Hall of Famer Joe Gordon and the more contemporary Nomar Garciaparra never played beyond their age 35 season. That is a very sobering thought for Utley Fans.

A much happier comp, who I always return to for Chase Utley is Jeff Kent. I like it because 1) Kent played until he was 40 2) He made the postseason 3 different times at age 36+ 3) He appeared on "Survivor" after he retired. As an aside I will note that I would prefer that Chase and Jen Utley appear on "the Amazing Race" over "Survivor" but I would watch either one.

Jeff Kent also posted a 3.9 WAR at age 36 and 3.7 at 37. As a Phillies fan, I would LOVE to see Chase Utley put up numbers that would get him to a 3.7 WAR.

In reality I don't see it.

In his favor Utley is coming off his best season since 2011 - His 3.6 WAR at age 35 was better than all 9 of his comps including Kent.   

The flip side to that is that Kent, Vinnay Catilla, and Bobby Grich are the 3 of the 9 comps to have 2.0+ WAR seasons a age 36. Jeff Kent is the only one of the three to have a mentionable career beyond 36.

I give Chsse Utley a 3.0 WAR in 2015. That puts him right between Castilla and Grich.

2014 Bowman Chrome
This year BowChro is debuting special backs that carry a visual representation of a players performance.  I felt as though this would be a fun card to post as we go all in for the analytics.

Chase Utley's 2014 card shows his hot/cold zones.

 2014 Bowman Chrome #123 Chase Utley

There it is stay off Low and inside to a lefthander. Utley also likes the High and outside pitch and pretty much anything low versus righties.

This is one of three back styles I have seen in 2014 BowChro. The pitchers have location graphs, while some hitters have spray charters.

Phillie 2015+
I will be keeping running track of the 2015 Phillies projected Win total as we analyze the roster. A link to those totals is here.

Sources & Links
WAR Stories Phillies 2015+ Index
Chase Utley Player Collection Index
Baseball-ref
Cardboard Connections

WAR Stories Phillies 2015+

This is the Index for our Phillies 2015+ series.

The goal of Phillies 2015+ is two fold. 1) I want to take a deeper look at the Phillies roster 2) I want to see if we can project the Phillies win total/playoff prospects. I am going to attempt to do this by projecting the 2015 WAR of the players on the expected Phils Roster.

2014 Bowman Chrome #123 Chase Utley

The Table below is a running table of my guesses at 2015 WAR ratings for various Phillies. You can click on players highlighted in GREEN  to see a somewhat more in depth discussion of the players projection. 

Pos	Player	2015 WAR	age 2015	2014 WAR	2014$$$
C	Carlos Ruiz	2.3	36	3.2	8.5
1B	Ryan Howard	0	35	-1.1	25
2B	Chase Utley	3	36	3.6	15
3B	Cody Asche		25	0.6	0.5
SS	Freddy Galvis		25	-0.7	0.5
RF	Domonic Brown	+1.5	27	-1.4	0.6
LF	Ben Revere	0	27	0.6	2
U	Darin Ruf	+1.6	28	0.1	0.5
CF	Odubel Herrera	+1.3	23	na	na
Ace	Cole Hamels	9.3	31	6.6	22.5
P2	Clff Lee	3.5	36	0.8	25
P3	Aaron Harang		30	0.4	7.7
P4	Jerome Williams	0.0	33	1.5	2.1
P5	Chad Billingsley	1.6	31	DNP
P6	Dave Buchanan	1.0	26	1.4
CL	Jonathan Papelbon	1.7	34	2.8	13
R1	Ken Giles	0.8	24	2
R2	Justin DeFratus		27	0.8	0.5
U1	Wil Nieves		37	0.7	1.1
U2	Grady Sizemore		32	0.3	0.8
R3	M A Gonzalez		28	-0.1	3.7
RC	Maikel Franco	+1.5
	Replacement Team	50		50
	Total Wins	77.8			79.2
	Actual Wins			73

Other 2015 WAR projections
Jimmy Rollins +2.0 (traded Dodgers)
Marlon Byrd
Kyle Kendrick


Note: I don't know much about how WAR is calculated, I discuss my ignorance here.