Opening Day: 2009 UD Piece of History CSC-UK Utley & Kinsler

We have already had Australia Opening Day and ESPN Opening Night. Today we finally get to Phillies Opening Day.

2009 UD A Piece of History #CSC-UK Chase Utley and Ian Kinsler

Five years ago both the Phillies own Chase Utley and the Rangers Ian Kinsler were coming off exceptional seasons. Among second basemen, Utley led all of Major League baseball in Offensive WAR, Kinsler was 2nd in the AL to Dustin Pedroia.

Today both players find themselves at a significantly different stature. Utley (age 35) hasn't played 140+ games since 2009, and Kinsler (31) has been jettisoned by the Rangers in favor of younger talent.

Reading the Competition
RTC will be returning for 2014. I hope to feature some two team cards like the Utley-Kinsler combo above.  I expect this will present us with some interesting pairings and players for discussion.

Source
Chase Utley Player Collection Index
Baseball-ref.com

Sunday Night Baseball: Steve Garvey 1986 Fleer League Leaders #15

Yes the Dodgers may have already played a pair of games, but to me MLB Opening Day is still in progress. Tonight the Dodgers visit the division rival San Diego Padres to begin the domestic portion of the season.

1986 Fleer League Leaders #15 Steve Garvey 

I will always think of Steve Garvey as a Dodger, but he did have a significant stint with the Padres. Five years of Garvey's career were spent in San Diego. His tenure there was so successful that the Padres retired #6 in honor of Garvey.

1986 Fleer League Leaders
This is a special edition set that Fleer put together in 1986. The 44 card complete set boxes were distributed at Walgreen's. I think "Leaders" in the set name refers to being a team leader, the cards certainly do not point to any specific statistical category for which the player led the league.

Checker

The 44 card checklist for the set runs in alphabetical order by surname. #38 Juan Samuel is the sole Phillies player on the list, although the set does also include Mariano Duncan, Julio Franco, Keith Moreland, Dale Murphy, Pete Rose and Ryne Sandberg with other clubs. There are several Hall of Famers in there including Tom Seaver, Ozzie, Robin Yount, Carlton Fisk, Ripken, Carew, Gary Carter, Kirby Puckett, and Phil Niekro.

Since this is Fleer each Box contains six random team stickers. Keeping with today's theme, this pack happened to be a Padres Hot Box:

1984 Padres
This season the Padres who are struggling for current success are once again celebrating the 1984 squad, who they just honored in 2009. 2014 marks the 30th anniversary of the 1984 Padre, which took the NLCS from the Cubs despite losing the first 2 games of the 5 game series.  Steve Garvey was the MVP of the series, He batted .400 with a team leading 7 RBIs including 5 in game 4 which he also ended with a Game Winning Home Run.


Welcome back baseball - I hope to continue with the Sunday Night Baseball postings throughout the season. Perhaps the Phillies will find some success in 2014 and find themselves on the big show at some point.
 

Sources
Baseball-ref 
Padres
Bob Lemke's Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards
Gaslamp Ball
2009 Padres

Mike Schmidt 2013 Topps Chasing History #CH-92

The Phillies have revamped their broadcast lineup for 2014. Three of the teams alums are coming in to do color commentary: Jamie Moyer and Matt Stairs from the 2008 World Champs and Hall of Fame 3rd baseman Mike Schmidt.

2013 Topps Chasing History #CH-92 Mike Schmidt (Gold)

Schmidt is apparently healthy after a recent cancer scare. He had surgery and radiation treatment related to mole that was found on his back. Recent scans have shown Schmidt to be cancer free.

During the regular season the Phillies plan on having Mike Schmidt join the TV broadcast team as part of a three man booth with lead Tom McCarthy and either Moyer or Stairs.

Mike Schmidt will turn 65 later this year, He appears to have remained in good physical shape while retired. Hopefully this will aid him in avoiding a recurrence of any cancer.

2013 Topps Chasing History
CH is a 150 card insert set spread evenly across the the three series of of 2013 Topps. The card come in both silver and gold variations. I am not sure but assume gold is more scarce

2013 Topps Chasing History #CH-92 Mike Schmidt (Gold)
2013 Topps Chasing History #CH-92 Mike Schmidt (Silver)

 

More Schmidt
Phungo HoF Index

Sources
Phillies,com
h/t the Phillies Room 
baseball cardpedia
 

2014 03 08 Card Show Valley Forge PA: 1952 Topps HOF Larry Doby

Last week as part of the Year of the Horse series we profiled Ellis Valentine and his famous half face mask card. One of the interesting things that was noted in a linked Jeff Pearlman interview is the an early mentor of Valentine was Larry Doby. 

1952 Topps #243 Larry Doby

In 1947 Three months after Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Larry Doby became the first African-American player in the AL. On July 5, 1947 Doby pinch hit in the 7th inning of a game between the White Sox and Indians.

A year later Doby was a key member of the Indians squad that won the 1948 World Series. During the series he led the team in hits and batting average. 66 years later it remains the Indians most recent World Championship.

Larry Doby would go on to lead the AL in Home Runs twice (1952, 1954). His 1954 performance was good enough to place him 2nd in the MVP voting (Yogi Berra). Doby led the league in WAR in 1952 and oWAR in 1950. The MVPs those years went to Phil Rizzuto (1950) and Bobby Shantz (1952). It should be noted that Shantz's pitching WAR did outpace Doby 9.6 - 7.0.

For the Collector
I picked this card up at the Valley Forge Card Show for $8.  A 1952 Topps card of an Iconic Hall of Famer for $8 stinking bucks. That is my victory of the year.

2014 03 08 VF Card Show
1952 Topps #243 Larry Doby
1969 Topps #6 LL HR Dick Allen McCovey Banks  
1973 Topps #503 Phil Niekro
  
Sources
Baseball-ref
baseball Hall of Fame

Phillies 2014+ Cody Asche 2013 Topps #US71 (RC)

The Phillies drafted Cody Asche in the fourth round of the Draft in June 2011, less than 3 years later he is penciled in as the teams opening day third baseman. A year ago the Phillies picked up Michael Young to fill the 3B role, Ideally the Phils would have made the postseason, Young would be back for a transition year and Asche wouldn’t be coming up until the end of this season rather than last. 

2013 Topps #US71 Cody Asche (RC)

Of course, things didn’t go that way and we got our first look at Cody. His debut was fair at best – The .235 batting average in 162 ABs is simply not good enough for a Major League corner infielder. The other problematic number was Asche’s 43 strikeouts which projects out to 140+ in a full 600 PA season. Asche showed decent power with 5 homers and 14 XBH. His defense is seen as average, advanced defensive metrics in a limited MLB sample back that up with a slightly below average dWAR.

Currently Cody Asche’s biggest issue is hitting LHP. All 5 of his Homers were vs righty’s, at lower levels only 3 of 15 HR were versus southpaws. Furthermore his 2013 slash line vs LHP across both majors and AAA was .252/.299/.361 in 147 ABs.

2014+
In 2005 at age 26 Chase Utley played his first full season, He batted .291 with 28 Homers and 105 RBIs. However, in 128 ABs versus lefties he batted .219 with only 7 of those homers. His vs LHP slash line for the season was .219/.348/.469. A key difference between Utley's 2005 and Asche 2013 vs LHP is that Utley worked walks. Utley had 28 hits vs LHP, but he also had 25 walks - this accounted for an OBP that was 129 points higher then his BA. Asking Cody Asche to become Chase Utley would be way to large of a request - but I believe for Cody to be an everyday player it is necessary for him to be more selective at teh plate, especially vs Lefties. 

Phungo Sez
Honestly, I don't think that Asche his ready to play everyday for a playoff caliber team. I also don't think that the 2014 Phillies fall into that premium category. If he stays in the majors all of 2014 I see Asche at .281 average .331 OBP, 20 HR, 67 RBI with a WAR of 1.8 (2.1 oWAR)

Phillies 2014+ Index
Cody Asche WAR + 1.8
Cole Hamels WAR +3.8
Ryan Howard WAR +1.0

Sources
Baseball-ref

MLB in Australia: 2009 Bowman Chrome #BCW60 Brad Harman

Major League Baseball held Opening Day down under overnight. The Dodgers won the game 3-1 behind the always fine pitching of Clayton Kershaw. Scott Van Slyke produced the offense for LA with a 2 Run Homer. Mark Trumbo picked an RBI in his first game with the D-Backs.

2009 Bowman Chrome World Baseball Classic #BCW60 Brad Harman

Australia hasn't sent many players to the majors, but at least one of them played for the Phillies. Brad Harman played a handful of games for the 2008 World Championship Phillies. In 10 ABs he picked up a single hit, an RBI Double off Zach Duke and the Pirates on April 25.

Unfortunately that was pretty much the end of Harman's career. He was released by the Phillies in 2009 and the following year he was suspended by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority for violating the agencies anti-doping rules while playing in the US. He has been eligible to play since 2011, but I found no evidence that he has returned to the game. 

Sources 
Baseball-cardpedia
ESPN
Herald Sun (Melbourne AU)
baseball-ref

Phillies 2014+ Cole Hamels 2009 Topps #299

We are a half decade removed from the spring of 2009. That spring Cole Hamels was 25 years old coming off a World Championship and a World Series MVP award.

2014 Topps #299 Postseason Highlights Cole Hamels

2009 ended up being Cole Hamels worst season....to date. 2014 is full of uncertainty for the now 30 year old Southpaw. He has a mysterious injury the Philllies remain mum about, Scheduled throwing sessions have been scratched, Hamels has described the issue as arm fatique and minor. None of this is comforting to Phils fans as Cole's 2014 Debut keeps getting delayed.

2013 Cole
This makes Hamels new season tough to predict. It may be true that Hamels was a victim of poor run support in 2013, but his overall performance was quite average. Whils his WHIP, H/9, BB/9, K/9, and K/BB numbers each were off only slightly, the cumulative effect of the averages was that his ERA+ dropped to 106 well below his career average of 123. This is in a season when the rest of the leagues pitchers were putting up unprecedent strikeout numbers. It could very well be that Hamels was suffering from his present arm issues last season.

Sim Scores
To gain some insight into what Cole Hamels season may 2014 season may look like we took a look at his age 29/30 similarity score matches in Baseball-ref. Of Hamels top 10 matches 2 are active in his class (Tim Lincecum and Zack Greinke) and Juan Pizarro was a reliever. This leaves us with seven comparables:  



Yellow = Age 30 seasons of the 7 pitchers that comp with Hamels
light grey line 1 = average of all 7 pitchers
light grey line 2 = average of the bottom 5 pitchers on the list
Grey = Team Phungo 2014 Projection

Four of the 7 pitchers pitched full seasons. Jake Peavy had an unprecedented back/torso injury midway through his age 29 season. During the winter prior to 1990 Kevin Appier had an off the field injury. Sid Fernandez missed about half a season due to a series of  knee injuries.  I created two lines of averages, the first line is all 7, the second line excludes Peavy and Appier due to the timing/type of injuries. I kept Fernandez because his injury was basically in season and not season ending. 

Those odds would give Hamels a 4 of 7 chance of getting 200 innings (57%) for the full set. 4 in 5 (80%) if you exclude Peavy and Appier.

Those are fairly frightening numbers for the Phillies who likely need many things to go their way to be competitive. Hamels looks to be gone for at least part of April which jeopardizes any chance he has of getting 200 innings. 

Beyond that 2013 for Hamels was an average major league season. Among the comps Bob Welch and Fernandez's abbreviated season were the two that could be considered significantly above average. The rest were slightly above average and sadly I think that is the best we can hope for from Mr Hamels.    

2014
I see Hamels 2014 Numbers roughly matching his 2013 averages, which slightly lest output due to missing a month of the season - 8-10, 3.65 ERA with 185 innings. His 2013 WAR was 4.6 - for 2014 I am penciling Hamels in for 3.8 WAR.
 
2009 Topps Postseason Hightlights
 

2014 Topps #299 Postseason Highlights Cole Hamels (b-side)

Minor quibble with the flip side of this 09 PSH card - As the card mentions in the text, the 2009 Series included an unprecedented 2 day rain delay. This meant the Series ran through October 29th, not the 27th.

Phillies 2014+ Index
Cole Hamels
Ryan Howard

Sources
Baseball-ref
New York Times
Rory Costello @ Sabr.org - Sid Fernandez
ESPN Chicago
MLB.com
Larry Stone @ Seattle Times