Staff Blog
behind the numbers: it is like day and night
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As We Should be GMs pointed out today :
The Phils are awesome at night time, churning out 41 wins to only 27 losses. The rest of the time they pretty much suck: 12-19 in day games.
That is a 21 game swing, which is pretty a serious number. For comparison’s sake, the Phillies’ night winning percentage is roughly comparable to the WP of the best team in the American baseball (the Angels at .602 to .612) while their day WP aligns nicely with the WP of the worst (the Mariners at .387 to .388). We decided to go inside the numbers a little bit here and try to figure out why this might be.
Breakdown ATJ
The Phillies basic offensive stats are skewed across the board
BA OBP SLUG OPS
Day .241 .323 .402 .726
Night .264 .338 .459 .797
So at first glance we thought that it meant that for some reason the hitters weren’t hitting. Maybe they weren’t picking up the balls, maybe Uncle Chuck was throwing out a Sunday lineup more than I remembered.
Then I looked at the pitchers comparative ERAs
ERA
Day 4.61
Night 3.61
During day games the Phillies have the second worst batting average in the league (.241, second to Colorado). That jumps to 11th during at night. Their OPS goes from first in the NL to 9th.
Their pitching isn’t much better. It goes from 23rd during the day to 5th at night. For some reason, across the board the Phillies can’t play under the sun. There are a couple of plausible explanations for this: the Phils are a boom-or-bust offense, for example, and if, by chance, two or three high scoring games occurred at night it might skew the numbers. The team does seem to work in the outliers. Another could be rotations: there is a big difference between Cole Hamels and Adam Eaton. If Eaton was lined up to pitch several more day games than Hollywood was, one would predict that those stats would be skewed. Or it could be the stadium – the Bank schedules less day games than several other clubs, if the Phils play better at home that could be the real reason.
Unfortunately, none of those theories hold up. Sure, both 20-run games were at night, but the Phillies did score 15 and 10 during the day.
Hamels has thrown six of his 20 starts during the day, a comparable stat to the team, and has struggled during the day as well.
Maybe there is something in the numbers that we’re missing – I’m certainly not ruling it out – but there is another possibility that may exist: this might not be able what the Phillies aren’t doing on the field, but rather what they are doing off it.
So why does this team, which clearly has the talent to compete for the crown, struggle during the day while dominating at night? It might be the clear skies and bright sun are not at fault. Perhaps, instead, it is the night before that is to blame.
Nice use of WSBGM’s info there, that’s a tremendous blog, I love it….probably because I’m co-author.
[...] big intangibles are the time of day – for whatever reason the Phillies have one of the worst day/night splits of any team in the majors and have four strait [...]