SB Nation User Blog: lseltzer

Phillies schedule available for Outlook and Apple iCal

lseltzer — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:28:17 -0000

Phillies schedule available for Outlook and Apple iCal

Import into your Outlook or iCal.

February 20 - Almost 2 million tickets sold already

lseltzer — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:16:45 -0000

Inquirer: Phillies Tickets Are Selling Fast

By yesterday, the Phillies had sold enough season tickets to fill, on average, 24,000 seats a game - about 4,000 more per game than last year.

That's about 1.9 million seats right there.

Before yesterday, 400,000 had been sold in other ways - including special six-game plans, group sales, and advance single-game sales to season-ticket holders, purchasers from last year, and members of a Phillies e-mail club.

Yesterday, 50,000 more tickets were gobbled up.

Here are the ESPN MLB Attendance figures for 2008 and prior years. Phillies attendance was 3,422,583, 97.1% of capacity.

Was Hamels The Right MVP?

lseltzer — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:05:07 -0000

I can't think of anyone better, but it's not an obvious decision.

Throughout last night's game-let I was wondering who would be the MVP. I thought if he held on for the win Hamels would be, and it wasn't his fault he didn't get the win. That second run was earned because the pop up that Rollins didn't catch was called a hit. This is a fair ruling, but not fair to Hamels.

Every time Howard came up I thought that a big hit here could get him the MVP, but he didn't deliver.

The two top hitters (see here for team hitting stats) were Werth and Ruiz. Werth also had some bad baserunning I guess, but I could have seen it going to Ruiz.

My last question: Who decides who gets the series MVP?

MLB Wishful Thinking On Weather

lseltzer — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:56:42 -0000

An article in the Inquirer says that weather services actually gave fairly accurate forecasts to MLB.

Selig and other MLB guys said that the weather services with which they consulted indicated that the rain wouldn't be so bad Monday night. The services say otherwise.

AccuWeather...had developed a fairly accurate forecast by early Monday afternoon.

The National Weather Service revised its regional forecast several times during the day, but by 8 p.m., shortly before the start of Game 5, it was calling for substantial rainfall around 10 p.m. as well.

Meanwhile, WeatherBug's chief meteorologist, Mark Hoekzema, said his service had been telling baseball officials most of the day to expect rain at game time, light at first but intensifying until its peak at around 10 p.m.

Who Starts Game 5 2/3?

lseltzer — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:59:03 -0000

So obviously we have new pitchers tonight (or maybe tomorrow) for the continuation game. Do you put Myers out there? Durbin?

t's odd, because there are potentially only 9 outs left for the Rays, so you don't need a pitcher to go very far. MLB.com says that they're likely to use the bullpen.

Remember, if the continuation game goes to Wednesday then the potential game 7 is no earlier than Friday, and Hamels could certainly pitch some.

Andy Reid On The Phillies

lseltzer — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:57 -0000

Andy Reid had red on for last night's game.

From the transcript of Andy Reid's press conference yesterday:

On what he will be doing for tonight's Phillies game:
"I'm going to be pulling hard for the Phillies, baby, and for [Phillies manager] Charlie [Manuel]. I had a chance to go to the game yesterday and that place was electric over there. They have a great thing going, and I'll have the red on today."

On whether he will attend the parade if the Phillies win:
"I will. I will just open my curtains and it will go right past me right there, so I'll be there."

On whether the atmosphere in the city will change if the Phillies win:
"You know what, they are going to win. I'm going to take the 'if' out of that for you. They are going to win, and the city will love every minute of it. It will be great for the city."

Game 4 Train Wreck For Sports Fans

lseltzer — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:16:39 -0000

Beware of game 4. Bad news for all of the fans.

Todd Zolecki's story in the inkwire this morning has a coda pointing out that if the Phillies lose game 3, game 4 is scheduled for Sunday at 1PM eastern - the same time as the Eagles-Redskins game.

It's also the same time as the Falcons at Green Bay.

Not a problem for me; I live in the New York market so I can't watch the Eagles game anyway.

Post-Mortem On ESPN's Pre-Season Predictions

lseltzer — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:50:08 -0000

I love doing this stuff. Today I decided to look up ESPN's pre-2008 baseball season predictions to compare them to the actual outcomes, so far. The results are always amusing.

(Click here to see their consensus prediction for the final standings.)

As I write this the final picture is still not clear, since the AL Central might go either to the Twins or White Sox, but for my purposes it doesn't matter. Not a single ESPN expert predicted either team to reach the playoffs

19 different ESPN experts made their predictions for who would reach each playoff position, and also for who would beat whom in the series. As of now, only 2 of the World Series predictions remain possible: Eric Karabell of ESPN Fantasy's Cubs over Red Sox and Pedro Gomez's Angels over Dodgers.

There seems to have been great enthusiasm for the Mets, which is not surprising I guess, but also for the Tigers, Indians and Braves. Only Karabell and Sean McAdam predicted the Phillies to take the East and 4 others picked them for the wild card.

I put all the predictions in a spreadsheet and did a little math: assigning 1 point for a correct prediction and 1/2 point for predicting the wild card as division champs or vice-versa (e.g. predicting the Phillies as wild card or Red Sox to win the division). A perfect pick would be 8 points. I came up with these totals:

Jonah Keri			4
Tim Kurkjian			4
Keith Law			3.5
Sean McAdam			3.5
Jorge Arangure Jr.		3.5
Rob Neyer			3
Bob Klapisch			3
Peter Pascarelli	        3
John Shea			2.5
Peter Gammons			2.5
Pedro Gomez			2.5
Steve Phillips			2.5
Jerry Crasnick			2.5
Eric Karabell			2.5
Buster Olney			2
Enrique Rojas			2
Jayson Stark			1.5
Amy Nelson			1.5
Nate Ravitz			1.5

Ouch! I like Jasyon Stark, but numbers don't lie. And maybe Jonah Keri and Tim Kurkjian deserve some praise, but 4 isn't really all that good. Kurkjian predicted a Red Sox over Mets series, Perhaps there's some Shea nostalgia and wishful thinking going on, and he predicted the Yankees as wild cards. The Mets and Indians are his only conventional mistakes, and lots of others made them.

I'll take my hat off to Keri for predicting both wild cards correctly, something only he and Peter Pascarelli did. But Keri also predicted the Yankees, Mets, Indians and D-Backs to take their divisions. That's a lot of important bad picks.

The most correct predictions were for the Cubbies. 17 of the 19 predictions had them winning the Central, with the other two taking the Brewers, so the Central was the most predictable division this year. 10 of 19 picked the Angels to take the AL West and 7 picked the Dodgers in the NL West.

There are also predictions for MVP, Cy Young and Rookie of the Year. I won't get into them, but these are much harder to predict and it's no surprise that few of them look plausible now.

Captain Of The Phillies

lseltzer — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:49:28 -0000

Which Phillie should get a C on his shirt?

It's really more of a hockey thing, but in New York they often designate a player as team captain. John Franco even got the C on his shirt.

I'm not sure if it really accomplishes anything, but if the Phillies were to have a captain who should it be?

I somehow see either Rollins or Moyer. Or Lidge? No, my vote's for Moyer.

In fact you'd probably need to know how they are viewed by the team, and damned if I know.

Poll

Vote for a Phillies team captain/

Ryan Howard

0 votes

Chase Utley

11 votes

Jimmy Rolliins

17 votes

Pat Burrell

3 votes

Shane Victorino

0 votes

Jamie Moyer

7 votes

Cole Hamels

0 votes

Brett Meyers

1 votes

Brad Lidge

0 votes

Other

0 votes

39 votes | Poll has closed

Best Phillies Attendance Year Ever?

lseltzer — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:38:12 -0000

In case you didn't notice, the Phillies are having a monster year for attendance.

I recommend the ESPN MLB Attendance Report, which has data for each team back to 2001.

Through yesterday, 61 games, the Phillies have an attendance total of 2,580,342, for an average of 42,300. ESPN calls this 97.2% capacity so they must be counting capacity as 43,519 (rounded). But the summer has been monstrous with frequent sellouts. For the last 11 games (going back to and including the Braves series at the end of July) the average attendance is 44,939 (source ESPN Phillies schedule).

Looking at average attendance per home game the order of first through fifth is Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Phillies and Cardinals. The Phillies recently overtook the Cards, but it's impossible for the Phils to overtake the Dodgers whose current average attendance is 45,391, well above the capacity of Citizens Bank Park.The Yankees and Mets both have ballparks with much greater capacity, although next year the Mets at CitiField will have a capacity more in line with that of CBP. The new Yankee Stadium will still be much larger.

Looking at average percentage of capacity the Phillies are once again 4th, but behind the Red Sox (104.1%!), Tigers (99.5%) and Cubs (99.1%). The nearest team behind them is the Yankees at 92%. Incidentally, the Yankees are on pace for a final attendance of 4,282,427, slightly ahead of last year. On the one hand, once school starts it may be harder to get people into the seats, but on the other there are only 16 games left at The House That Ruth Built.

The Phillies are on pace for 3,426,342, but if you project their last 11 game average out for the last 20 games of the year you get 3,479,122, clearly their best year ever. 2004, the first year of Citizens Bank Park saw 3,206,532 and the best year at the Vet was 1993 at 3,137,674.

Another interesting point: The ESPN page lets you see away attendance too. For every year of this decade until this one the Yankees were #1 in away attendance, but this year they are way down to #7. Above them are the Cards, Dodgers, Mets, Cubs and Red Sox, and so the Red Sox also win the overall attendance numbers by a fair amount. The Phillies aren't a major draw away, #17 out of 30. And in spite of their impossible dream year the Rays are #26 out of 30 at home and dead last away. That one I don't understand because they play a lot of games in New York and Boston where every game gets good attendance. Then again, Toronto and Baltimore are both below average.

I look at this and figure the Phillies must be awash in money. Am I wrong? Let's hope they invest in players.