The Phillies Spring Training season for 2013 is around the corner, pitchers and catchers report on February 12th and the first full squad workout is on the 15th of February as the Phillies try to regrow the momentum that they carried before the disastrous 2012 campaign.
The injuries of 2012 are behind this team, and the guys who were injured are now either fully healed or playing elsewhere this upcoming season. Let’s take a look at the roster from April 5th 2012, the Opening Day of the 2012 season vs. the Pittsburgh Pirates, and see how the team will look this year much different.
As we see in the chart above, the Phillies opened the season with a cloud around most of the team. Here’s how the team looked offensively through the All-Star Break in 2012 which is known as the ‘1st Half’ and then the rest of the season in the ‘2nd Half’.
The Phillies had a lot of hits in the first half of 2012, but a lot of those hits didn’t produce a lot of runs in relation to the number of hits they got in the 2nd half of the season and the runs that were produced from those hits.
Here is how the Phillies batters got their hits in relation to the balls and strikes count in 2012, it also shows you a lot about when the Phillies will be getting a lot of their hits in 2013 when the count reaches certain numbers:
Obviously, the 3-1 count is the bread and butter of the team last year, but I was surprised to see that the Phillies hit 27 home runs on the first pitch last year. If the Phils can do better this year, they will try much harder to get a hit when the count is 1-2, which they only managed to hit .146 last year.
The next and final chart of this post is an interesting one, it’s Runs Created. A player who had a big impact on the team by creating runs with the hits that they got. The chart may surprise you to see who was on top in that category. Thanks also to Baseball-Reference for the data.
