Intro

I am a Phillies fan and stathead living in the Philadelphia area. First off, yes, there are people living in the metropolitan area who like the Phillies more than the Eagles, though we try to keep it under wraps. On Friday night, the Phillies played a game in Pittsburgh in the middle of a pennant race while the Eagles played a preseason game at the Linc. The Inquirer's sports page the next day was dominated by coverage of the Eagles' impressive showing, with a column on the side about the Phils' 11-8 victory. But I'm used to it.
Baseball statheads are forced under small rocks in the desert, too, because most of the baseball-loving population is either too lazy or too stupid to learn about sabermetrics. And nobody likes being told they're wrong, so people curse statistics as some demonic witchcraft meant to corrupt the good ol' American game.
I, however, live in Philadelphia and love the Phillies (don't tell anyone); I also love everything hollistic about baseball, but embrace statistics as my window into the game (don't tell anyone). (Actually, tell people. It would be cool if people actually read my blog).
This blog, if I keep it up, will be about my opinions on the Phillies, opinions formed by a curious, pensive, passionate, and, yes, statistically-based mind.
I guess as a sort of intro or whatever, I'll explain the title of this blog. Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance was the famed Chicago Cubs double play trio in the early 1900s. Many rallies were killed by double plays flipped between these three players.
Well, the Phillies of the early 2000s have a prodigious 1B, 2B, and SS. Jimmy Rollins is an offensive stud playing one of the most demanding positions on the field at a very high level. he is overshadowed by fellow Phillies Howard and Utley and fellow SS, the Mets' Jose Reyes, but his value to a team rivals all of them. According to Baseball Prospectus, he's added 10.4 wins over a theoretical replacement player through August 17th so far in the 2007 season, most on the team. In 2006, he added 9.3, .1 less than Howard, the 2006 NL MVP, did. Rollins is an elite player that few take notice of because much of his value is due to strong defense and the fact that he plays a position that usually doesn't produce offense.
Howard and Utley make the right side of the Phillies' infield the most feared in baseball. Howard is a god to me, but is admittedly very flawed. His defense can be painful to watch, but his hitting is downright imposing. People complain about his strikeouts...screw that! A .260/.386/.570 (avg/obp/slg) line is hella valuable, especially considering he was injured for the first two months. Unfortunately, his hitting even appears to be flawed. In his MVP campaign, though he crushed righties and lefties, he did have a significant platoon split, hitting .331/.453/.711 against righties while hitting a somewhat less impressive .279/.364/.558 against lefties. His 2007 return to Earth has seen this issue become more of a problem: Righties-.287/.425/.605, Lefties-.221/.326/.519. Though still a power threat, he clearly isn't seeing pitches well off of lefties, as the 100-point drop in OBP would suggest. Still, though some things can be done to slow him down, he is one of the NL's unstoppable offensive forces (I'm pretty sure he's a superhero of some sort, too. For more, see 24).
Utley's the hard-nosed, gritty player of the trio. He doesn't always make things look easy (like Howard) or petty (like Rollins) but no 2B playing today compares to Utley. He's a solid but not spectacular fielder, but he's a hitting machine. Unlike with Howard, there's not much you can do to try to derail Utley's .336/.414/.581 line...bring in a lefty, perhaps you keep his power down, but he'll have no problem drawing a walk or going gap to gap. Utley hits better than Rollins and fields better than Howard, and in 2007, most people would probably give him the nod over the other two in the spectacular trio in a Phillies' MVP vote. I, personally, abstain (Actually, I'd vote for Rhino, but my vote probably shouldn't count).
Rollins-to-Utley-to-Howard is a privelage that baseball fans should be lucky enough to see over the course of the next half-decade or so. Thank God.