Have The Phillies Been A Little Lucky This Year? Should They Be Worried?

I got thinking about this thanks to a thread at Baseball Think Factory. It had to do with productive outs and how the Phillies were hitting with runners in scoring position (RISP). But the Phillies actually do better with RISP (and in close and late situations) than they normally do. It looks like a lot better. That is usually a case of luck and won't continue into the future. Here is what I posted over at BTF.

The Phillies have the highest OPS with RISP in the NL. They are tied for the 2nd hightest SLG and they are 6th in OBP (at .356 while the league average is .351). So they get on base at an above average rate with RISP and have great power with RISP. Sounds good. Here is the link to the NL RISP hitting data

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting/split/39/league/nl/sort/OPS/order/true

The Phillies have an overall team hitting OPS of .780 while their pitchers have allowed an OPS overall of .757. So their differential overall is .023. Using my regression formula of

pct = 1.21*OPSDIFF + .5

I estimate they should have about a .528 pct. Yet it is actually .579. Their hitters have an OPS of .800 with RISP while their pitchers have allowed just .726. So their overall RISP performance is really good. I wonder what kind of training or drills they do to pull that off? Or maybe they know how to scout clutch players.:)

The Phillies hitters have a team OPS of .792 in close and late situations while their pitchers allow an OPS of .684. So that is a differential of .108. And as mentioned above their RISP differential is .074 while their overall differential is just .023. So they really know how to ramp up their performance when it counts.