March came in like a lion for these Phillies
First things first: Spring training stats probably aren’t predictive. At least, not to any great degree. Yes, that pitcher who’s got a staggeringly low ERA needs to show he’s got it for more than just a couple innings. Yes, that hitter who came out of nowhere to blast a few homers in a couple March appearances is probably dancing with Lady Small Sample Size. But isn’t it nice to dream? To hope spring’s eternal?
We don’t have to just hope, of course. This is baseball. We have numbers. Lots of them. We can look at past spring successes and see how they translated, or didn’t into the regular season. FanGraphs keeps track of spring stats all the way back to 2006. Let’s take a look at the best 3 performances for hitters and the best 3 for pitchers from 2006 to the present. For hitters, we’ll look at the top 3 by Weighted Runs Created+, and for pitchers, the top 3 by Fielding Independent Pitching. This approach is quick and arbitrary. But while I wouldn’t recommend taking this to the next SABR Analytics conference, it does provide some nice anecdotes. And as everyone knows, the plural of anecdote, while not data, is “stuff to talk about at baseball games”.
Hitters:
2022 Bryce Harper: wRC+ 279
Spring Training: .400/.432/1.143 Regular Season: .286/.364/.514
Arguably no Phillie in our chosen timespan has ever had a better spring training at the plate than Bryce Harper’s 2022, where he ruined the month of March for a cavalcade of unhappy pitchers. Harper’s regular season, however, was a bit of a downturn for him, compared both to his spring and to his prior season. Injuries (broken thumb, UCL tear) were probably to blame. Of course, a slightly less effective season for Bryce Harper is still pretty spectacular, and he was named to the All-Star team.
2023 Jake Cave: wRC+ 243
Spring Training: .462/.500/.827 Regular Season: .212/.272/.348
If you didn’t take notice of how Jake was hammering the ball in March 2023, you were probably living in a Cave. There was good reason to believe that this was a springtime illusion; Cave was entering his 6th MLB season, and the highest slugging percentage he had posted across an entire campaign was .473. Still, this was Cave’s first season in Philly, and perhaps it could’ve been hoped that a new coaching staff had unlocked something in him. Sadly, he cooled off as the weather warmed up. Cave had an uninspiring season off the bench in 2023, in what turned out to be his only season as a Phillie.
2012 Carlos Ruiz: wRC+ 241
Spring Training: .479/.500/.771 Regular Season: .325/.394/.540
Say it together, now: Chooooooooooch. Carlos turned Clearwater into the site of a spring showcase. His March batting bonanza foretold a career-best season for the beloved backstop: his batting average, and slugging percentage were career bests, and he posted more homers (16) RBI (68), hits (121) and doubles (32) than he had in any prior season, or would in any season after. He was named to the All-Star team for the only time in his career.
Pitchers
2018 Aaron Nola: FIP 2.11
Spring Training: ERA 3.50, K% 25.4%, BB% 4.2% Regular Season: ERA 2.37, K% 27%, BB% 7%
Nola’s ERA in Spring 2018 was nothing special. But per FIP, he was putting on one heck of a show (in other words, his spring ERA wasn’t showy because the defense behind him was still scraping off the rust). His regular season looked a lot like his spring efforts, and his ERA became more reflective of his true performance level. The result was his sole All-Star campaign (so far) and a 3rd place finish in the Cy Young voting.
2009 Chan Ho Park: FIP 2.22
Spring Training: ERA 2.53, K% 29.4%, BB% 2.4% Regular Season: ERA 4.43, K% 20.2, BB%, 9.1%
The Korean hurler mowed them down in Spring 2009, and offered only a select few the succor of a free pass. He was coming off of a bounce-back season with the Dodgers, and it was to be hoped that his spring was a sign that that he would continue to perform at that higher level. He didn’t, at least at first. After struggling as a starter he was bullpen-bound, where he found more success. He made the postseason roster as a reliever and appeared in 4 of the 6 World Series games.
2020 Aaron Nola: FIP 2.28
Spring Training: ERA 2.77, K% 24.1%, BB% 3.7% Regular Season: ERA 3.28, K% 33.2%, BB% 8%
2020 was a strange, short season. Nola struck out plenty of batters in spring, and even more in the fan-free main campaign. But he also gave out a lot of free passes. Given that he appeared in just 12 games, it’s best not to put much stock into these numbers; there’s no telling how things would have progressed over the course of a more typical workload.
Sometimes a torrid spring is the harbinger of a career season. Sometimes it means nothing at all. Spring results, while fun, probably don’t tell us too much about how players will fare in the regular season.Which is exactly how we began this article. To quote the looping line that ends and begins Pink Floyd’s 1979 rock opera The Wall: Isn’t this where we came in? But still, if you want to look at a killer springtime performance and get high hopes, I won’t stop you. What’s spring for, if not dreaming?