The D-Train’s early success was mostly a mirage as he was only truly successful when he kept his walks down as he did in 2005 when he won 22 games with a walk rate just above two per nine innings. His strikeout rate was only average and his ability to induce ground balls was only slightly above-average. ERA retrodictors were very much in disagreement with his actual earned run averages from ‘03 to ‘06. His fantastic ‘05 campaign, for example, was bolstered by an unsustainable 4.9% home run per fly ball rate.

Whatcha throwin' for, Willis?

As such, Willis was expected to regress but he was certainly not expected to fall off of a giant cliff. Between ‘07 and ‘10, Willis has walked exactly 200 batters in 323 and two-thirds innings, an average of 5.6 per nine innings. Considering the average walk rate last year among all Major League starting pitchers was 3.2, you can see why the future is looking bleak for Willis.

After a tumultuous ‘07 in Florida, Willis was sent to Detroit in the Miguel Cabrera trade. At the time, everyone agreed that a change of scenery was exactly what the southpaw needed. Unfortunately for him, the Tigers organization, and the millions of fans he had gained with his unique personality and pitching delivery, it didn’t work out in Detroit either. He only pitched 57 and two-thirds innings in ‘08 and ‘09, winning only one of his 14 starts thanks to an 8.27 ERA and 9.8 BB/9 rate.

Earlier this month, the Tigers gave up on Willis and traded him to the Arizona Diamondbacks. The player they received from the D-Backs was Billy Buckner whose career ERA is 6.25. The trade was considered a win for the Tigers.

If Willis isn’t able to fix himself in Arizona, his prospects as a Major Leaguer will very nearly evaporate if not dissipate entirely. And through his first four starts in his new home, things aren’t looking any better. He has a 4.67 ERA which doesn’t seem bad when compared to his past performances, but his walk rate is an ugly 10.9 per nine innings and his strikeout rate (5.1 per nine innings) is as bad as it has ever been in his Major League career.

It is, perhaps, a sad chapter to close out what could have been a storybook career. Few players in baseball are so universally liked but Willis was one of them.

After two chances to redeem himself in Detroit and Arizona, Willis will likely not be given any more legitimate opportunities to salvage his Major League career as a pitcher. There is a way he can keep himself in the Majors, however — he can reinvent himself as a hitter.

Ankiel's pitching strategy was to close his eyes and hope the ball would find the strike zone.

One of D-Train’s calling cards was his ability to handle the bat, a feature forgotten upon his move to the American League. From ‘03 to ‘07, in 404 plate appearances, Willis hit eight home runs and drove in 35 runs with a .639 OPS. The average National League pitcher hit for a .366 OPS in ‘07. Willis even drew walks — 21 of them, in fact.

If he has the drive and another team has a Minor League roster spot to offer, Willis can pull a Rick Ankiel and convert from a hurler to a hitter. Ankiel, of course, suffered from a similar but more hilarious inability to find the strike zone. During the top of the third inning in Game 2 of the 2000 National League Division Series against the Atlanta Braves, Ankiel uncorked five wild pitches and four walks that led to four runs. The St. Louis Cardinals tried their hardest to get Ankiel back on the right path as a pitcher, but in 2005 they decided to convert him to a batter. He had hit two home runs and compiled a .674 OPS during the 2000 regular season, so the transition wasn’t exactly random.

With Single-A Quad Cities and Double-A Springfield in ‘05, Ankiel slugged 21 homers and finished with an impressive .853 OPS. He missed the ‘06 season after tearing his patellar tendon in his left knee, but returned where he left off in ‘07, hitting 32 homers and OPS’ed .883 in Triple-A Memphis. That earned him a promotion to the Majors in early August and he stuck with the team for the rest of the regular season and he hasn’t looked back. As a professional Major League hitter from ‘07 to ‘10, Ankiel has hit 50 home runs with a .775 OPS.

That could be Dontrelle Willis some day.

Things have been grim for the Phillies over the last three weeks. While the Flyers made an improbable run into the Stanley Cup Finals, the Phillies’ offense simultaneously seemed (seems?) to be making an improbable run towards Deadball Era shut-out records. They have been shut out seven times in 61 games, putting them on pace for 19 over a full season. The 1908 St. Louis Cardinals hold the record, shut out 33 times.

The Phillies’ futility has most of the fans calling for change. Corey Seidman of Phillies Nation wants Raul Ibanez released. Others want Greg Dobbs taken outside to be Old Yellered. Most want Domonic Brown called up from Double-A Reading. Personally, I simply would like to see the Phillies rearrange the bric-a-brac riding the pine in the dugout. But we all have one thing in common: we want something done. Standing pat is not an option.

Would this behavior hold true if the Phillies’ offensive performance were on the exact other side of their mean? In other words, if we assume the Phillies’ true talent level offensively is around a .340 wOBA with a standard deviation of .005 (pulled that number out of thin air), but they’re hitting .320, would fans make equivalent clamors were the Phillies hitting .360 (in an equal amount of games)*? Doubtful.

*For comparison, last year, Alexei Ramirez hit for a .319 wOBA; Nyjer Morgan .340; and Dustin Pedroia .360.

Why, then, do we extrapolate more out of a losing streak than a winning streak? In the example above, hitting for a .360 wOBA is as likely as hitting .320. Both performances, four standard deviations from the mean, are equally unrepresentative.

I believe the answer to that question is that the Phillies have earned the reputation as an offensive juggernaut. The Phillies have won the NL East three years running, won it all in 2008, and reached the World Series for a second consecutive year last year — all of that success largely due to the offense. Even going back beyond ‘07, the Phillies have been at or near the top of the National League in most offensive categories. We have come to expect offensive greatness out of the Phillies. Fans would expect the .360 wOBA to occur over any stretch of games much more often than the .320 wOBA though it is not statistically true.

Sure, the Phillies have thrown away one-eighth of their season during this offensive slump in which they have hit for an OPS under .600. In a span of 15 games from May 1-17, the Phillies compiled a .901 OPS. As frustrating as it may be, Phillies fans will have to take the bad if they want the good. Begging for sea change is reactionary and counter-productive, especially given the small sample size of 20 games.

Molina has improved as a hitter, bumping his OPS into the .700’s in each of the past three seasons. Molina has even improved on the basepaths, successfully stealing 15 bases in 20 attempts (75%) between 2009 and ‘10 compared to four stolen bases in nine attempts (44%) from ‘04-08. But it isn’t the bat or the legs that provides the most value — it’s his arm.

The Cardinals’ backstop, one of three active Molina brothers, is feared throughout Major League Baseball for his ability to throw out runners on the bases. He is even known to utilize the snap-throw from home to first if he catches a runner leaning the wrong way. Essentially, if you are playing the Cardinals, you are going to have to find another way to generate runs because you are not going to be running wild on Molina.

Everyone accepts that Molina’s arm is tops in the Majors, but just how good is it, and how has it squelched the opposing team’s running game? I tossed some numbers, courtesy Baseball Reference, into Excel and came up with a z-score for the number of times a stolen base has been attempted against a team (a.k.a. aggression) and for the opposing teams’ success rate on those attempts.

If you are not familiar with the z-score, it simply tells you how many standard deviations away from the average the particular data point lies. The z-score is found by subtracting the average from the specific data point and then dividing it by the standard deviation. For instance, in 2009, opposing teams attempted 72 stolen bases against the Cardinals compared to the league average of 128 with a standard deviation of 25. 72 minus 128 divided by 25 is -2.24. That means that the SBA against the Cardinals is about two and a quarter standard deviations below the mean, which is pretty outrageous.

In all six seasons (including 2010) in which Molina has been the Cardinals’ main catcher, the team has ranked either first or second in lowest SBA z-score. Save for 2006, when the Cardinals came in fourth, the same holds true for SB% z-score. In fact, all six seasons rank in the top-nine lowest SBA z-score seasons and in the top-20 lowest SB% z-score seasons.

Sorted by SBA z-score:

Sorted by SB% z-score:

A visual representation using a scatter plot:

As you may have deduced, the red diamonds represent the Cardinals’ z-scores.

At this point, you are probably wondering if other Cardinal catchers have had any positive impact on these numbers. Cardinal catchers not named Molina have, for the most part, been absolutely terrible at nabbing base-stealers.

(2010 numbers accurate up to and including games on Friday, June 4.)

In every season except 2008 — when Jason LaRue was the back-up backstop — Molina’s numbers are far and away better than the other Cardinal catchers. So the Cardinals’ z-scores above actually look tame since they include the mundane performances of the rest.

Fans across the nation have been filling in their All-Star ballots. Miguel Olivo of the Colorado Rockies has been a great surprise both offensively (.412 wOBA) and defensively (thrown out 55% of base-stealers). Olivo is, without a doubt, the catcher most deserving of an All-Star spot. But after Olivo, it is a crapshoot between Brian McCann, Carlos Ruiz, Nick Hundley, and Molina. While Molina can’t compete with the aforementioned offensively, his arm helps him make up a lot of ground and an argument can be made that he should be the first back-up backstop on the NL All-Star roster this year.

And you have to wonder just how much Cardinal pitchers love pitching in St. Louis. Busch Stadium is very pitcher-friendly, they are coached by Dave Duncan (whose effect is quite tangible), and they are being caught by baseball’s best running game preventer. It is no surprise that two Cardinals starters — Adam Wainwright and Chris Carpenter — finished second and third in NL Cy Young award balloting last year and Jaime Garcia is putting together an impressive rookie campaign thus far in 2010 with a 1.47 ERA in 67 and one-third innings. The Cardinals are proving that you don’t have to have a rotation chock full of stars to have good pitching. With a good pitching coach and a great defensive catcher, opposing teams have had to become acquainted with the goose eggs in the box score.