The Phillies Need More Out of Their Starting Rotation
After just over two weeks of regular season baseball, the Phillies are a measly 6-10. It’s not that the Phillies are a bad team per se; they just have, for the most part, fallen far short of expectations. Money aside and injuries aside (injuries albeit having played a large part in the team’s slow start), the team is still much too talented to play the way that they’ve been playing.
For this team, now six games back from the division lead, nothing seems to go as planned. On Saturday, they lost to the Cincinnati Reds by 13 runs. On Sunday, they won by 11. They lead all of baseball in team batting average at .293, yet only boast a winning percentage of .375. So what’s the catch? Why are the Phillies not beating teams that, frankly, they’re supposed to beat?
One of the biggest issues has been the pitching – specifically, the inability to pitch deep into games. In only four of the team’s 16 games, a starting pitcher has only pitched six or more innings. This consistent trend of starting pitchers lasting only until the fifth or sixth innings has put an even larger weight on an already strained bullpen.
Heading into the season, it was widely accepted that the Phillies starting rotation would consist of these five pitchers: Aaron Nola, Zach Wheeler, Ranger Suarez, Taijuan Walker, and Bailey Falter / Andrew Painter. However, with Suarez out until at least early May and top prospect Painter on the 60-day IL, it feels like there really have been only three starters: Nola, Wheeler, and Walker. Falter – who has done his best to perform admirably at the big league level – is, at worst, the fifth pitcher in the rotation on a contending team. With “Swiss army knife” reliever Matt Strahm starting every fifth day, Falter, a pitcher who doesn’t have the stuff to pitch past the fifth inning routinely, is the third starter in the rotation. One can only imagine the difference that the implementation of Suarez and Painter into the rotation could have on the season so far.
So, with a pitching rotation that’s already injured and hasn’t been able to pitch deep into games, the bullpen has been forced to pick up the slack—day after day after day. Where the Phillies struggle is in these bridge innings between where their starters leave the game versus when they should depart the game; in innings 1-3, Phillies’ pitchers have a 3.56 ERA with a .243 opposing batting average. However, when the starters invariably falter, bad things start to snow pile. Through innings 4-6, the ERA jumps to 6.75, with a .282 BAA and a .353 BABIP – the story stays the same through innings 7-9; only opposing hitters bat .288 and have a .359 BABIP.
It’s not a surprise that relievers sport a 6.83 ERA on the year with a .292 BAA compared to starters’ 4.46 ERA – it’s a consequence. The bullpen’s exhausted. They’re tired of having to do all the work. It’s why fans are seeing pitchers that probably shouldn’t be on the team pitching in relief for the Phillies. 24-year-old Mckinley Moore, who made his MLB debut last week, has given up seven earned runs in just 3.1 innings. Spring Training trade addition Yunior Marte was demoted to AAA after just two appearances after giving up six runs in one cumulative inning of work. With perhaps the team’s best reliever, Seranthony Dominguez, somehow on the fritz, the Phillies have had to lean upon Connor Brogdon and Andrew Bellati, who, until being pitched multiple days in a row, was unhittable.
The Phillies are a team made to score runs. And they will, with more consistency, as players return from injury (Bryce Harper seems to be ready to take the field in a matter of weeks, not months), and their timing gets better with each coming day. Their pitching, typically, just has to do enough to keep it close. If we’ve seen anything from the first 16 games, however, that responsibility cannot fall squarely on the bullpen’s shoulders.
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Categorized:Phillies