About a month ago, I was watching the Yankees play the Phillies with my mother. I recall looking at the Phillies lineup and saying they should be better than their record.
Their lineup consists of four All Stars in JT Realmuto, Bryce Harper, Andrew McCutchen and Jean Segura. They also have formidable All Stars in Didi Gregorius and Rhys Hoskins. Last year Harper, Realmuto and Hoskins collectively hit 89 home runs for the Fightin’ Phils and knocked in 282 runs. Andrew McCutchen is getting older and is not the stud that he used to be. This isn’t helped by the fact that he was plagued with injuries last year. However, he still had an impressive .834 OPS. Segura is a run of the mill as far as offensive production is concerned, but is a good anchor of the defense at second base.
So why with all these talented position players are the Phillies struggling? The answer there is simplemente, their pitching staff is to blame.
Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler have put up good outings thus far but the rest of the staff has not. The other starting pitchers have high ERAs and three out of the four have an ERA+ below league average. ERA+ measures a pitchers ability in comparison to the ballpark factors and the league average. An ERA+ of 100 means that a pitcher is performing at the league average. Out of the most used relievers in the Phillies bullpen only one has an ERA under 3. The next closest, Hector Neris, the closer, had an ERA of 9.95. (Since writing this originally Hector Neris’ ERA has reduced to 5.54. He has since lost the role of closer as well). If that wasn’t bad enough four pitchers in the bullpen have ERAs above 15! To be fair these are small sample sizes and if they saw more playing time in a longer season the averages would subside. This is not to say that it would be good by any metric, it would just be good in comparison to where they are right now. Nevertheless, the majority of the Phillies relievers have an ERA+ below league average.
A perfect example of how horrendous the staff has been is the game against the Atlanta Braves on August 10th. Aaron Nola pitched eight innings while striking out ten, allowing one run and only giving up two hits. The Phillies lineup showed their prowess by pounding the Braves and putting thirteen runs on the board.
After eight stellar innings Joe Girardi, the Phillies manager, decided to go to the bullpen. The conventional wisdom in baseball is to not use the back end of your bullpen in a blowout, as they would normally try to end a close game in the late innings. Makes sense right? Girardi should have had confidence that his guys could lock down a victory, although they’d been shaky, with a lead this large.
Girardi brings in Nick Pivetta and the result backs up the statistics. Pivetta threw twenty nine pitches and faced seven hitters. He ended up letting six runs cross the plate on six hits, including a home run. The Phillies twelve run lead was diminished to five runs. Girardi had seen enough, Pivetta left the game with a man on base. Girardi brought in Trevor Kelley who got the second out and then gave up another home run. The score was now 13-8, but the Phillies would end up winning the game as the next batter grounded out to Rhys Hoskins at first.
The fact that the Phillies came out victorious in the game is not the takeaway. If they were leading by a narrower margin and the bullpen churned out the same performance, they would have lost. As cliche as it sounds, pitching and defense wins championships.
The performance of the bullpen in this game, along with the rest of the abhorrent season, gave the Phillies the impetus to trade for bullpen help. They acquired Brandon Workman from the Red Sox in exchange for Nick Pivetta and a prospect. The Phillies appear to have won this trade, at least in the short term, as the Red Sox are in a rebuilding stage. I applaud the Phils for making this happen. They have a good lineup that can obviously produce. They simply need a steadier bullpen to shut the door in a pinch, or in their case a twelve run lead. Workman has only given up two runs in his last seven games with the Phillies and recorded four saves, while striking out eight.
As of writing this, the Phillies have scored 213 runs this season, while allowing 218 runs to cross the plate in that stretch yielding a run differential of -5 (Runs scored – Runs allowed).* This is surprising because of the fact that they currently hold second place in the NL East. Last night’s loss to the Marlins has Miami nipping at their heels.
They have been able to stay in the hunt because when they win, their offense is averaging almost seven runs per game (6.7 to be exact). The high offense in games they win gives the pitching staff more of a lead and provides a cushion.
When they lose they are averaging 4.2 runs per game. This yields a differential of 2.5 in runs scored, which may not seem too bad but out of the 19 losses, 57% of the time they scored less than four runs. The average is inflated by three losses where they scored eight runs or more. When you take out the three high scoring losses the Phillies average 1.7 runs a game.
Upon closer inspection the high scoring games that they ended up losing were either in extra innings, e.g. the bullpen blew the lead, or Jake Arrieta’s disastrous start against the Braves on August 30th. These were games that had the bullpen been better or if Arrieta had a better outing, they would have three additional wins.
I understand that the Phillies have gone 11-5 in their last 16 games.* However, this can be accounted for by their offense coming through in the late innings of many of these ball games. The starting pitching has been solid, but the bullpen ends up coming in a cutting it too close for comfort. Aaron Nola has been great for them this year but it is a problem when your best starter consistently goes deep into games because of the ineptitude of the bullpen. As of right now it looks like they have a shot of getting a wild card spot. I would not expect them to go too far. If I were Matt Klentak and the Phillies front office I would try and bolster the bullpen in the offseason to make a postseason run in 2021. They could give the Braves a run for their money.
*(Stats as of Friday afternoon. They have changed after Philadelphia played a double header)
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