Who are the contenders for the Philadelphia Phillies in adding depth to their starting rotation?
The Philadelphia Phillies are now rumored to be adding two starting free agent pitchers. Really? So said Mike Axisa at CBSSports.com Mar. 3, prompting further comment by others the same day. Well, maybe the Phillies are considering scraping around the bottom of the free agent barrel because the only three free agent pitchers worth signing at this point are Jake Arrieta, Lance Lynn, and Alex Cobb.
This writer has about worn out his keyboard pushing Cobb, and who knows what Lynn wants? His name, in any event, isn’t Arrieta. Arrieta apparently wants 15 years, $400 million, and Rhode Island. (Scott Boras will take the state; he intends to sail.)
No one knows what the Phillies will do, of course, except those running the last-place, billion-dollar team in the making. Fans in the Delaware Valley, however, have been talking about starters for months now and doubted the team would sign even one. At this point, they are daring the team to prove they aren’t tanking while they anticipate next season’s free agents, whom they will undoubtedly also overthink.
Those who saw the Phillies split-squad loss to the Baltimore Orioles in Clearwater Mar. 3 also have more significant concerns about this team.
On that day, the bright young core of Phillies position players was nearly no-hit by O’s hurlers. The final score that day was 4-2, Baltimore, but no one with Phillies on his jersey booked a hit until almost everybody on the field was arguably a minor leaguer, late in the game. The big young guns – Cesar Hernandez, Odubel Herrera, Rhys Hoskins, Carlos Santana, Nick Williams, Maikel Franco, Jorge Alfaro, and J.P. Crawford – went hitless for seven innings. Six of those eight had three at-bats apiece. Worse, none of these “promising” players hit the ball hard into play except Franco (a fly to deep left-center). As NBC Sports Philly announcers Tom McCarthy and Ben Davis pointed out, most of them were swinging late. The most effective batter was Santana, who walked twice.
More from Call to the Pen
- Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
- Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
- Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
- Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
- 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals
Moreover, while spring training is a time “to work on things,” the pitchers the Phillies faced early in this game were a whole lot of guys not named Sandy Koufax. Kevin Gausman was the best of the lot, and he retired the entire lineup in order in three quick innings, lowering his spring ERA to 10.38.
So, you’re surely saying, it doesn’t matter. It’s only spring training. Maybe the boys were sleepy and arrived at the park late as Gabe Kapler allows them to do. It’s not clear that rule applies to game days, but even if there’s an early check-in time for one o’clock games, maybe they were just too relaxed from the massages Kapler also promotes.
All right, all right. It is only spring training, but there will likely be 30 such games for the Phillies this season, days when they all don’t hit. Maybe they’ll scratch out four wins among those 30.
Next: Gabe Kapler’s pros and cons
They need more starting pitchers. Moreover, contrary to the “promising” commentary about their position players, their hitters except Santana are very young in MLB terms. Mike Axisa’s editor suggests by a sub-head the Phillies “may not be as far from contention as they appear.” On the contrary, they are just as far away on Mar. 4 as they appeared the day before.