Are the Philadelphia Phillies and Gabe Kapler killing the starting pitcher?
The Philadelphia Phillies team record for pitcher appearances in a season is 90. It was set in 1987 by reliever Kent Tekulve. Tekulve was largely a one-inning sidearm hurler, a closer in his younger years with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and fairly effective even in his later years with Philadelphia.
In ’87 at the age of 40, for example, he not only set the Phillies record for appearances but led all NL pitchers in games played while posting a 3.09 ERA and a 1.190 WHIP. Teke led the NL in appearances four times in total, which made him a player Phillies current manager Gabe Kapler would seemingly have appreciated a great deal.
Kapler is in an interesting situation currently. His starting pitchers are pretty weak aside from Aaron Nola and Jake Arrieta, and this week Arrieta is not quite ready for prime time. He was signed by the Phillies only a couple of weeks before the season began. Therefore, Kapler has determined he will be relying heavily on his relief corps, not only to bail out his weaker, back-of-the-rotation starters but also to preserve his valuable starting arms. How long this approach will last is interesting to ponder.
While Kapler has said “I’m well aware that we can’t use everybody every night,” the numbers thus far, after three games against the Atlanta Braves, strongly suggest he needs to figure out how to rest his relievers pretty soon. After two games he had five pitchers he had used in both games (Edubray Ramos, Luis Garcia, Adam Morgan, Hoby Milner, and Hector Neris).
After three contests, Milner had been used in every game, and six relievers had been used in two of the three opening contests. Before Apr. 1 the Phillies had a total of 21 pitcher appearances. With an asterisk. Down 13-2 after seven innings in the eventual 15-2 loss Mar. 31, Kapler used utilityman Pedro Florimon to surrender two more runs.
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In the second game alone, eight relievers had been trotted out. Some were starting to suggest on Twitter that there would be a season-long competition between Philadelphia starters and relievers for a weird, total innings pitched championship.
Moreover, this incipient abuse of his relief corps by Kapler may be exacerbated by injuries to his most expensive relievers, Pat Neshek and Tommy Hunter. Both are starting the season on the DL, Hunter with a strained hamstring, Neshek with a strained shoulder.
In praising his coaching and video staff after the Phillies second game and Kapler’s first MLB win as a manager, he mentioned teamwork in general in passing:
"“Everything we do as a team, and I’m really proud of the group collectively tonight.”"
This is a wonderful sentiment, and not surprisingly, it showed up in Todd Zolecki’s MLB.com piece on that game. However, a team does not suffer injuries collectively. They are suffered individually, and players on pace to pitch in every game the team plays, or even two out of every three, will need to be shut down somewhere along the line.
Next: Gabe Kapler outsmarts himself
Or, perhaps, we are all watching the beginning of another evolutionary change in baseball. Could it be that soon the phrase starting pitcher will become, merely, first pitcher? Will Kent Tekulve’s appearances record be wiped out this very season? Could Hoby Milner or Luis Garcia actually appear in 110 games?