Philadelphia Phillies: Team preview and prediction for 2020 season

Philadelphia Phillies: 2020 Preview and Prediction

As far as the starting pitching is concerned, this might be an area where we could see the Phils struggle. At the top, we have two superb talents in Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler, but how is the rest of the group going to fill-in? Zach Eflin is pretty good but can he take that next step? What about Vince Velasquez or Nick Pivetta? Neither guy has really been able to break through yet. And what of Jake Arrieta?

Arrieta has completely fallen off the map and is in danger of being dropped altogether from the active roster with his struggles he’s had with his command and his drop in velocity.

One guy I would look to step up is Spencer Howard, one of the Phillies’ top prospects. Howard has yet to play past Double-A ball in the Philadelphia Phillies organization, but in his three minor league seasons, he’s been nothing short of fantastic racking up a combined ERA of 3.28 and striking out 281 batters in 211.1 innings pitched.

The plan for the Phils was going to be to let Howard take some time in Triple-A this year and then bring him up later in the season to make a big impact. But now with the delayed season, we could actually see Howard on the Opening Day roster. Howard is a young guy to watch as an X-factor in this Philly rotation.

As for Nola and Wheeler, this is one of the best 1-2 combos in the game right now. Nola has been great for the past two seasons and almost won the CY Young in 2018.

Wheeler, on the other hand, is going to wind up being the number one starter in this rotation, and may even be a perennial CY Young contender with his buddy, Jacob deGrom, over in Queens. If you’ve been watching the Mets these past two seasons, you would know how much Wheeler has developed into a star pitcher in this league.

It’s very interesting because in these past two seasons, Wheeler has dropped his fastball usage from where it was two seasons ago from 61.8% in 2017 to 58.2% in 2018 and 59.0% in 2019 via FanGraphs. In turn, we’ve also seen the slider usage has also dropped somewhat from 20.2% in 2017 to 19.2% in 2018 and 20.0% in 2019 and his changeup usage has gone up about four percentage points while he has also developed a split-finger since 2018.

And by this adjustment Wheeler has made, along with the fact that he’s managed to stay relatively healthy, his overall velocity on all of his pitches has gone up from 2017 and his effectiveness has also skyrocketed.

Now that he’s going to be under the guidance of such a gifted manager who knows how to handle pitchers, I think we’re going to see him take an even bigger step forward and he could be a sleeper contender for CY Young this year.