Philadelphia Phillies acquire hard-throwing Jose Alvarado

The Philadelphia Phillies have continued to focus on their bullpen, acquiring Jose Alvarado from the Rays as part of a three team deal.

As the MLB off-season action lurches along as though the driver forgot to release the parking brake, the Philadelphia Phillies have made a potentially significant first move under new GM Sam Fuld. As the team and Mark Feinsand announced within a minute of each other shortly after 1:30 p.m. Dec. 29, Philly has acquired hard-throwing left-hander Jose Alvarado in a three-way trade with the Rays and Dodgers.

To complete the trade, the Phillies are sending LHP Garrett Cleavinger to the Dodgers, and Los Angeles is sending MiLB infielder Dillon Paulson and a player to be named later to Tampa Bay. Cleavinger’s MLB experience in total involves two-thirds of an inning thrown for the Phils this past summer. He was drafted by Baltimore in 2015.

Alvarado, at 25, is somewhat more experience than Cleavinger at the big league level. He comes to the Phillies with three advantages – first, and most important, he is not someone who pitched for Philadelphia’s horrid relief corps last season. Second, the pitcher throws two pitches with extreme velocity. Third, he has some back-end relief experience.

However, Alvarado has battled injuries for the last two years. Prior to that, in his second year with the Rays, he appeared in 70 games and posted a 2.39 ERA and a 1.109 WHIP. His WHIP in his rookie season was only three ticks higher than that.

The Phillies clearly should have some indication that the pitcher is recovered from problems with an oblique, and his throwing elbow and shoulder. The shoulder was this past season’s problem. An additional (perhaps modest) red flag in Alvarado’s history is the month he had to take off in ’19 for what is termed a “personal matter” in Venezuela.

If everything works out well, however, the Philadelphia Phillies will have a pitcher who allegedly throws a 97-mph sinking fastball, a 98-mph four-seamer, a hard slider, and a mid-80s curve. The challenge for the Phillies’ new pitching coach, Caleb Cotham, is to figure out how to depress Alvarado’s flyball rate. Brooks Baseball uses the term “extreme flyball pitch” twice in their profile of him.

When the ball isn’t in the air, though, Jose Alvarado has gotten a lot of swings and misses.