Philadelphia Phillies: A deep dive into “awful” pitching
By Rick Soisson
The remarks are tossed out casually about the Philadelphia Phillies. “This is a flawed team.” “This sure ain’t a perfect team.” “The bullpen is awful.” “I’m not sure there’s a real number one in the rotation.” Sports-talk radio hosts and their guests all have generalized evaluations all the time.
So do those on social media and those employed by the mainstream media.
Since the team is, as this is typed, sitting in third place in the NL East at 28-29, there is something to some of the above remarks. Those ugly comments have been paused for a short period because of the firing of Joe Girardi and the initial success of interim manager Rob Thomson, but such remarks are never entirely absent.
How awful is the Phillies bullpen, or for that matter, their entire pitching staff?
For example, one Phillies fan, in the middle of the current winning streak, felt compelled to point out that on June 8 in 1974, an obscure Reds catcher, Bill Plummer, homered twice off the greatest Phillies pitcher ever, Steve Carlton. His deathless further observation was that those two homers represented 14 percent of Plummer’s career total.
Philadelphia.
Let’s pick at the sad evaluations of the current Phillies hurlers for a bit. Just how bad are they thus far, to focus?
During their current winning streak, which began June 1, their starters had averaged over six innings per outing, according to Tom McCarthy on the NBC Sports Philly broadcast from Milwaukee on June 9. So, right now, the starters are doing their jobs in modern terms.
Of course, that innings-per-start number fell on Thursday, as starter Zach Eflin only lasted four frames.
A deeper dive into the starters for the Phillies reveals nothing much surprising in terms of won-lost and ERA numbers at this junction. Last year’s Cy Young runner-up, Zack Wheeler, is 4-3, with a respectable 3.14 ERA. He is followed by putative number two, Aaron Nola at 4-4 and 3.50, then Zach Eflin, Kyle Gibson, and Ranger Suarez – together 9-9, with ERAs of 3.76, 4.40, and 4.42, respectively.
In other words, a .500 team’s record is reflected in their starters. They are 17-16, a tiny bit better than the team record. But how tiny is that bit really?