Philadelphia Phillies: Can Friends of Bryce give eight great weeks?

The day before Opening Day, the Philadelphia Phillies and their fans faced one question: How badly will the injuries to Bryce Harper, Ranger Suarez, and Rhys Hoskins hamstring this team for the next eight to 10 weeks?

Does this team have the hitters, new pitching, and back-up pitching, given a new batch of rules clearly designed to help hitters, to keep the team in the NL East race until Harper returns? Will Bryce’s friends pick him up while he heals from Tommy John surgery?

Many are aware of the Friends of Bryce situation that has grown up in Philadelphia. Buddies from his past with the Nationals and players Harper personally lobbied for after facing them as rivals surround his rehabbing self.

Can the team Bryce Harper helped build put up enough until he and injured Phillies pitchers return?

The list goes on for a bit — Trea Turner (played with Harper for three years in Washington), hitting coach Kevin Long (who worked with Harper for two years with the Nats and has improved two younger Phillies starters as hitters more recently), and J.T. Realmuto (Harper lobbied the Phillies owner to re-sign him). There is also Kyle Schwarber, who worked with Long for half a season in Washington, and Bryson Stott, who is one of Harper’s oldest friends despite a five-year age difference.

You get the idea.

While Scott Lauber writes, “the Phillies didn’t make those moves because Harper pushed for it,” he also must note what everybody knows in Philadelphia, that “Harper does have the ear of [owner John] Middleton, in particular.”

Indeed, he has it so much, that at times it has seemed his baseball card should read ”Right fielder/DH/ Assistant GM” on the bottom front. Remember when we all knew that Harper opposed trading Alec Bohm in a deal for Kris Bryant? Yeah, he did that too.

The question is whether these guys, including Nick Castellanos, will produce enough until, perhaps, late June or July.

The answer there is seemingly yes … on paper.

But a question has to be asked about the Phillies pitching at this point as well. A Phils fan ideal was not realized by the end of spring training this year. That ideal would have been a healthy rotation of Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, newcomer Taijuan Walker, Ranger Suarez, and teen phenom Andrew Painter, who could have won the fifth starter’s job.

Suarez (soreness) and Painter (sprained UCL) will not be in the rotation to start the season, and unlike those guys in the locker room who score, Phillies pitchers can’t point to especially strong replacements for Suarez and an ideal Painter. The hitters could fairly say Turner will “replace” Harper’s or Hoskins’ run production.

To start the season the rotation will include Bailey Falter, coming off a 3.64 ERA-performance in a mixed reliever-starter’s role in 2022, and Matt Strahm, who was signed to do exactly that, but really isn’t stretched out properly to start yet.

Left-hander Falter will face the Rangers Sunday evening in Philadelphia’s third game. Left-hander Strahm will start the team’s fifth game against the Yankees on Tuesday. The start will be his 26th of his 207-game career spread out over seven seasons.

Maybe it will all work out perfectly, Phillies fans, and everything bad has already happened. That’s possible, but there seems little room for error. And just don’t think about Castellanos’ slump year. Don’t think about that time Wheeler missed nine days at the end of the season because he ripped off a fingernail trying to put on skinny jeans, then lost two of his last three starts.