Pitching carry Phillies, who haven’t seen many top arms since the series opener originally appeared in NBC Sports Philadelphia
Built around lineup power, bullpen power and rotation stability, two of the Phillies’ three units have held up their end of the bargain over six series.
The rotation entered Tuesday night with a 2.95 ERA, the lowest in the National League. Phillies starting pitchers had the second-highest strikeout rate in the NL and the third-best groundball rate in the major leagues.
Their bullpen entered the night with a 5.01 ERA, but that was heavily skewed by three poor outings by Connor Brogdon and mop-up work by Ricardo Pinto. Remove those two and the Phillies bullpen has a 3.72 ERA.
Jose Alvarado has thrown seven straight scoreless games since allowing a career-high five runs on Opening Day to the Braves. Matt Strahm has allowed two hits with 11 strikeouts in 7⅓ scoreless innings since his opening day stumble. Jeff Hoffman has a 2.16 ERA with two wins and one save. Gregory Soto has a 1.69 ERA. Yunior Marte has an ERA of 1.17.
“I think throughout the season there are going to be a lot of guys helping each other out,” Hoffman said Monday night. “Right now, you could say the pitchers are doing it for the offense, and we could look at a month from now and the hitters might be carrying the pitchers. Marathon season. We kind of roll with the waves. At the end of the day , I hope we take care of each other well enough to win a lot of games.”
With so much emphasis on reducing the chase rate, we’ve seen a muted version of the Phillies’ offense thus far. They didn’t have a great night collectively, scoring more than five runs just once, on the night Bryce Harper scored three times.
The Phils entered the midway point of the Rockies series with just 30 extra-base hits, the fewest in MLB. They had just 12 doubles, the fewest in 17 games since at least 1901.
Nick Castellanos, who had nine doubles in his first 17 games last season, is still searching for his first extra-base hit. The only Phillie with an OPS of .800 or better is Brandon Marsh.
In retrospect, it shouldn’t be too surprising that the Phillies’ focus on reducing their chase rate got into some players’ heads or resulted in hesitation. It’s not that realistic for 32-year-old Castellanos or 31-year-old Trea Turner to change their offensive approach during an offseason. What the Phillies have been preaching is being aggressive in zones you can control and selective in zones you can’t. That’s easier said than done the vast majority of the time, and the last thing you want are hitters who have relied on instinct for decades wondering whether to swing when a pitch is on its way to the plate.
The expansion of the strike zone was obviously the main reason for the Phillies’ demise in the 2023 NLCS, but it wasn’t a glaring problem in the previous six months, nor was the offense as a whole. The Phillies averaged 4.9 runs per game last season and finished fifth in the majors in slugging percentage.
Phils hitters feel like they’re on the verge of an upset. Sometimes all it takes is one night for the floodgates to open. It looked like Harper’s three-homer game two Tuesdays ago might be a starting point, but the Phillies scored just 36 runs over the next 12 games.
They also didn’t face high-quality pitching. They saw Spencer Strider, Max Fried and Chris Sale in the opening series against Atlanta, but have since faced lesser pitching staffs from the Reds, Nationals, Cardinals and Rockies, with the AL’s worst White Sox on deck.
The concern would grow even more if the Phillies were unable to advance this week in what is probably the most advantageous home ground of their season, on paper.
“Grinding,” said Aaron Nola. “We’re competing. We haven’t scored a lot of runs, man, but it’s going to happen, for sure. Our team is really good. We’ve seen what our lineup can do. Nobody’s going to hang their head on that. We still have a lot of baseball. All that What we can do, from a pitcher’s perspective, is keep the game as close as possible and give these guys the best chance.
