The Phillies bullpen has been awful this year, steering people away from talking about the starting rotation’s own struggles.
The Phillies lost another game at the hands of the bullpen Saturday night. Edubray Ramos gave up a monster home run to Bryce Harper as he hit his second walk-off against Philadelphia this season. It was the tenth loss charged to the team’s bullpen, tied for second-highest in the major leagues.
A lot of Philadelphia’s struggles this season can easily be blamed on the bullpen. Their collective -0.9 fWAR is the worst in the league. As a whole, Phils relievers have a 4.66 ERA, 5.29 FIP, 10.4% walk rate, and 1.44 WHIP.
A lot of pressure falls on the bullpen because losing a game on a walk-off stings a lot more than a loss that’s decided earlier in the game. That’s why most of the criticism about the Phillies falls on the bullpen.
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However, the starting rotation deserves its own criticism as well. They have given up a .265 batting average, third-worst in the league. Their 4.76 ERA and 4.79 FIP are both fourth-worst. They are among the bottom third of the league in WHIP (1.37) and strikeout rate (17.7%).
One of the biggest issues with the rotation is their inability to last deeper into games.
They have thrown the third-fewest innings among all teams with 181.2 innings pitched through Saturday night. Plenty of times a starter is up towards 90 or even 100 pitches by the fifth inning.
With the starting pitchers racking up high pitch counts earlier in games, it forces manager Pete Mackanin to use up more relievers earlier in games. He told Stephen Gross of the Morning Call it causes a negative trickle-down effect:
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"“It does magnify the problems because what happens is I end up using relief pitchers in situations that I don’t want to have to use them,” Mackanin said. “If I bring in a long guy and he can’t get through more than one inning, then I have to go to another guy. It snowballs. It’s been snowballing.”"
That effect was evident on Saturday night. Nick Pivetta couldn’t get through the fifth, giving up a four-run inning and completely erasing the lead the Phils had. Pivetta finished the game with 92 pitches in just 4.2 innings.
By the end of the game, Mackanin had used five relievers with just two to spare if the game kept going. With a doubleheader coming the next day, the team’s bullpen was once again being stretched thin due to the ineffectiveness of the rotation.
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Philadelphia’s bullpen has been quite bad this year, but they are being set up to fail by their starting pitchers.