Phillies-Rangers: Five things we learned from the series
By John Town
The bullpen is worse than we thought
Talking about bad pitching, the Phillies bullpen. Brad Lidge went on record during spring training saying there is hope for the ‘pen in 2017, but he was far from correct. It’s clearly the worst in baseball, giving up a league-high 27 home runs.
Outside of Pat Neshek, no one in this bullpen can get consistent outs to save their life. Fairly soon moves will be made to give guys in Triple-A a chance to prove themselves because what happened in Texas was embarrassing, and Pete needs to hold people responsible.
Yes, Mackanin hasn’t managed the bullpen all that well and shot himself in the foot with Joely Rodriguez on Thursday. Corresponding moves will have to go through for non-40 man roster players to reach the big leagues, but veterans Pedro Beato and Pat Venditte have been lights out in Lehigh Valley.
Enough is enough with this bullpen, and if I have to watch Luis Garcia throw fastball after fastball down the middle of the plate in the fifth inning one more time, I’m done.
The final stats from the Texas series for the bullpen are as follows: 11.1 innings, 11 earned runs, six walks, three home runs.