If you read between the lines of Dave Dombrowski’s meeting with the media Monday, you get the sense that the president of baseball operations for the Philadelphia Phillies thinks adding another starting pitcher is the team’s top priority.
While Dombrowski seemed relatively certain that reigning National League MVP Bryce Harper will return in 2022, the Phillies seem to be taking a bit more of a hope for the best approach with righty Zach Eflin.
“With Eflin, it’s a little bit tougher situation and I feel badly for him,” Dombrowski admitted Monday. “There’s nothing really structurally wrong from all the tests that have been done. It’s just a slow healing process for him.”
Eflin, as Dombrowski noted, had an MRI that showed no structural damage in his right knee last Monday. Still, the 28-year-old was feeling soreness above his right knee, interim manager Rob Thomson acknowledged Friday. Previously, Eflin had been dealing with bruising on the fat pad under his right patellar tendon. That patellar tendon has been operated on twice, including last September.
The Phillies do still believe that Eflin will return in 2022, but they got burned a year ago when he the knee prevented him from pitching after July 16. While there’s certainly sympathy for the continued injuries that Eflin has had to deal with, the Phillies aren’t going to be naive and proceed as though it’s certain he will be back this season, and that he’ll remain healthy once he returns.
“I look for him to come back, but I don’t know when,” Dombrowski said. “And so I don’t think from my perspective, I can just say ‘Oh, we’re going to wait for that to happen.’ Now last year is a little bit different because it happened after the trading deadline. But I don’t think that we can just sit here and wait to see what takes place. We’re very happy with [Bailey] Falter and [Cristopher] Sánchez with the roles that they fill. But I mean, ideally we’d be in a position where we look to supplement what we have in that regard, because of the injury status.”
Eflin made a career-high 28 starts in the 2019 season. Between 2021 and 2022, he’s made just 31 total starts. The Phillies and Eflin have a mutual $15 million option for 2023.
Who could the Phillies pursue to fill the vacancy in their starting rotation before the Aug. 2 trade deadline? Over the weekend, we examined some options that we deemed to be realistic. To say it’s a seller’s market for pitching — and well, just about everything — would be putting it lightly.
“There’s a lot of clubs that are trying to explore and acquire it,” Dombrowski said with a laugh.
At the top, Frankie Montas and Luis Castillo are among the arms expected to be traded for a fairly notable return. Things can change, but the guess here is that the Phillies won’t be players at the very top of the market.
With that said, Dombrowski once acquired Doug Fister from the Seattle Mariners when he was the general manager of the Detroit Tigers in July of 2011. The thought was that Fister would slot in behind Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer. He ended up going 8-1 with a 1.79 ERA after the trade to the Tigers. Sometimes, when you acquire mid-rotation arms, they outperform even your expectations.
Eleven years after striking gold with Fister, Dombrowski will again go hunting for a diamond in the rough to stabilize the starting rotation behind Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler. If he’s able to find one, he’s very confident about the chances that the Phillies have to return to the postseason for the first time since 2011, and potentially surprise some people in October baseball.
“We’re trying to make the playoffs. If we win the division, that’s great. But we’re sitting what, nine and a half games out of first place. But if you make the postseason, anything can happen. And I do think that we have a really nice structure for a short series. We have really good starting pitching at the top. Our bullpen is deep and throwing the ball very well. And when we’re healthy, I think we can hit good pitching as well as anybody. We’re not healthy right now. But if a couple of those guys come back and we can straighten a couple guys out, we can hit good pitching as well as anybody. So we’re dangerous in that type of situation.”
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