Categories: Opinion

Fifth starter shouldn’t be a priority for Phillies at trade deadline

Dave Dombrowski is in his third season as Phillies president of baseball operations. (Cheryl Pursell)

It’s a problem nearly every team has to deal with at some point.

Fifth starters are a dying breed in the year 2023. Shoulder and elbow injuries are on the rise and for some reason, finding and developing reliable starting pitching is harder than it’s ever been. Even the pitching juggernaut Dodgers have to resort to bullpen games. The Rays have been getting away with it for years.

Some teams desperately need to trade for a back-end starter at the deadline just to get through the final two months of the season. The Phillies — at least right now — are not one of those teams.

It may not seem this way to those who view baseball from a Phillies-centric perspective, but the Phillies may have one of the best pitching situations in the sport.

Consider this. The Phillies are fifth in baseball with 35 starts of at least six innings or more from their rotation. They are in the bottom three of the sport when it comes to the number of relief outings of at least an inning and a third at 41. The top six, the Rockies, A’s, Reds, Tigers, Yankees and Cardinals, are all pitching-starved teams. That tells you that the Phillies aren’t scrambling to get through nine innings every night the way other clubs are.

It’s surprising to see the Phillies in the bottom three when it comes to these extended relief outings considering that the Phillies have built an army of middle relievers ready to get more than three outs on a given night. Nobody exemplifies that quite like Andrew Vasquez, who stranded the additional runner at second twice in the Phillies’ 3-2 win over the Athletics in 12 innings on Saturday. He’s pitched in 30% of those 41 extended outings and has a 1.62 ERA this season.

Regression to the mean will come for guys like Vasquez, but the good news for the Phillies is that they have an array of options in middle relief for if someone like Vasquez begins to struggle. Andrew Bellatti and Connor Brogdon, two relievers in last year’s World Series run, are pitching in Triple A.

The Phillies are giving Cristopher Sánchez a chance to lock down a rotation spot. His four innings of shutout ball against the A’s was a promising beginning. In reality, all the Phillies need is for Sánchez to be a reliable “bulk boy.” If Sánchez can give the Phillies three or four really good innings every fifth day and turn it over to one of the best bullpens in the majors, he can stick. If not, the Phillies have other potential bulk boys on the 40-man roster. Nick Nelson, who has already dealt with two injuries this year, is probably next in line for an opportunity if Sánchez falters.

This is just a long way of saying that the Phillies have a perfectly fine plan to get through day five in the rotation right now and concerns surrounding the No. 5 spot are way overblown. Fifth starter is far from the Phillies’ biggest need at the trade deadline and I can even go as far to say that the Phillies may be better off with not even bothering to trade for a back-end starter.

The Phillies, instead, need to focus on acquiring players that will be expected to contribute to a run for the championship come October. It’s why the Phillies need to at least be intrigued at the idea of acquiring a star hitter like Paul Goldschmidt. A dream scenario would be a trade for an ace — a Corbin Burnes or Dylan Cease type that could potentially replace one or both of Aaron Nola or Zack Wheeler, who are set to become free agents in the near future.

Think back to last season. The Phillies acquired Noah Syndergaard in a trade that sent outfielders Mickey Moniak and Jadiel Sánchez to the Angels. For the price of an MLB-ready outfielder that didn’t have a spot on the major league roster and an intriguing later-round draft choice in the lower minors, the Phillies acquired an arm they thought could eat innings for a few weeks.

Syndergaard struggled with the Phillies in the regular season and was eventually taken out of the rotation in favor of Bailey Falter. While the former Met did pitch meaningful innings for the Phillies in the postseason, he was essentially relegated to the role of bulk boy in the postseason. At best, a club’s fifth starter becomes a good multi-inning reliever in the playoffs. At worst, they’re either pitching in garbage time (see Kyle Gibson’s playoff game logs) or kept off the playoff roster entirely.

Last year, the Phillies needed to acquire talent at the deadline in order to turn a good roster into a playoff roster. This year, it’s not about breaking a playoff drought, it’s about winning a championship and the Phillies need to think about making moves that bring them closer to a World Series title. Fifth starters do not move the needle and the Phillies are more than capable of filling innings and getting to a win total necessary to secure a playoff spot in the National League without one.

The best counterargument is that if the cost isn’t prohibitive, then the Phillies should just be safe and acquire a fifth starter. It’s possible to make both difference-making moves and marginal ones.

Maybe the Phillies can find a situation like the Syndergaard case where they can take on money in exchange for giving up a lesser prospect package, but that may not be the case this year. The supply of available starting pitching at the deadline has a good chance of being much lower this year considering that the balanced schedule should keep more mediocre teams in the playoff race come late July. The real sellers are the league’s basement dwellers and they’re as bad as they are because they have no talent to sell off.

Cost-effective moves are also not always effective. The Phillies grabbed Dylan Covey off waivers nearly a month ago and after one good start and not much else, the Phillies have decided to keep him on the roster over better middle relief alternatives with minor league options like Brogdon, Bellatti or Luis Ortiz for bulk depth. There’s risk in acquiring what you think is an upgrade, even if it’s at a low price.

It should also be noted that the calculus surrounding all this could change if the Phillies suffer an injury to the rotation within the next six weeks. If the Phillies need to take Chase Anderson (remember him?) and his 2.72 ERA away from the Rockies on Aug. 1 in exchange for some mildly intriguing prospect in High A to make ends meet, then so be it.

But maybe there’s a world where the Phillies’ top four starters remain effective and healthy and Andrew Painter — the biggest wild card in all of this — becomes their fifth starter. The Phillies will build him up as slowly as they possibly can, but if he’s healthy and ready to contribute around the beginning of August, the Phillies may not have room to add another starter to the rotation. Like the Zach Eflin situation last year, the Phillies can’t bank on Painter to contribute this year, but they can’t discount the possibility of eventually having him available.

The Phillies, as currently constructed, are not in desperate need of a fifth starter to patch things up. It’s time for the Phillies — and Phillies fans — to think bigger. The 2023 team has much more in common with the 2009 Phillies than the 2019 Phillies. One team acquired Cliff Lee at the deadline. The other got Drew Smyly and Jason Vargas.