The story of Tuesday’s game was the missed opportunities against Atlanta Braves ace Spencer Strider, but the Phillies, following another brilliant Ranger Suà rez outing, needed the bullpen to come through again against the best lineup in baseball.
It’s a tall task, but it wasn’t an impossible one considering just how well the bullpen has performed this year. Instead, the unit gave up three runs in the final three frames, but maybe things play out a little differently if better decisions were made.
With the game tied 1-1 in the top of the seventh, Rob Thomson went to right-hander Jeff Hoffman to keep the game scoreless against three righties in the bottom of the Braves lineup. Right-handed hitters slashed .188/.257/.344 against Hoffman heading into Tuesday’s game. Eddie Rosario, a lefty on a hot streak, was going to pinch hit for Kevin Pillar in the inning but regardless, the matchup made sense when you look at the splits.
Hoffman pitched to a 2.57 ERA coming into the game, but his fastball velocity has been down from around 98 mph during his June 4 appearance in Washington to as low as 95 in Tuesday’s game.
Hoffman walked the first batter Orlando Arcia and allowed a double to the pinch hitter Rosario. Thomson was then faced with a decision: Take your chances with Acuña Jr. or walk him and pitch to Ozzie Albies hitting from the left side.
There’s no breaks in the Atlanta lineup, so Thomson chose the former and it didn’t work out. Acuña Jr. drove in the go-ahead run on a base hit to center field. Another run came in to score on an RBI ground out from Albies.
Hoffman, who signed a minor league deal on March 31 and had his contract selected on May 4, is a luxury to have as a middle reliever. He can miss bats with his slider and is capable of getting more than three outs on a given night.
It’s not ideal when you have to throw him into high leverage against the most potent lineup in baseball, but that is the situation Thomson and the Phillies find themselves in.
José Alvarado, Yunior Marte and Matt Strahm were unavailable out of the bullpen on Tuesday, according to Thomson after the game. On WIP the next morning, Thomson said that he was looking to give Alvarado two days of rest after the lefty pitched two days in a row for the first time since his injury. Thomson wanted to give Strahm and Marte two days rest after both guys threw “up-down outings” on Saturday, meaning they finished one inning and came back to start the next inning.
Maybe there’s an argument to be made that Thomson should have pushed Marte or used one of Gregory Soto or Craig Kimbrel before the eighth and ninth inning, but the front office does deserve some blame for Tuesday’s missed opportunity.
For weeks, the Phillies have been carrying Dylan Covey in the bullpen as a bulk relief option. Tuesday marked only his fourth appearance out of the ‘pen this month. When the Phillies acquired him off waivers from the Los Angeles Dodgers, he was stretched out as a traditional starter. Since his solid first bulk outing against the Diamondbacks on May 23, Covey has not thrown more than 35 pitches in an outing. It’s fair to wonder how much “bulk” Covey could provide the Phillies and if the Phillies need it that badly considering they have other multi-inning relievers and their starting pitchers have been consistently giving them length.
And while Covey does deserve props for throwing a scoreless ninth inning, carrying Covey and not using him regularly for weeks at a time has a cascading effect.
The Phillies have Connor Brogdon and Andrew Bellatti, two guys trusted to take down key innings in the postseason for the Phillies, pitching in Triple A. If either of them were on the roster, Thomson would have been more inclined to use one of them in a leverage situation when the bullpen had to do some heavy lifting against the A’s over the weekend. Maybe the Phillies don’t have to go into Tuesday’s game with three relievers down if the front office didn’t feel inclined to continue carrying Covey for weeks.
You can blame Thomson’s restrictive usage rules, but that’s just the way things are in today’s game. It’s a conversation that has rarely come up this year since the Phillies have legit bullpen depth in the majors and in Triple A.
The front office deserves a lot of credit for building that depth, but they also deserve blame for failing to take full advantage of it.
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