Phillies waste special season from starting rotation with early postseason exit

Zack Wheeler was a Cy Young candidate in 2024. (Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire)

Maybe the concerns about Ranger Suárez heading into Game 4 were overblown. Sure, he didn’t look like the Ranger Suárez that had become a postseason hero over the past few years when he returned from a back injury late in the season.

But, as it had been all year in Philadelphia and as it was all throughout this National League Division Series, the starting pitching was the least of the Phillies’ worries.

Suárez battled through 4 1/3 shutout innings. He didn’t have his best fastball. He loaded the bases twice in two innings. None of that mattered as he gave his team a shot in an eventual 4-1 loss to the Mets on Wednesday night at Citi Field to eliminate the Phillies from the playoffs and send New York to play for the National League pennant.

“I thought our starters did well,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said, “and I was encouraged by Ranger’s stuff today. He was flirting with disaster the first two innings, and he just kept fighting and changing speeds and keeping people off-balance. That’s who he is. He’s just a poised man and he really knows how to pitch.”

The Game 4 outcome was emblematic. Philadelphia’s engine, its starting rotation, was the bright spot in a playoff disappointment. Losing a best-of-five series in four games with four solid outings from their starters, the Phillies not only wasted the contributions from their starting pitchers in the postseason; they failed to capitalize on an entire special season from their rotation.

Led by workhorses Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, the ever-cool Suárez and breakout left-hander Cristopher Sánchez, Philadelphia’s starters were the backbone of the club’s early surge and run to an NL East championship. They continued to hold up their end as the Phillies crumbled in the playoffs against New York.

The 2024 rotation was arguably the best starting staff the Phillies have had since their memorable 2011 season with “Four Aces” in Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt. The team’s starters this year had a 3.81 ERA, the second-lowest mark in the last 14 Phillies seasons. (The 2022 Phillies rotation had a 3.80 ERA in 6 1/3 fewer innings.)

Philadelphia’s 21.8 fWAR among starting pitchers was second-best in the big leagues behind the Atlanta Braves. Its rotation ERA ranked eighth in the majors and third in the National League. Wheeler, Suárez and Sánchez made the NL All-Star team.

Wheeler, perhaps the ace of all aces over the last five years, had a 2.57 ERA in 200 innings and led the National League with 0.955 walks and hits per innings pitched; he will likely be the NL Cy Young runner-up for the second time in his career. Nola had a 3.57 ERA in 199 1/3 innings. Sánchez (3.32 ERA) tossed a staggering 181 2/3 innings in his first full season as a major-league starter, and Suárez (3.46 ERA) threw 150 2/3 while missing time on the injured list.

The rotation was assembled to carry a heavy load, and the top four starters delivered in an incredibly effective way.

“That’s something I believe in,” veteran executive and Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said when asked recently to compare his current team to his Tigers squads of the 2010s with star-studded rotations, “is trying to get good quality starting pitchers that can give you a lot of innings but also be good innings, because you’re not pitching too many hundred innings if you don’t have the ability to do so. It’s something we try to build a club based upon, so there’s some similarities.”

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The Phillies had the best record in baseball at the All-Star break at 62-34, going on a 20-7 run in the month of May to lift them atop the standings. The rotation had a 3.22 ERA in the first half, the best of any staff.

The main four arms did the big lifting, but Philadelphia also got some unexpected contributions earlier in the season. Right-hander Spencer Turnbull started the year in the rotation and had a 1.67 ERA in his first six starts. Local rookie Tyler Phillips ripped off a ridiculous four-start heater to begin his career in July, culminating in a complete-game shutout of the Cleveland Guardians in the ballpark he grew up attending.

Eventually, the fifth spot in the rotation became an issue as No. 5 starter Taijuan Walker struggled all season, Turnbull got hurt and Phillips hit a wall. While the Phillies still finished with impressive starting pitching stats, maybe the gaudy first-half numbers could’ve been sustained if the Phillies had a better solution at the back end. But that was only a regular-season problem, as the team could roll with its best four in the postseason.

Drawing the sixth-seeded Mets after a first-round bye, the Phillies lined up the playoff performer Wheeler to start Game 1 at Citizens Bank Park. They handed Sánchez — with a 2.12 ERA at home and a 5.02 ERA on the road — the ball for Game 2 in South Philly. Nola was tabbed for Game 3, and Suárez was the Game 4 starter.

“I think his calmness,” Thomson said of what makes Wheeler great in the postseason. “I don’t think he gets rattled at any time. Nola is a lot like that. And that’s why he’s probably a good Game 3 starter for us going into Citi Field. But I think it’s just his poise and his calmness that gives him an edge.”

Those four pitchers were excellent as a group as the Phillies failed to meet the moment and fell to a red-hot New York team. Wheeler and Suárez provided scoreless performances. Nola and Sánchez pitched well enough. The Phillies won only Game 2 in a comeback effort.

The bullpen allowed 17 runs, 16 of them earned, in 12 2/3 innings in the series. The offense scored only two runs before the sixth inning. Philadelphia squandered an NLDS in which its starters had a 2.53 ERA in 21 1/3 innings.

While the entire unit is under contract for 2025 and may even get an addition as top prospect Andrew Painter recovers from Tommy John surgery, there’s no guarantee that the rotation can pitch at this level for another season. Wheeler, 34, and Nola, 31, have been two of the most durable pitchers in the majors in recent memory, but it’s hard to predict year-to-year starter health. Suárez has yet to hold up over the course of a season. There’s a reason pitchers don’t regularly amass large inning totals these days.

The makings of another elite staff are certainly still there, but it’ll take some good fortune to get the same results. The fortune was apparent this year. The Phillies had a ready-made, championship-caliber rotation in 2024. The rest of their roster couldn’t reach that level when the team entered October.