Griff McGarry hit rock bottom on the mound. But the Phillies think it can be a catalyst for change.

CLEARWATER, Fla. — This is what rock bottom looks like.

It’s the first inning of a triple-A game last Aug. 15, and Griff McGarry is leaving the mound at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown, his head hanging so low that it could drag the infield. He faced seven batters, walking six and hitting one. Pitch count: 35. Strikes: 7. Outs: zero.

“The worst experience,” he said recently, “that I’ve had on a ball field.”

It happens. But when it’s sandwiched between an eight-run shellacking and a five-walk, five-run misery that lasted for all of 1⅔ innings, it’s less a slump than a full-blown crisis. And that was exactly what the Phillies were facing with McGarry, a promising 24-year-old pitching prospect.

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In September 2022, they considered rushing him up to the big leagues to bring more octane to the bullpen in the thick of a wild-card race. By the end of last summer, the Phillies were shutting McGarry down after he walked 15 of 35 batters and allowed 20 runs in 4⅓ innings in a three-start span.

How’s that for a nosedive?

“It’s a very, very difficult thing,” said Travis Hergert, the Phillies’ minor league pitching coordinator. “Because when you take a guy out of competition, they kind of give you a look of, ‘You’re going to do what?’ But the struggles are real, right? He was disappointed because he felt like not only was he letting himself down but the organization down. He knows who he is.”

What can you say, then, to a pitcher who has electric stuff and no idea where it’s going? What do you do when facing him becomes a walk in the park — or lots of walks in many parks? What happens when one of the organization’s best young arms slips so far down the depth chart that he can’t be counted on as even rotation depth?

And what can be done to salvage him?

With McGarry, the process began immediately. After ruling out an injury as the cause of his wildness, the Phillies removed him from the triple-A roster and conducted what Hergert described as “a drastic overhaul” of the hard-throwing righty’s mechanics.

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McGarry’s arm swing is shorter now, his delivery more compact. If it works (check back after a handful of appearances in Grapefruit League games, though striking out the side on 15 pitches Friday was a promising start), the Phillies expect he will be able to land his fastball in the strike zone more consistently.

But McGarry’s control problems aren’t new. He dominated the low minors with pure stuff, so the Phillies avoided messing with his mechanics. For as bad, then, as it got last August, Hergert, director of pitching development Brian Kaplan, major-league pitching coach Caleb Cotham, and the rest of the team’s pitching brain trust choose to view his extreme struggles as the catalyst for changes that they insist now were inevitable.

“As a pitching group, we always felt like that day would come,” Hergert said. “As dynamic as the stuff is, we had to figure out a way to get him in the zone more.”

It’s a riddle that coaches have tried to solve since McGarry was in college.

In 2021, as a senior at the University of Virginia, McGarry got KO’d from a start against Virginia Commonwealth after walking three batters, hitting one, throwing seven of 21 pitches for a strike, and not recording an out in the first inning.

Sound familiar?

McGarry didn’t pitch in a game for nearly three weeks. Upon his return, he came out of the bullpen to close out a no-hitter in a 17-0 blowout of Wake Forest.

“You couldn’t bring him into a close game because what if he walked five guys in a row, and then you just blew the game,” Virginia pitching coach Drew Dickinson said by phone. “But I remember he was sitting like 99 to 101, and it was like electric. I looked and said, ‘This is different.’”

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It wasn’t McGarry’s mechanics, although he did try to smooth out the rotation of his hips, as much as his demeanor on the mound. He appeared “not as amped up,” Dickinson recalled, more in control of his emotions.

According to Dickinson, McGarry spoke with a sports psychologist at the school. McGarry didn’t say whether he sought help last season from the Phillies’ mental performance staff, but acknowledged he’s “always working on that.” He also conceded the disappointment over how badly his final few starts went.

“It’s pretty hard not to feel the weight of, ‘Wow, I didn’t even accomplish anything there,’” McGarry said. “It’s tough for the six hours you’re sitting there after the game [thinking], ‘I just let my team down.’ But it’s all how you bounce back. One outing doesn’t define my next one and what I do the following year.

“That’s a part of the game, whether you’re doing well or whether you’re struggling. Having a strong mental side is huge.”

McGarry returned to Virginia’s rotation in the postseason. He walked four batters but struck out eight in 3⅓ innings of a victory over Old Dominion, then carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning against Dallas Baptist in the NCAA Super Regional.

In the College World Series, McGarry turned in a tour de force, giving up two runs, striking out eight, and walking only two in 7⅓ innings of a tough-luck loss to eventual national champion Mississippi State.

“After the Wake Forest game, everybody just saw the [stuff] that he went through, you could see that a weight had been lifted off his shoulders,” Dickinson said. “You saw the rest of the year that he was the best pitcher in college baseball. Maybe that weight’s back on there a little bit now.

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“Because it wasn’t like he was executing pitches and getting banged around. He was walking everybody in triple A. He didn’t give himself a fighting chance to have success. He knows that. Everybody in the world knows that. So, think about the pressure that’s on a young man. He knows, all I’ve got to do is throw strikes, and he’s magnifying a problem that he knows he has and everybody knows he has, and how much tougher mentally it is to get over that hurdle.”

Dickinson paused.

“But I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “The guy got through it one time. He’s done it once before. He can do it again.”

A different ball and automated strike zone may have contributed to McGarry’s meltdowns in triple A. Usually, though, it comes back to his mechanics. So, a few days after his final start, the Phillies gave him a football. Hergert explained that quarterbacks tend to take a shorter, more direct path in their throwing motion.

McGarry bought into the new mechanics because, well, why not?

“I was like, ‘Hey, let’s do it.’” he said. “I really just wanted to come back into this year with a fresh start.”

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So, McGarry incorporated the changes in September with triple-A pitching coaches César Ramos and Ryan Buchter, then brought it to Cressey Sports Performance in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where he works out in the offseason.

But in stepping back before he goes forward, McGarry doesn’t factor into the Phillies’ immediate plans. If last season had ended better, they would have more confidence in him as a depth option at triple A. Instead, they signed Spencer Turnbull and lefty Kolby Allard, scooped Max Castillo off waivers, and tossed a minor-league contract at David Buchanan.

McGarry’s future role — starter or reliever? — remains an open question, too.

“We’re hopeful that he will be [a starter], but we also have to get him back to where he was before he went to triple A,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said. “So, yes, we still think he can do that, but I can’t tell you [for sure].”

Since the Phillies drafted McGarry in the fifth round in 2021, some in the organization have wondered if he will wind up in the bullpen because the quality of his stuff inarguably outpaces the consistency of his command.

But then McGarry has a start like last July 21 in Altoona, Pa. He struck out 10 batters in seven scoreless — and most important, walk-free — innings for double-A Reading.

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“You’re seeing a ton of success, but then you’re also seeing just the complete opposite. That was the struggle for all of us,” Hergert said. “We’ve discussed [his role], and I don’t think we’re definitive in our answer yet. I think it can go either way.”

McGarry’s career, in general, may have reached that tipping point.

“I feel like I’m in a really good spot,” he said. “I appreciate all their time and work that they’ve put in with me. Excited to just see how things play out.”