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Pitching change: Phillies need to think about using an opener again | Bob Brookover

The Phillies hired general manager Matt Klentak, manager Gabe Kapler and pitching coach Chris Young to be out-of-the-box thinkers. With the starting rotation filled with pitchers who struggle to get beyond five innings, it's time for that trio to come up with an idea to help them.

Phillies manager Gabe Kapler makes a pitching change earlier this season against Washington. More frequent changes have helped slow games down in recent years.
Phillies manager Gabe Kapler makes a pitching change earlier this season against Washington. More frequent changes have helped slow games down in recent years.Read moreELIZABETH ROBERTSON/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Phillies found themselves confronted with the same question at the end of the trade deadline as they were at the beginning of the season: Do they have enough quality pitching to get to the postseason?

“We definitely made some adjustments,” general manager Matt Klentak said.

He’s right. Lefties Drew Smyly and Jason Vargas have entered the rotation and right-handers Nick Pivetta and Zach Eflin have been exiled to the bullpen.

Smyly, who had one quality start (six innings or more and three runs or fewer) among his nine outings before being released by Texas in late June, has already given the Phillies two quality starts in a couple of wins. He will try for a third Sunday against the Chicago White Sox.

Still, it’s difficult to become comfortable too soon with a guy who left Texas with an 8.42 ERA and failed to finish five innings in six of his nine starts with the Rangers.

Vargas, a soft-tossing lefty, was in the midst of a solid season with the New York Mets provided you overlook his threatening June remarks aimed at a beat reporter. In 18 starts, he had a 3.66 ERA. He went five innings or more and allowed three runs or fewer in 11 of his starts, which might soon be the new definition of a quality start.

Klentak got both lefties from the Ross Dress For Less rack and he needed to do something to escape the hamster wheel that Pivetta, Eflin, and Vince Velasquez had the Phillies running on all season.

And still, for obvious reasons, we wonder if it’s enough.

A bone spur on Jake Arrieta’s right elbow has made him a five-inning pitcher at most.

Velasquez remains in the rotation and he has not made it through six innings in 11 straight starts dating to Apirl 14.

He was one of 120 pitchers to have started at least 13 games this season entering the weekend. Only two pitchers on that list – Jordan Zimmermann and the recently traded Ryne Stanek – have logged fewer innings. Zimmermann, pitching for the worst team in baseball in Detroit, has a 7.23 ERA, which easily explains his light workload.

Stanek, who is now with Miami, started 27 games for the Rays, which brings us to our next subject – the opener. That’s the new-age role Stanek performed for the Rays and that’s what the Phillies might need right now even though Klentak indicated that was not the direction they were headed after the deadline expired Wednesday.

“I think we’ll be fairly traditional and we’ll run the five-man rotation out there for the foreseeable future, but there may be times when we use the bullpen a little bit differently to support that,” Klentak said.

Klentak was brought here by managing partner John Middleton and team president Andy MacPhail in large part because he had a strong background in analytics.

Gabe Kapler was billed as an out-of-the-box thinker when Klentak and the Phillies decided upon him as their manager after the 2017 season. Chris Young was elevated from assistant pitching coach to the top job at the expense of Rick Kranitz following last season because the Phillies felt the younger of the two men, no pun intended, was more innovative.

Kranitz, of course, landed on his feet and is now the pitching coach with the Atlanta Braves, the team that went into the weekend with the lowest ERA (4.30) in the N.L. East as well as a seven-game lead in the division. The Phillies entered the weekend with the highest team (4.59) and rotation (4.52) ERA in the division, and their 4.71 bullpen ERA, which ranked 23rd in baseball, was nothing to write home about, either.

Middleton and MacPhail believed they had put together a strong, intelligent think tank when they gave the Phillies front office and field staff a radical makeover, and now would be the perfect time for that group to step forward with some ideas that could help the Phillies overcome a rotation that clearly needs it.

Kapler flirted with the idea of the opener before finally taking it out on a first date earlier this season at Dodger Stadium. He started reliever Jose Alvarez and got two scoreless innings from the lefty in a game the Phillies eventually lost on a home run surrendered by Hector Neris in the bottom of the ninth.

With former starters Pivetta and Eflin in the bullpen now, the Phillies appear armed to reopen the opener idea that Tampa Bay and the New York Yankees have implemented so brilliantly this season.

The Rays were 17-10 in Stanek’s 27 opener games this season and he had a 2.09 ERA in that role compared with a 7.82 ERA in his 14 relief appearances. The “length” pitcher who most often followed Stanek into games the last two seasons has been Ryan Yarbrough and he has gone 26-9 with a 3.95 ERA despite starting just 11 games.

The Yankees have had their own share of pitching injuries and problems this season, but the one thing that has worked well for them is the use of Chad Green as an opener. He has started eight games and the Yankees have won all eight. His ERA in the opener role is 2.31. In 28 other relief appearances, he has a 6.10 ERA.

Nestor Cortes Jr. has been the “length” guy for six of Green’s starts and he has a 3.50 ERA in those games compared with a 5.87 ERA in 15 other appearances.

Now, the Phillies have a need to do something different, something innovative and it’s up to Klentak, Kapler, and Young to figure out what it should be.