Don Mattingly needs to figure out his bullpen. Are there any answers?
If you believe the odds, the Phillies remain in the driver’s seat for one of the six NL playoff spots up for grabs. If you believe your eyes, it won’t matter if they get to October.
It is officially audition season in the Phillies’ bullpen.
Are there any candidates?
It is a daunting question. It is also the question that will end up defining Don Mattingly’s stint as interim manager.
The Phillies somehow managed to sneak out a 7-6 win over the Blue Jays on Sunday, but it took them 12 innings, and they made a whole lot of not-so-good memories along the way.
At the top of that list was Orion Kerkering’s latest implosion. This one occurred in the eighth inning, almost immediately after Jesús Luzardo put a bow on one of the finer starting pitching performances you’ll see. The Phillies lefty looked like he did last postseason: seven innings, five baserunners, 12 strikeouts, two runs. Most importantly, he held a 5-2 lead. It would have taken a drastic turn of events to dampen the buzz at Citizens Bank Park. The Phillies bullpen rose to the challenge.
Two batters into the eighth, Kerkering was one out away from delivering a three-run lead to Jhoan Duran in the ninth. Four batters later, the game was tied. There was some bad luck involved, with Ernie Clement’s RBI double the only extra-base hit. Still.
This was Kerkering’s fourth outing allowing two-plus runs in his last 20 appearances. Opposing batters are now reaching base at a .360 clip against him in high-leverage situations. Only five relievers have averaged as many pitches per plate appearance (4.17) in as many or more innings (45⅓) as Kerkering. The same is true of José Alvarado, who is averaging 4.18 pitches per PA in 43⅔ innings.
In fact, everything you can say of Kerkering is true of Alvarado. On Saturday, the lefty blew a save situation that sunk the Phillies against Toronto. He has allowed multiple runs in seven of his last 28 outings. The peripheral numbers have begun to catch up to his 5.77 ERA. In his last 13 games, he has 13 strikeouts against 10 walks/HBPs.
» READ MORE: Jonathan Bowlan has thrived as the Phillies’ setup reliever. The job could be his to keep.
Mattingly needs to figure this thing out. If you believe the odds, the Phillies remain in the driver’s seat for one of the six NL playoff spots up for grabs. If you believe your eyes, it won’t matter if they get to October.
Even if righthander Jonathan Bowlan continues to perform in his new high-leverage role, that still leaves Mattingly one dependable arm short of avoiding offseason ulcer surgery.
Tim Mayza isn’t an option. Before Sunday’s scoreless inning, the journeyman lefty had faced just 48 batters in high-leverage situations over the last three seasons. Nearly half had reached base, including 11 of 27 in 2026.
Caleb Kilian might not be an option after suffering an oblique injury at some point in the top of the 11th.
“It didn’t look good,” Mattingly said afterward.
The Phillies’ one hope might be newly acquired lefty Brooks Raley, who pitched a scoreless 11th on Sunday. Raley last pitched in the postseason in 2022 while with the Rays. He retired three of the five batters he faced and did not allow a run in extra innings of a tie game.
Good luck finding any relevance there. Same goes for his earlier postseason action with Houston. Four of the seven earned runs he allowed came in a couple of outings where the Astros were down six. Otherwise, he has allowed one earned run in 8⅔ innings since the start of the 2020 ALCS. That’s not much of a sample upon which to render judgment.
David Murphy alerts
But that’s more than we can say for Kerkering. His sample size is robust enough to leave little doubt that Mattingly can’t continue to factor him into his high-leverage decision-making.
The Phillies have plenty of other headaches. Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber combined to reach base seven times on Sunday. They combined to score two runs, both of them driven in by Schwarber himself. It’s a good thing that Schwarber snapped the second-longest homerless streak of his career, and that he did it exactly how you’d expect.
But Sunday was another answer to the question that so many had asked over the previous 17 games. What’s wrong with Schwarber? Well, what’s wrong is that the Phillies can rarely afford for him to not hit home runs. The problem wasn’t that he hadn’t hit a home run in over two weeks. The problem was that it was so conspicuous.
Same goes for Harper. After striking out in the first inning, the Phillies’ new right fielder drew a walk in four of his last five plate appearances. Three of them came with less than two out. He reached second base once, on a double steal on a Luis Arraez strikeout. J.T. Realmuto struck out to end the inning. In the 11th, Harper drew a one-out walk to load the bases, then watched right fielder Nathan Lukes gun down pinch-runner Garrett Stubbs at the plate on an Arraez fly-out to end the inning. The lack of punch in the middle of the order is nothing new.
Compounding matters are the defensive concerns in the wake of the Phillies’ attempt to accommodate their deficiencies in the middle of the order. Bryson Stott has been excellent at third base, and maybe that will ultimately make up for Harper in right field and Alec Bohm at first base. But Bohm was charged with another error on Sunday.
» READ MORE: Derek Hill delivers walk-off hit to lift Phillies past Blue Jays in extra innings
Plenty of teams have won playoff series, even championships, with bullpens that looked as leaky as Mattingly’s does right now. One needn’t look any further than the 2023 Diamondbacks, who slopped it together well enough to overtake the Phillies in seven games in the NLCS. Baseball is a sport where the odds are overwhelmingly in the favor of even an average-to-below pitcher. It isn’t unreasonable to hope that those odds string themselves together in the right order in the postseason. But it is a much tougher ask when a pitcher is backed by a defense that gives away outs and a lineup that has all of the balance of a fat man on a seesaw.
Mattingly’s challenge right now is to find out who his pros are, assuming he has any. Raley and Bowlan in the seventh and eighth isn’t how the Phillies would have hoped to be drawing it up at this stage of the game. The odds are hardly healthy that it will end up looking much better than what they’ve seen thus far. But they at least must look.
In trading for Luis Arraez at the deadline, the Phillies displaced three-fourths of their infield but left Trea Turner at shortstop. To help make sense of it all, pennant-winning former shortstop and current radio broadcaster Kevin Stocker joined Phillies Extra, The Inquirer's baseball podcast. Watch here.
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