Baker: Astros Don’t Expect Bregman Back For At Least A Month
The Astros have been rather vague with their timeline for Alex Bregman‘s return from the injured list, but manager Dusty Baker said in an appearance on Sports Talk 790 today that he doesn’t expect Bregman back for at least another month (Twitter link).
Injury updates on Bregman have been handled somewhat clumsily from the beginning. The third baseman himself initially said there was no timetable, which isn’t particularly surprising, but he also added at the time of the injury that he wasn’t sure whether he was dealing with a Grade 1 or Grade 2 strain of his hamstring. Last week, Baker told reporters that the expectation was for Bregman to be out “two to three works or more,” and while today’s statement doesn’t technically invalidate that tentative timeline, it certainly paints a more pessimistic outlook with regard to Bregman’s return.
The first-place Astros have a 1.5-game lead over the second-place Athletics, so the absence of one of their best all-around players is a particularly notable blow. The 27-year-old Bregman is enjoying another strong year at the plate, hitting .275/.359/.428 with seven homers and 14 doubles through 262 plate appearances. That’s in line with last year’s production, but his bat has fallen off since 2019’s ridiculous .296/.423/.592, 41-homer showing that earned him a second-place finish in AL MVP voting.
With Bregman sidelined, the Astros have turned to young Abraham Toro to handle the bulk of the work at the hot corner. The 24-year-old Toro has ranked as one of Houston’s better prospects for the past few years, and after a rough showing at the plate early in the season, he’s returned from Triple-A with a .294/.385/.471 in 39 plate appearances. That follows up on a massive .352/.485/.593 performance in 68 Triple-A plate appearances.
Blue Jays Designate Travis Bergen For Assignment
The Blue Jays announced Tuesday that they’ve designated lefty Travis Bergen for assignment. Toronto needed to open a roster spot after this morning’s four-player trade, which sent righty Adam Cimber and outfielder Corey Dickerson from Miami to Toronto in exchange for infielder Joe Panik and minor league right-hander Andrew McInvale.
Bergen, 27, has a pristine 1.69 ERA in 10 2/3 innings this year, but the rest of his numbers don’t paint as rosy a picture. He’s yielded five hits (one homer), walked eight batters and plunked another pair while recording just six strikeouts. Bergen has faced 46 hitters this season and walked or hit 22 percent of them.
This marks the third season in which the left-handed Bergen has logged some Major League time. He’s totaled 38 2/3 frames of MLB work and notched a solid-looking 3.96 ERA, but a 20.9 percent strikeout rate and sky-high 15.6 percent walk rate are both notable red flags.
To his credit, Bergen has been excellent in the minors — when he’s been healthy enough to take the mound. Despite being a 2015 draftee, he’s only totaled 109 1/3 innings of minor league ball. Bergen tossed just five innings after being drafted in 2015 and spent the rest of that season on the injured list. He then had Tommy John surgery in 2016, which limited him to five innings that season and 18 frames in his return effort in 2017.
Bergen worked a healthy and dominant season in 2018, logging 56 1/3 innings with a 0.95 ERA, a 32.0 percent strikeout rate and a 6.5 percent walk rate between the Jays’ Class-A Advanced and Double-A affiliates. Toronto still left him off the 40-man roster, and the Giants took him in that December’s Rule 5 Draft. Bergen’s Rule 5 status in 2019 further limited his innings, and San Francisco eventually returned him to the Jays in August — shortly before the minor league season ended.
There were, of course, no minor league games for Bergen to work in 2020. He spent the summer at the Jays’ alternate training site before being traded to Arizona in return for Robbie Ray. The D-backs designated him for assignment over the winter — the trade of Ray was more about dumping the remainder of his salary at a time when he was struggling badly and had little trade value — and the Jays reacquired him for cash.
The end result of all this is a pitcher who, despite being six-plus years removed from his draft date, has just 148 professional innings under his belt. Bergen has a 1.81 ERA and 31.1 percent strikeout rate in the minors, but he’s also set to turn 28 in October and has far less experience than most in his situation would. That said, based on the minor league numbers and the fact that he has multiple minor league options remaining, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see another club take a chance on Bergen — even with the spotty command and lack of experience. The Jays will have a week to trade him or try to pass him through outright waivers.
KBO’s LG Twins Sign Justin Bour
The LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization announced that they’ve signed former big league first baseman Justin Bour for the remainder of the 2021 season (link via Jee-ho Yoo of South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency). Bour will be paid $350K for the remainder of the season.
Bour, 33, signed a minor league deal with the Giants after Spring Training had begun and opened the 2021 season with their top affiliate in Sacramento. He’s out to a .213/.346/.426 start to the season with six homers, five doubles, a strong 15.4 percent walk rate and a 23 percent strikeout rate in Triple-A. The former Marlins, Phillies and Angels first baseman spent the 2020 season with Nippon Professional Baseball’s Hanshin Tigers in Japan, hitting at a .243/.338/.422 clip with 17 long balls and eight doubles in 379 trips to the plate.
It’s been a couple years since we’ve seen Bour in the Majors and a bit longer than that since we saw him at his best. From 2014-17, Bour hit .273/.346/.489 as the Marlins’ primary first baseman — including a monstrous .289/.366/.536, 25-homer showing back in 2017 (134 wRC+, 143 OPS+). Bour was an above-average hitter in each of his five seasons with the Fish, but his production dropped precipitously following a 2018 trade to the Phillies and fell off even further with the Angels in 2019.
Bour is replacing first baseman Roberto Ramos on the roster for the Twins. Ramos, 26, took the KBO by storm last year in his debut campaign when he hit .278/.362/.592 with 38 home runs, 17 doubles and a pair of triples. The former Rockies prospect has been hindered by a lower back injury throughout the 2021 season, however, and has now been out of action for the Twins since June 9. He batted .243/.317/.422 through 205 plate appearances before the injury sidelined him.
The Cubs’ Deadline Dilemma
The 2021 season hasn’t gone as the Cubs expected after trading away their ace and listening to offers on several other highly regarded players over the winter. Trading Yu Darvish, non-tendering Kyle Schwarber and generally avoiding any additions until some bargain pickups late in the winter, the Cubs appeared ticketed for a transition year. With Kris Bryant, Javier Baez and Anthony Rizzo set to become free agents after extension talks failed to bear fruit, a retooling of some extent appeared nigh.
Perhaps the Cubs didn’t count quite so much on the inactivity throughout the rest of the division. The Cardinals eventually added Nolan Arenado in a blockbuster trade with the Rockies, and the Brewers made some nice late moves, most notably signing Kolten Wong to a two-year pact, but the NL Central was a wasteland in terms of hot stove activity. The Reds dumped their two best relievers to trim payroll and now have MLB’s worst bullpen. The Pirates, setting out on a lengthy rebuild, obviously made little effort to improve. Even the Cardinals, beyond their acquisition of Arenado, opted not to address some spotty pitching depth.
The result was an eminently winnable division for anyone other than the rebuilding Pirates. (Sorry, Pittsburgh fans.) And with all the focus on the looming turnover in Chicago after Theo Epstein stepped away and Jed Hoyer ascended to the top baseball operations spot, it almost became easy to forget that the Cubs won the division by three games during last year’s shortened season. Subtracting Darvish and Schwarber hurt, but the Cubs added some complementary veterans to round out the roster a bit: Zach Davies, Joc Pederson, Trevor Williams, Jake Marisnick, Andrew Chafin and old friend Jake Arrieta all entered the mix. It was at the very least a competent roster in a lackluster division.
Add in varying levels of resurgences not only from Bryant, Rizzo and Baez but also from written-off closer Craig Kimbrel, and the Cubs suddenly find themselves in the thick of the division race. Bryant was playing at a near-MVP level for much of the season until a recent slide. Rizzo’s bat isn’t back to peak levels but is much improved over 2020. Ditto Baez. And Kimbrel? The right-hander is sitting on a 0.59 ERA with a 46.4 percent strikeout rate against an 8.9 percent walk rate — both the third-best single-season marks of his career. He’s played so well that the $16MM option on his contract for next season suddenly looks like a bargain.
The result is a second-place Cubs team that finds itself in a gray area with just over one month until the trade deadline. Entering the year, the predominant question regarding Bryant was: “Where will he be traded this summer?” Now, it’s shifted to: “How can they trade him when they’re only a few games out of first?”
In reality, it’s hard to envision the Cubs trading anyone if they’re this close to the front of the division. To the contrary, this team looks more like a buyer than it does one that should be expected to dangle Bryant, Baez, Rizzo, Kimbrel, Davies, Pederson, Chafin or any of its impending free agents. The front office may have envisioned the Darvish trade as a launching point for similar deals down the line — clear payroll, add some young talent to lay the groundwork for the next generation — but instead the 2021 season now has the feel of one final hurrah with the 2016 core.
The context of the division and the schedule plays an important role, too. The Cubs have dropped nine of their past thirteen games, including series losses to the Dodgers and Mets. Normally, that might’ve begun to shift the team away from potential buying status, but their Central-division competition hasn’t exactly been thriving, either (outside of the first-place Brewers).
The Cardinals have dropped eight of their past 10 games as they try to weather major rotation injuries. They were recently swept by both the Cubs and by a Reds team that put its two best relievers, Lucas Sims and Tejay Antone, on the injured list. Cincinnati has now dropped seven of ten themselves. There’s plenty of talent on both the Cardinals and the Reds, but injuries have impacted both clubs quite a bit in recent weeks.
The schedule in July will be pivotal for the division as a whole. Chicago plays three games in Milwaukee and three in Cincinnati before hosting the struggling Phillies for four and the Cardinals for three. Coming out of the break, the Cubs will play six of their first 14 games against MLB’s worst team, the Diamondbacks; the others are, again, against Cincinnati and St. Louis. It’s probably not what the front office envisioned, but given all that context it’d take a somewhat of a faceplant, primarily against a series of .500-or-worse opponents, for the Cubs to really be in position to sell.
The Darvish trade, of course, looks all the more egregious now that starting pitching is precisely what the Cubs need. Sahadev Sharma and Patrick Mooney of The Athletic took a thorough look at the Cubs’ rotation needs this morning, noting that executives around the league don’t expect them to make an aggressive, blockbuster style acquisition. The likelier focus, per Sharma and Mooney, would be on pitchers with reasonably affordable salaries and/or relatively low costs of acquisition.
Fans are never going to be excited by any report suggesting that their team’s primary targets are middle-of-the-road pitchers who can simply keep them in the game for five or maybe six innings at a time, but given where the Cubs are versus where they likely expected to be, it’s also not a huge surprise. A Darvish-caliber arm isn’t walking through that door, but someone like Merrill Kelly (D-backs), Chris Flexen (Mariners, if they sell pieces controlled beyond ’21) or Tyler Anderson (Pirates, if the Cubs don’t mind sending a prospect elsewhere in the division) are all speculative names that fit that general mold.
The next few weeks of games are going to be pivotal to most clubs around the league; there aren’t many clearly defined sellers. Even underperforming clubs like the Twins and Cardinals have so many games left against division rivals and/or rebuilding teams that they’ll probably wait to definitively commit to a course of action. But there might not be a team whose long-term outlook will be so closely tied to the fate of its July performance than the Cubs.
There are long-term implications for every team this time of year, but the Cubs have a slew of short-term veterans to market if they wish to sell — several of whom are longtime cornerstones. This could be a month in which they genuinely jumpstart an accelerated rebuild — not unlike the one the Yankees engineered in 2016 when they traded away Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman.
On the flip side, if the Cubs continue to exceed expectations, the pendulum would swing in the other direction, likely leaving the team with some draft compensation (via qualifying offers for Bryant, Rizzo and/or Baez). Not only would they lose the opportunity to add to a thin farm via trade — they’d perhaps further deplete the current system to make a measured push to remain in the division hunt.
A few clubs always find themselves performing something of a tightrope walk this time of year, but the Cubs are among the more prominent examples in recent memory. The clubhouse probably relishes the fact that they’ve upset the front office’s expectations to date; every group of players wants to win, after all. If they can keep it up a month longer, we’ll likely be looking at a much different deadline than most expected for the Cubs after they shipped Darvish to San Diego in exchange for Davies and a handful of lottery-ticket teenagers who might not make it to the Majors before the entire roster turns over.
Royals Designate Kelvin Gutierrez For Assignment, Select Emmanuel Rivera
The Royals announced Monday that they’ve designated infielder Kelvin Gutierrez for assignment and selected the contract of fellow infielder Emmanuel Rivera from Triple-A Omaha. Rivera, who’ll be making his MLB debut, is batting sixth in tonight’s lineup and manning the hot corner.
Gutierrez, 26, was acquired from the Nationals back in the 2018 trade that sent righty Kelvin Herrera from K.C. to D.C. At the time of the swap, Gutierrez was arguably the top prospect headed back to Kansas City — a potentially plus defender at third base with above-average power but questions about his hit tool. His development, unfortunately, hasn’t rounded out as hoped.
The Royals gave Gutierrez a look in each of the past three seasons, but he’s mustered only a .226/.275/.309 slash through 223 Major League plate appearances. He’s posted a .289/.364/.429 slash in 84 Triple-A games as well, although given the hitter-friendly nature of that setting, that output checks in at roughly league average, per wRC+. Gutierrez hasn’t been as strong defensively as expected at third base, either; he’s committed a dozen errors in 490 innings at third base while logging below-average marks in Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating and Outs Above Average.
That said, Gutierrez can be optioned for the remainder of the 2021 season and has been an average or better hitter at nearly every minor league stop. He’ll turn 27 two months from now, but another club in need of some depth at third base could take a mostly free look at this point. The Royals have a week to trade Gutierrez or attempt to pass him through outright waivers.
Rivera’s call to the big leagues serves as an early birthday present, as he’ll turn 25 tomorrow. He’s spent the season with Triple-A Omaha and posted a .282/.337/.593 batting line with 14 home runs, 11 doubles and a triple so far in 193 plate appearances. He doesn’t walk much (6.2 percent in 2021) but also has a seemingly manageable strikeout rate (22.3 percent).
Rivera as a mid-range prospect for the Royals heading into the 2019 season, but a forgettable .258/.297/.345 (79 wRC+) performance in Double-A caused him to fall off most organizational rankings. This is the most productive season of his career so far, however, and he’ll now get a chance to carry it over to the big league level for a Royals club that can afford him ample playing time.
Rangers’ Willie Calhoun, Hunter Wood Require Surgery
Rangers outfielder/designated hitter Willie Calhoun will require surgery to repair a fracture in his left ulna, the team announced to reporters Monday (Twitter thread via Kennedi Landry of MLB.com). Calhoun sustained the injury when he was hit by a pitch on the forearm over the weekend. A clear timetable hasn’t yet been revealed — that’ll presumably come after the operation — but an absence of some note now looks all the more inevitable.
Meanwhile, right-hander Hunter Wood, who has been out since late May after hitting the IL with an elbow surgery that was eventually termed a “mild” sprain of his right ulnar collateral ligament. He’s now undergone elbow surgery and will miss a minimum of eight months, which suggests that Wood did not require a full Tommy John surgery (which comes with a 12- to 16-month recovery period). Indeed, the procedure in question installed an internal brace in Wood’s elbow, tweets The Athletic’s Levi Weaver.
It was already apparent that Calhoun would be out awhile following the announcement of a fracture, but it’s a tough blow all the same. The 26-year-old wasn’t hitting for the type of power he displayed in 2019, but Calhoun’s 8.4 percent walk rate and 11.6 percent strikeout rate are both career-best marks. He’s long been a touted hitting prospect, and had he been able to maintain that improved approach while reclaiming some of his 2019 pop as the summer wore on, there was some breakout potential.
It remains to be seen when or whether Calhoun will return to the big league club in 2021, but the injury will deprive him of a chance to bolster his case in his first offseason of arbitration eligibility. He’s under club control through the 2024 season.
As for Wood, the surgery will cut his season short at just five big league innings. The right-hander joined the organization on a minor league pact over the winter and showed well in a brief Triple-A look before allowing a pair of runs in his MLB frames. Wood didn’t pitch in the Majors last season, but he’s seen MLB time with both the Rays and the Indians in the past, throwing quite well along the way. He’s tallied 91 2/3 innings at the MLB level and put together a 3.34 ERA with a below-average 21.9 percent strikeout rate against an very solid 8.1 percent walk rate.
While Wood’s 2021 season is over, he can remain under team control with the Rangers organization — they’re comfortable committing a 40-man roster spot over the winter. There’s no guarantee that’ll be the case, but Wood has been outrighted in the past, so even if the Rangers remove him from the 40-man this winter and he goes unclaimed on waivers, he’d have the option of electing free agency to determine the best fit.
Reds Designate Scott Heineman For Assignment, Select Alejo Lopez
The Reds announced Monday morning that they’ve selected the contract of infielder Alejo Lopez and designated outfielder Scott Heineman for assignment in order to open a spot on the roster.
Heineman, 28, was 3-for-30 in a brief, 19-game look with Cincinnati this season after coming over from the Rangers via a December trade that sent young Jose Acosta to Texas. That rough showing dipped his career batting line in the big leagues to .172/.249/.325 through 173 plate appearances — all coming with either Texas or Cincinnati. Heineman has a much better track record in Triple-A, where he’s posted a hearty .302/.368/.458 slash through 699 trips to the plate.
As for the 25-year-old Lopez, he’s in the midst of a breakout campaign in the upper minors. He didn’t enter the season regarded as one of the better prospects in the Reds organization, but Lopez destroyed the Double-A Southern League with a .362/.437/.448 batting line before moving to Triple-A and upping the pace with a .358/.436/.526 slash through a nearly identical sample of plate appearances.
Lopez has had some good fortune in terms of balls in play (.404 BABIP in Double-A, .368 in Triple-A), but his output is also buoyed by what look to be exceptional bat-to-ball skills. Lopez has just 18 strikeouts against 24 walks through 229 plate appearances this season, helping to offset a lack of power. Lopez has only two home runs (both in Triple-A) and just nine long balls in 1564 plate appearances in minor league ball overall. But he’s also swatted 19 doubles in this year’s 229 trips to the plate and gone 6-for-7 in stolen base attempts.
Lopez has split his time between second base and third base this season, with the former of those two spots being his primary position throughout his minor league career. He does have some experience at shortstop and got some work in left field while playing winter ball in Mexico. He’ll give Cincinnati a switch-hitting presence to bounce around the diamond. This will be Lopez’s first call to the Majors after being a 27th-round pick by the Reds back in 2015. He’s controllable through at least the 2027 season.
Diamondbacks Outright Stefan Crichton
JUNE 27: Crichton cleared waivers and has been sent outright to Reno, the D-Backs announced.
JUNE 23: The Diamondbacks announced Wednesday that they’ve designated right-handed reliever Stefan Crichton for assignment and recalled outfielder Nick Heath from Triple-A Reno in his place.
Crichton, 29, worked some high-leverage spots for the Snakes early in the season and even tallied four saves in the season’s first five weeks. In fact, Crichton is the only D-backs reliever with multiple saves this season and leads the team with nine saves dating back to Opening Day 2020.
The right-hander’s results have tanked as of late, however, leading to a 6.04 ERA that surely prompted Wednesday’s DFA. Crichton has totaled only 11 innings over his past 15 appearances, during which time he’s been tagged for 10 earned runs on 16 hits (two homers) with more walks (six) than strikeouts (five).
From 2019-20, Crichton was a solid member of the D-backs’ relief corps, tallying 56 1/3 innings of 3.04 ERA ball with a 50.3 percent grounder rate, a 24.1 percent strikeout rate and a 7.3 percent walk rate. His velocity, strikeout rate and walk rate have all gone in the wrong direction for two consecutive seasons, however. This year’s middling 13.9 percent clip is barely half what it was back in 2019 when he notched a career-best 26.8 percent mark.
The Diamondbacks will have a week to trade Crichton or attempt to pass him through outright waivers. This year’s struggles and velocity dip, paired with the fact that he’s out of minor league options, might temper optimism among other clubs, however.
Phillies Designate David Hale, Select Neftali Feliz
JUNE 26: David Hale has cleared waivers and elected free agency, per the Phillies. Hale is now free to explore an opportunity with any organization.
JUNE 25: The Phillies announced Friday that they’ve designated right-hander David Hale for assignment in order to open a spot on the roster for fellow righty Neftali Feliz, whose contract has been selected from Triple-A Lehigh Valley. Philadelphia also placed righty Sam Coonrod on the 10-day injured list due to tendinitis in his right forearm, recalled infielder Nick Maton to fill that roster spot and tabbed righty Enyel De Los Santos as the 27th man for today’s doubleheader.
It’s the first big league action for the now-33-year-old Feliz since 2017. The 2010 American League Rookie of the Year’s career was derailed by arm troubles that began with Tommy John surgery in 2012. That surgery wiped out nearly all of his 2013 campaign, and although Feliz returned with a 1.99 ERA in 2014, his velocity was diminished and his strikeout rate plummeted. Feliz struggled through a dismal 2015 season split between the Rangers and Tigers before enjoying a nice rebound effort with the Pirates in 2016. That bounceback effort, however, was truncated by an arm issue that ended his season in early September.
Feliz latched on with the Brewers on a one-year deal for the 2017 campaign but was hit hard in 27 frames with Milwaukee before being cut loose. The Royals signed him for the remainder of the year and got slightly better results. Feliz signed with the D-backs on a minor league deal that winter, but he was unable to make the team in Spring Training and cut loose at the end of camp. He followed a similar path with the Mariners in 2019.
From 2018-20, Feliz’s only work on the mound came in the Dominican Winter League. His showing there in the 2020-21 season — 3.07 ERA, 22-to-6 K/BB ratio in 14 2/3 innings — was enough for the Phillies to take notice and bring him in on a minor league pact. And his work thus far in Triple-A has certainly been impressive enough to merit a return to the Majors for the first time in nearly four years. Through 14 1/3 frames with Lehigh Valley, Feliz has yielded just a pair of earned runs on eight hits and six walks. He’s punched out 23 of the 58 batters he’s faced so far in Triple-A (39.6 percent).
Turning to the 33-year-old Hale, he never quite found his footing this season. He game the Phils 11 solid frames down the stretch last year, but Hale has surrendered at least one earned run in 10 of his 17 appearances this year and pitched to a 6.41 ERA through 26 2/3 innings of work.
Hale was a viable long relief/spot start option from 2018-20 — mostly with the Yankees, who signed him to a staggering five minor league deals in that time — as he tallied 68 1/3 innings with a 3.56 ERA. Hale has never missed many bats, but he’s generally shown good command and kept the ball on the ground at an above-average clip.
Coonrod, 28, got out to a brilliant start this season but hit a rough patch beginning in mid-May. He’s been tagged for 11 runs over his past nine innings, so it’s perhaps not entirely surprising to see that there’s some degree of an arm issue. Even with that slump, he’s still sporting a respectable 4.18 ERA with a 24.8 percent strikeout rate and an 8.3 percent walk rate.
The 24-year-old Maton returns after a brief stretch in Triple-A. He began his rookie season on an absolute tear in the big leagues, slashing .313/.337/.458 through his first 86 trips to the plate. However, Maton fell into a woeful 0-for-21 slump and lost playing time over the next few weeks, ultimately leading the Phils to send him down for some additional work. He’d never played above the Double-A level prior to the 2021 season.
Phillies Remove Hector Neris From Closer Role
The Phillies are shuffling up their bullpen, as manager Joe Girardi announced to reporters today that lefty Jose Alvarado will be first in line for save opportunities for now (Twitter link via Scott Lauber of the Philadelphia Inquirer). Hector Neris has been the team’s primary option in save opportunities this season, but he’s been tagged for six runs over his past five outings — a span of 4 1/3 frames. Neris blew a one-run lead in the ninth inning of Wednesday’s absolute rollercoaster of a game between the Phillies and Nationals.
Alvarado had his first opportunity in the seventh inning of today’s twin bill against the division-leading Mets, but Francisco Lindor lined an RBI single up the middle to tie the game at one apiece. The Mets would go on to win in the bottom of the eighth — Ranger Suarez yielded an RBI single to Dominic Smith.
It was a particularly disheartening loss for the Phillies, who got a historic performance from starter Aaron Nola. Their ace struck out ten consecutive Mets, tying a 51-year-old Tom Seaver record, notes the Athletic’s Matt Gelb (via Twitter). The blame doesn’t all fall on the bullpen, however, as the defense made a pair of errors, and Nola himself contributed two of their three overall hits in the game.
The closer shakeup isn’t the only change the Phils have brought about in the relief corps. Earlier today, the team announced that righty David Hale was being designated for assignment in order to make room on the roster for former AL Rookie of the Year Neftali Feliz, who’ll be returning to the Majors for the first time since 2017. The Phils also put Sam Coonrod on the injured list due to forearm tendinitis.
Philly relievers have been worth -0.2 fWAR this season while posting the third-worst save percentage in the Majors at 46.8 percent (15 for 32), notes Jim Salisbury of NBCSPhilly (via Twitter). That said, were it not for Philadelphia’s particular case of deja vu, the concern might not be quite on red alert. The Phillies bullpen, however, has sung this song before, posting -0.8 fWAR and a 7.06 ERA in 2020. Their 12 blown saves were the third-highest number in the Majors.
It’s not all doom-and-gloom, however: with a 50 percent groundball rate, Girardi’s bullpen is burning worms at a better rate than any other team in the Majors, and their 69.9 percent left on-base percentage ranks in the middle of the pack. And yet, despite their league-leading groundball percentage, when the ball does get elevated, it’s leaving the yard at a league-worst 17.2 percent home-run-to-fly-ball rate.
It should be noted that, like most bullpens, the Phillies have dealt with their fair share of injuries. Seranthony Dominguez has been out for the year as he recovers from Tommy John surgery. JoJo Romero looked like a potential breakout contributor before he, too, succumbed to Tommy John.
Furthermore, free agent acquisition and veteran high-leverage bullpen arm Archie Bradley missed 37 games, and he has yet to find his game: 4.20 ERA/5.69 FIP with an uncharacteristically-low 17.4 percent strikeout rate and uncharacteristically-high 15.9 percent walk rate. Brandon Kintzler, another would-be closing option and could-be stabilizing veteran presence, has been on the injured list for 17 days (and counting) with a neck strain.
Zooming out, the Phillies have lost four in a row, dropped seven of their past 10 and fallen behind the Nationals in the division (six games behind the Mets). Though the Phillies have entered every year of the Bryce Harper era with hopes of contention – and played like contenders for parts of those 2+ seasons – they are in danger of failing to post a winning record for the tenth consecutive season. The organization hasn’t finished above .500 since its highly-successfully five-year run as division champs from 2007 to 2011.
As for this season, Girardi’s bullpen is likely to remain fluid. Case and point, Neris found himself back in a closing situation in the second game of today’s doubleheader after Bradley served up a game-tying run in the bottom of the seventh. Neris successfully picked up the save.