Needs addressed, Girardi ready for a challenge
The baseball trade deadline passed at 4 Monday afternoon. Before 4:30, Joe Girardi said he would take it from there.
A 10-day derecho had just swept through his bullpen, remaking it quickly, dramatically, thoroughly, changing roles and changing expectations. That last piece to squeeze in at the horn was veteran righthander David Phelps, imported from Milwaukee for three players to be identified later. A former favorite of Girardi’s with the Yankees, Phelps would join newly acquired veterans Brandon Workman, Heath Hembree and David Hale, the healthier Tommy Hunter and Blake Parker, fished from the organization’s player pool to add experience. Even Ranger Suarez, cured of a virus and said to having thrown well in the Allentown camp, had finally been activated.
His lineup already lethal, his defense strong, his roster deep and speedy and his own paycheck reflective of a manager expected to win championships, Girardi suddenly felt like he was back in Yankee Stadium.
A contending team was in
place.
The manager would be blamed every time a pitcher fell behind in a count.
“They’ve given us what we need,” Girardi said. “Now it’s up to us to play to the best of our ability. And it’s on me to put our guys in the best situation and to make sure they are in a position to be successful.”
Not that Girardi ever ducked his responsibility to succeed, but his latest message included the modifier “now” for a reason. Until Matt Klentak’s bullpen power-wash, Girardi could have done one thing at the end of this season were the Phillies to have not made the playoffs. He could have rolled his eyes toward the bullpen in a perfectly understandable message. But not, to use his word, now.
Though the Phillies could have used another starting pitcher at the deadline, that only left them in the same situation as every majorleague team in history. And with Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler and Zach Eflin around the top of the rotation, and with inconsistent though occasionally overpowering Jake Arrieta somewhere in the mix, Klentak has assembled a responsible starting staff. By the deadline, he’d done the same with his bullpen.
With that, the general manager who would have preferred to have kept Gabe Kapler anyway, had professionally and ably left Girardi with little room for failure, particularly in a season when more than half of the teams will reach the postseason.
“The way I look at it, our offense has been scoring runs for most of the year,” Klentak said. “Not every single player has been clicking at the same time. But as a group, our scoring has been near the top of the league. So that’s been a positive and we hope that will sustain.
“We feel there is some depth on the positionplayer side, where we can withstand a 10-day IL placement to Adam Haseley or Jay Bruce, or now to Scott Kingery. On the starting pitching front, the Nola-Wheeler-Eflin trio has been about as good as any top three in baseball this year. And Jake has had some really good starts. We’ve got Spencer (Howard), who we want to give the ball to. And we have Vinny (Velasquez) there as well. So we think our rotation is in a good place right now.
“The part of our team that was not performing a couple weeks ago was the pen. And now through some trade additions and returns from the injury list and just some guys throwing the ball better, we think that stacks up pretty well, too.”
That Phelps was the final piece was another sign that Girardi’s demands will be heard, if not granted, by a front office made to look powerless by John Middleton during the public fiasco when Kapler was fired. The Phillies didn’t really need a shortstop this season, yet somehow Didi Gregorius, a known leader and a favorite of Girardi’s in New York, would bump to Citizens Bank Park on a oneyear contract. The bullpen needed sharpening, and it was sharpened. And Phelps appeared in 87 games for Girardi in New York from 2012 through 2014. No wonder it feels like there must be one more less visible cutout photo in the ballpark: The one of Girardi crammed in the general manager’s chair.
“This was mostly Matt and the front office,” Girardi said of the recent bullpen sweep. “I mean, he asked my opinion about guys. And he asked me my opinion of David Phelps because I knew him personally. But it was them having to get the deals done.”
A team game, that baseball. For even if the cavalcade of bullpen moves was a Girardi production, they had value, too, to Klentak, who was out of time to tout the good, young arms of Austin Davis and Ramon Rosso and Deolis Guerra and Reggie McClain.
He needed to give Girardi the varsity.
So he did.
“This was really the front office doing a great job,” Girardi said. “And I think Matt did a good job of recognizing that we needed help. So I give him a lot of credit for addressing a need that we needed right way.
“And they did it.” By Monday, the Phillies were a half-game out of second place, had won five of their previous six, had Suarez and Jay Bruce active again, had Rhys Hoskins hitting, Roman Quinn healthy, Andrew McCutchen warming, Alex Bohm playing like he deserved to be in the major leagues, Bryce Harper continuing to show why he will be the best player ever to wear a Phillies uniform and J.T. Realmuto showing why he should wear one for the next 10 years.
They also had a front office flashing some late-season competence.
“They’re going for it,” Joe Girardi said
He knew what that meant. He embraced the challenge.