Rest of season may fortell Kapler’s future
A little more than a year ago, it was said to be the Phillies’ choice. They could structure a trade with the Texas Rangers that would in part reverse what had taken place three years earlier, when with the July 31, 2015 non-waiver trade deadline about to toll, they sent ace pitcher Cole Hamels to the Rangers along with reliever Jake Diekman for a mega-prospect return.
As it stood a year ago, the Phillies had Hamels’ Phillies ace successor Aaron Nola backed by free agent acquisition Jake Arrieta. The club was still in the thick of a National League East pennant chase, hurdling a bad losing streak at the start of June to recover and get back into first place in the division. By July 25, they beat the Dodgers at home for a second straight night and headed to Cincinnati 1½ games up in the division at 57-44. The next night, having stretched their lead another game, the bubble burst.
Hamels had been dealt to Chicago instead of Philadelphia. Along with him went a $20 million option for 2019 that the Cubs would choose to pick up. The Phillies ... they’d wait to see what other starting pitching options would present themselves.
They promptly lost their next four games. And despite initially recovering from that little skid, August would soon go bad, September would be hysterically and historically bad, and Phillies would finish 10 games behind the Braves at 80-82.
There could be another chance to rectify that mistake, one that general manager Matt Klentak more or less built upon this year by first not bringing in a rock-solid supporting cast member for the rotation coming out of spring training, then not moving fast enough to secure anybody better than Drew Smyly or Jason Vargas for such a role after the Phillies’ rotation fell apart.
First Nick Pivetta went south after coming north.
Then Zach Eflin went from strong to silly bad.
Then Arrieta announced he had bone spurs in his elbow, spoke defiantly that it wasn’t going to get him down ... but after a poor and typically short outing Sunday in San Francisco, he finally admitted that perhaps he’d courageously spoke too soon.
“It hurts every day,” Arrieta told reporters after that game. “Today, I lacked the ability to throw any off-speed stuff with effectiveness and they made me pay for it.”
As for going forward, Arrieta suddenly isn’t so confident, saying he’d see how the Monday off-day went before making a decision on his immediate future Tuesday.
Ironically, that’s the day that Cole Hamels and the Cubs hit town. The former Phillies World Series MVP is scheduled to pitch against his former teammate (for a couple of months in 2015) Nola Wednesday at Citizens Bank Park.
Consider that pitching symphony a much more compelling reason to go to the ballpark than what’s taking place Thursday: a post-game concert by something named Bimbo. No, wait ... Diplo. He’s billed as a “American DJ, songwriter and record producer based in Los Angeles, California.” Gnarly, that.
But how lo can the Phillies Dip?
When they beat Arizona at CBP on the night of June 11, they went to 38-29 and were perfectly deadlocked at the top of the division with the Braves. When they lost Sunday in San Francisco, they went 22-29 over the two months since, slipping nine full games behind division-leading Atlanta while also falling behind both Washington and New York.
Yes, your fourth-place Phillies, a team that Gabe Kapler concluded after the latest loss Sunday that his players should be thinking, ‘we’ve got seven weeks to go, that’s a lot of time.’”
That would include sinking lower in the National League Philadelphia sports relevance charts.
Of course, anything could happen in those lazy, hazy late days of summer baseball, just like anything can happen in offseason when it comes time for GM Klentak to explain to his bosses about the chances he can make on the roster, in the clubhouse, in the managers and coaching offices, to possibly make things better.
Without a drastic turnaround by this baseball team, it would seem more and more possible that Klentak will have to make a sacrificial move in the offseason to either improve the club’s direction ... or at least keep upper management’s frustrations flowing away from his door.
Thus, with each bad loss, the speculation about Kapler’s Phillies future continues to ramp up, but that’s nothing new. What’s new is the growing evidence that Klentak, despite making several moves leading up to the July 31 trade deadline, is going to be held accountable, too.
He can easily argue the circumstances of how repeated reliever injuries knocked the bullpen efforts off the tracks almost immediately at the start of the season and have continued throughout.
He could also plead no contest on the starters, since three of them, Pivetta, Vince Velasquez and then Eflin, went so far astray. Pivetta was demoted to Triple-A quickly, returned and failed and finally was dispatched to the bullpen. He’s been generally good there, at least until giving up a two-run single to a Giants pitcher who had never batted before in an eighth inning disaster Sunday.
Velasquez had to work out of the bullpen for a while when he had a typical stretch of early game exits and disappointing overall appearances. He did OK there, came back into the starting rotation and is still there. But one reason Double-V is back in the rotation is Eflin, whose solid early season dissolved into repeated acts of long-ball generosity to the opposition.
Enter acquisitions like Smyly and Jason Vargas, both of whom are stopgaps until this season comes to what’s expected to be yet another shortchanged end.
All that means is that the organization’s top prospects, such as third baseman Alec Bohm, advanced outfielder Adam Haseley or maybe shortstop Bryson Stott would draw inquiries if Klentak investigates ways to improve the pitching staff via an offseason trade or three. Essentially, it’s been a game of delaying the inevitable while an argument could be made that with better injury luck and a shift of focus from the bench bosses, this season could have been much better than it’s turned out to be.
Of course, Kapler can offer up the same alibis as Klentak when it comes time to have his postseason discussions. He wouldn’t be wrong, though when two straight seasons go so wrong so late, bad luck talk is only going to ring so true.