Kapler sticking by ‘C.Y.’ despite staff slippage
PHILADELPHIA >> Four times in 16 days, the Phillies tried to win a game started by Aaron Nola. Four times in 16 days, including a 99-pitch burst of mediocrity Monday, they lost. So that was it. The table was run.
Perfection was achieved.
Every one of the Phillies’ projected starting pitchers for 2019 had flopped, regressed, tired, broken down or otherwise disappeared.
There was Vince Velasquez, once a desired prospect, becoming unable to pitch deep into games.
There was Zach Eflin, earlier in the season in some muffled All-Star whispers, sinking to an 8-11 record.
There was Jake Arrieta, his season over with a sore elbow.
There was Nick Pivetta, thought to be fit for a breakout season but being dumped to the minors, then to the bullpen, then into relative insignificance.
There was Jerad Eickhoff, ever injured.
Because all else was failing, there was Nola, a year removed from the
There was Jerad Eickhoff, ever injured.
Because all else was failing, there was Nola, a year removed from the bronze medal in the NL Cy Young race, a 2018 All-Star, showing some early signs of excellence, made to pitch every fifth day regardless of the rotation. But even he has been unable to help much as the wild-card race turned tense.
So, the question: Is the manager satisfied with what first-year pitching coach Chris Young has been able to do with the starting pitching?
“I think C.Y. is doing a good job,” Kapler said. “Obviously, we’ve had some challenges with our pitching staff, and I think he, like everyone, went through an adjustment period. I think he’s been open and has made changes when the situation required it. We’ve seen some improvements from the first half of the year.
“He works incredibly hard, all the time. He’s going to be the person that, when challenged, commits to doing what is necessary. He really cares about our pitching staff and is consistently driven to help them get better. We still have a ways to go to get our pitching staff to where we want it to be, but that’s a responsibility we all share.” Asked. Answered. The Phillies were to play the Atlanta Braves in about three hours and were still reasonably involved in a playoff race. At that moment, there was zero reason for the manager to allow himself to be cornered into blasting his pitching coach. Though John Middleton had seen enough of hitting coach John Mallee earlier and ordered him replaced by Charlie Manuel, the time had passed for the owner’s mood of the day to matter. The Phillies will win or lose with what they have, Young included. In that context, Kapler’s endorsement was as understandable as it was necessary.
Young, who had reason to be busy, sent word that he would be unavailable for discussion Tuesday, but that he would make himself available Wednesday. Yet the pitching coach he’d replaced this season, Rich Kranitz, was just as busy down the hall, working with the Braves, who were to swing a 15-game lead over the Phillies around the ballpark.
“He’s fit right in,” said Atlanta manager Brian Snitker. “I’d seen him from afar but I heard nothing but good things when we hired him. His communication with the players is probably his biggest strength, how he interacts with those guys every day. He’s got great awareness when the game starts. He’s been in this league a long time. He’s a baseball guy.”
Young hasn’t been around much at all. He was a minor-league pitcher who’d risen through the scouting departments of the Padres and Astros to become Kranitz’s assistant last season with the Phils. But even if less than one full season is insufficient to draw conclusions about his abilities, the results have said plenty. And some echoes have been chilling. While he had preached about the value of throwing fourseamers high in an attempt to collect strikeouts, Eflin, for one, returned to his more comfortable style of throwing sinking pitches in hopes of generating feeble contact.
“He has helped me a lot, in terms of understanding what I am good at, and sequencing, and what to throw guys in certain situations and whatnot,” said Eflin of Young. “Absolutely.”
Yet wasn’t it Eflin who insisted on pitching his own way, no matter the original plan?
“No, not necessarily,” he said. “As a staff, they liked my four-seam a lot at the top of the zone and liked my slider a lot, which I have always had. But it has been uncharacteristic of me to throw it as many times as I was. I guess, at a certain point it got uncomfortable for me. So we had talked about implementing my sinker again, and using that to get weak contact and early contact.
“So it’s been a two-way street with him and we’ve come together and come up with this plan on how to attack hitters now and I think it’s been pretty strong. A lot better.”
It was the front office, not Kapler or Young, that decided to stack so many unproven starters behind Nola and Arrieta. Later, Drew Smyly and Jason Vargas, with a combined age of 66, were imported to provide stability. Neither has been a disaster. Yet from Day 1 of the Grapefruit League, there was one truth about the Phillies: Nothing they had planned would work without Nola performing as an All-Star level No. 1.
“I’m not panicking at all,” Nola said. “It happens. It’s baseball. I’m not going to have it every start. You have bad ones.”
He’s had a few. And the Phillies have had too many.