Without Bailey Falter, the Blue Jays take advantage of a bullpen game to top the Phillies

TORONTO — The absence of one player can make quite a difference. The Phillies know this. They’ve lost Bryce Harper, they’ve lost Jean Segura. On Tuesday night, the player they lost was Bailey Falter.

Falter, who had been pitching out of the rotation in place of an injured Zach Eflin, was optioned to triple-A Lehigh Valley on July 7. When asked why Falter was sent down, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski wouldn’t give a specific reason, but Falter was unvaccinated last year when he tested positive for COVID-19.

We don’t know for certain if Falter is unvaccinated. He hasn’t spoken to that. But if he is, Falter, who was in line to pitch Tuesday night against the Blue Jays, wouldn’t have been able to enter Canada, where vaccination is a requirement for visitors. Because he was in Lehigh Valley, the Phillies were forced to cobble together a bullpen game that ended in a 4-3 loss.

Falter has not been lights-out for the Phillies this season — he has a 4.82 ERA through nine games pitched, five of them starts — but he would have been able to give his team four innings. Instead, interim manager Rob Thomson ended up using six relievers, a significant workload for a group heading into a five-game stretch over six days before the All-Star break.

Thomson said he does not expect the bullpen to be short over the next five games.

“I think we did a pretty good job of getting through this game and still having people that will be available tomorrow,” he said. “We should be OK.”

» READ MORE: As Rob Thomson makes Canadian baseball history, his roots are firmly in his home country

The Phillies bullpen has looked more than solid over the past few weeks. They were not as unflappable Tuesday night. Andrew Bellatti — who entered the game with a 2.19 ERA over his last 14 games — made his first career start, and allowed two earned runs in one inning. Mark Appel followed him, pitching three innings — his longest major league outing to date — and allowed an earned run on five hits with two strikeouts.

Even still, the bullpen escaped some close calls. Jeurys Familia ran into trouble in the bottom of the sixth, when Lourdes Gurriel Jr. hit an RBI double to give the Blue Jays their 4-3 lead. With runners on second and third and one out, Corey Knebel entered the game. He walked his first batter to load the bases but induced a popout and a groundout to end the inning.

“I was proud of the bullpen,” Thomson said. “They sucked it up tonight. Got it done.”

José Alvarado and Michael Kelly followed Knebel with scoreless outings, but the offense wasn’t able to do more damage against the Blue Jays’ bullpen.

The Phillies placed four players on the restricted list ahead of Tuesday’s game: starting pitchers Kyle Gibson and Aaron Nola, catcher J.T. Realmuto, and third baseman Alec Bohm. Of their two position players, Bohm’s bat was the one that the Phillies missed the most Tuesday night.

The third baseman has hit .381/.417/.667 over his last seven games. He’s recorded at least one hit in six of those seven games and has driven in six runs over that span. Bohm dislocated his finger Monday night in St. Louis, so he likely wouldn’t have been able to contribute Tuesday night. But he is unvaccinated, which prevented him from even traveling with the team.

“We’ve lost by a run with those guys,” Thomson said of Bohm and Realmuto. “I’m proud of that group out there. They worked hard. They battled. [Matt] Vierling hustling down the line on a strike three. The ball that [George] Springer caught in center field kind of hurt our momentum a little bit, but [Garrett Stubbs] had a great game. [Bryson] Stott’s swinging the bat very well. Odúbel [Herrera] hit that ball in the gap that [Bradley] Zimmer made a nice catch on. So those guys are here. They played hard. They battled. They gave us a chance to win.”

» READ MORE: Bad teammates J.T. Realmuto and Alec Bohm are unvaccinated, but the Phillies won’t miss them

Toronto starter José Berríos gave the Phillies one of the better outings of his season so far. He struck out 13 batters and allowed six hits and three earned runs. The Phillies weren’t able to do much else after that. After Berríos exited ahead of the seventh inning, the Phillies offense put up only one hit over their next three innings and finished their night with 14 strikeouts.

“That’s the guy that I saw in Minnesota,” Thomson said of Berríos. “First pitch strikes, using all of his pitches, throwing all of his pitches for strikes. You’ve got to give him credit. He was really good.”

One of the few bright spots in the Phillies’ 4-3 loss on Tuesday was Stott, who finished his night 2-for-4 with a home run. The hits have not been raining down for Stott, but he is hitting the ball hard, thanks to a few adjustments he made with Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long.

Stott said the two got together when the Phillies were in Texas in mid-June. Long noticed Stott was hitting a few balls hard but wasn’t getting on top of the barrel.

“I got with K-Long and realized I was hitting too many popouts,” Stott said. “Kind of cleaned up my path a little bit. And tried to get to the top of more stuff that will turn to line drives. Because that’s just the way my swing works. I’m a lefty that throws righty, so it’s already going up. I don’t need to try to force it up.

“I grew up doing everything left-handed, so my top hand is pretty strong, as a righty-thrower. Using my left hand to try to hit the ball is what I think about. And it’s kind of kept my swing in line.”

This is a mindset adjustment rather than a mechanical one. Stott says it’s still in the process of coming together, but he’s optimistic because his strikeouts are down and his exit velocity is up. From July 1-July 12, Stott has an average exit velocity of 92 mph, per Baseball Savant. He averaged 87.8 mph for the month of June.

“I don’t think the numbers are saying that it’s all coming together, but I’ve hit a bunch of balls hard,” Stott said. “K-Long always laughs, he says he’s never seen anything like it. Every ball I hit, they’re standing there. They’re not even moving, they’re just catching it. So that’s baseball. You’ve just got to keep swinging and keep going.”