Forget 1964. The Phillies should eye the postseason, particularly with the bullpen

The good thing about being born in 1982 is that you weren’t alive when 1964 happened. True, you had to wait 26 years for a championship. But that is nothing compared to the mental and emotional damage inflicted by the Phillies’ epic collapse with 12 games to play (not to mention the LSD).

It’s sad, really. The old-timers have spent the last 60 years of their lives waiting for the other shoe to drop. The lasting lesson seems to have been that nothing good can last. The Phillies are on pace for 111 wins? We’ve seen it before, kid. The Eagles are off to a hot start? Let me tell you about 1964, sonny. Daughter’s new boyfriend seems surprisingly normal? That’s what Gene Mauch said!

Well, the Phillies’ current 9-game division lead is enough for me. Rob Thomson and Dave Dombrowski shouldn’t start planning the parade route just yet. But they do have the luxury of turning a portion of their attention toward postseason preparedness. The goal between now and October: Figure out how to turn a very good bullpen into a dominant, airtight force that will give the Phillies a decisive edge in the playoffs.

Thomson’s job is twofold. One, figure out what he has in young Orion Kerkering. Two, figure out the best way to combine that with what he has in José Alvarado and Jeff Hoffman.

Dombrowski’s job: Cash in his trade chips for a fourth elite late-innings arm, preferably a late-innings ace who can serve as his go-to choice for the middle of the order in the eighth or the ninth and allow Thomson to mix-and-match the other three. Combine that with Matt Strahm in the middle innings and watch opponents start to sweat the second time through the order.

Let me be clear about my vision here. The Phillies already have a very good bullpen, but having a very good bullpen in June rarely means that your bullpen is good enough. Often, it simply means that you have the building blocks for a great bullpen, the kind that can insulate a team from the game-to-game variability that undermines the World Series hopes of so many great regular seasons. What matters is what happens between now and then, both in solidifying from within and complementing from external sources.

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The greatest bullpens offer a degree of constancy/certainty that simply does not exist elsewhere in the playoffs, due to the inconstancy of hitting and starting pitching. The greatest of hitters go 0-for-8 all the time. The greatest of rotations can count on allowing two or three runs in six or seven innings more often than not. The greatest of bullpens can throw up a zero nearly every inning it pitches. I’m talking about a bullpen that virtually eliminates the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings as a consideration. Thomson saw it firsthand during his time with the Yankees. The rest of us saw it in 2008.

The wild card is the same as it was last October. The big question: Who is Orion Kerkering, and how heavily will the Phillies be able to lean on him once the postseason has arrived? To date, the bulk of his outings have come in low- and medium-leverage situations. That is by design, and a well-reasoned one. Kerkering is far from a finished product, and his skill set is unorthodox enough to require some care in handling.

Through 22 appearances, Kerkering has been something less than dominant, while still being effective (1.52 ERA with 26 strikeouts and five walks in 23⅔ innings). The question now is whether he can become devastating by the time the postseason arrives. It is still mostly a case of wait-and-see. But if he continues as he has lately, with 12 strikeouts in opponents’ last 21 plate appearances, the goal will shift to exposing him to the sorts of situations that mimic the ones he will face as a primary option in a playoff bullpen. I wouldn’t count on him as a lights-out closer this season. But we’ll see.

You know the season is going well when your biggest concern is a closer who is 12-for-14 in save chances with a 3.41 ERA. I say that mostly for effect. Alvarado is far from a liability. The meltdown against the Mets in London was unfortunate and nothing more. In the 28 appearances that preceded it, Alvarado posted a 1.35 ERA. He’s been pretty darn effective since that ugly opening day outing against the Braves, when he allowed five of seven batters to reach base, all of them scoring.

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That said, “effective” isn’t necessarily the adjective a championship team is searching for in its closer. We’ve seen Alvarado in much greater form than that. Up until his stint on the injured list last May, he was dominant, or pretty close to it. From mid-June 2022 through late April 2023, he allowed exactly six earned runs in 49⅓ innings with a whopping 88 strikeouts against a mere 12 walks. In his first 12 appearances of last season, he retired 37 of the 43 batters he faced, 24 via strikeout.

That’s a different pitcher than the one who returned from the IL last June. This year, his strikeout percentage has dropped to 26.9 from 37.6 in the previous two regular seasons. His ground ball percentage has dipped from 55.1 to 50. His swing-and-miss percentage has fallen from 33.8 to 23.8.

Just to reiterate, all of these numbers are still at a level that belong in the back end of a championship bullpen. The question is where, particularly in light of Alvarado’s regression against righties.

When Alvarado first emerged in his current role as the Phillies’ unquestioned high-leverage relief ace, the platoon advantage was hardly one at all. It didn’t matter what side of the plate a hitter happened to be standing on. Alvarado was the best option. In 2022, he held righties to a .188 average and .564 OPS while striking out nearly half of them.

Fast forward to this season through Wednesday, when righties are hitting .239 with a .667 OPS while striking out in “only” 23 of 71 at-bats. Thing is, Alvarado is on pace to face significantly more righties than he did in either 2022 or 2023.

Another point of interest: Alvarado’s splits against lefties are better than they’ve ever been. As of Wednesday, he’d held them to 4-for-34 with one extra base hit, good enough for a .118 average and .336 OPS (career marks: .196 and .549).

If ever there was a time to sell out for such an arm, this season is it.

Reality is, the rotation’s dominance has masked some of the more concerning aspects of this bullpen. As effective as Alvarado, Hoffman, Strahm, and Kerkering have been, the drop off after them is massive. Seranthony Dominguez does not inspire confidence, regardless of recent results. Gregory Soto has regressed from maddeningly inconsistent to consistently maddening. Keep in mind, in last year’s NLCS, the Phillies’ fifth through eighth relievers logged eight innings, including Kerkering’s ride on the struggle bus in the Game 3 and 4 losses.

As a whole, the bullpen has been very good, but not elite. One area of note: they rank in the middle of the pack in stranding inherited runners. Perhaps the greatest benefit of adding a closer type would be freeing Thomson up to deploy Alvarado in the dicey situations where he has long excelled.

Playing matchups isn’t as easy as it was before the three-batter rule. But the Phillies would be well positioned to do it with Alvarado and Strahm from the left side and Kerkering and Hoffman from the right side. The guy they are missing is the classic elite, shutdown, closer-type strikeout arm who can handle the highest-leverage pocket of the lineup in the eighth or ninth inning.

That’s Dombrowski’s mission. Thomson can handle the rest.