Phillies decide time isn’t on their side as trade deadline passes | Bob Ford
On the day when contending teams were intent on adding players for the playoff push, the Phils had to subtract a pitcher who, until a few weeks ago, was optimistically expected to return and contribute.
The clock on the wall of the Phillies clubhouse was making its slow digital trek toward the trade deadline on Wednesday afternoon as reliever Dave Robertson stood at his locker and announced that time had officially expired on his season.
On the day when contending teams were intent on adding players for the playoff push, the Phils had to subtract a pitcher who, until a few weeks ago, was optimistically expected to return and contribute.
The news that the flexor tendon in Robertson’s right elbow had taken a turn for the worse wasn’t the most surprising of developments. Updates on his progress had gone dark very recently, and bad news regarding the health of the Phillies’ bullpen is never unexpected this year.
Still, it was ironic that the guy whose April injury put the first major hole in the roster didn’t exit the scene until the final day when the team could still try to fix things. Robertson was far from the gaudiest free-agent addition of the offseason, but he was supposed to solidify the bullpen. Signed for two seasons and $23 million, Robertson had the lowest earned run average among major-league relievers for the previous 10 seasons, and averaged 63 appearances per year.
“I’ve never had an injury like this before,” Robertson said at his locker. “I’ve been reexamined and reimaged and it’s worsened … and I think the only way to have my elbow fixed, to be able to get back on the playing field, is to surgically have it repaired.”
The injury to Robertson is on the long list of bullpen injuries that includes ones suffered by Tommy Hunter, Victor Arano, Edubray Ramos, Adam Morgan, Seranthony Dominguez, Pat Neshek, and Juan Nicasio. It’s been an amazing stretch of either bad luck or bad karma or something, but the result has been a really bad bullpen.
You can attribute the Phillies’ underwhelming season to whatever you choose, and there are some worthy candidates: the failures of the starting rotation, the overhyped offense, and the loss of leadoff hitter Andrew McCutchen. But put the bullpen situation right up there.
“On paper, starting the season, I thought we were going to be exceptional, and I didn’t think all of us would get injured,” Robertson said. “I had a pretty good run of getting a lot of appearances every season and I didn’t see why this season was going to be any different. I just feel that it was unlucky and my body just didn’t hold up this year.”
Leading up to the trade deadline, the front office had to decide whether the season’s expectations could still be saved. Those expectations were greater than just slipping into a wild-card playoff spot. If the organization chose to try for a deeper run in the first of Bryce Harper’s 13 years here, that would require looting its minor-league teams for prospects.
Judging by what the Phillies did, there was obviously no confidence that the situation could be fixed. This season has been the baseball equivalent of falling down a set of stairs. At some point, you stop trying to prevent the fall and start trying to cushion the landing. Trading for Zack Greinke is stopping the fall. Trading for Jason Vargas is cushioning the landing.
The Phils made moves for depth or just to get new guys they aren’t tired of yet. None of the moves cost them anything much, which should be all the information one needs. They sent “cash considerations” to Baltimore for starter Dan Straily, demoted in June to the minors with a 9.82 earned run average. It would be nice to know how much it costs to get a pitcher who gives up more than one earned run per inning pitched. Probably not a lot.
“We explored all that,” general manager Matt Klentak said, asked if the Phillies ever angled to get top players at the deadline, “and obviously we got what we got.”
The results speak for themselves, just as the standings speak for themselves. Klentak noted the injury issues, particularly to the bullpen, but he made it clear that the biggest disappointments came from the top down and not the bottom up.
“For this team to accomplish what it wants to accomplish, we’re going to need the stars in that room to carry us. We have the talent. We had a very splashy offseason,” Klentak said. “We brought in a lot of talent and those guys are going to have to do what they do to push us into October.”
That sounded like an indictment of the good, but not great, seasons of Harper, J.T. Realmuto, Jean Segura, and the core of everyday players. If so, it is also the reason the team shut down its championship aspirations and settled instead for a less uncomfortable landing to the season.
The clubhouse has taken all this in, and the team knows where it stands with the front office. Manager Gabe Kapler’s job got tougher Wednesday, although he chose to look at it another way.
“I think the first thing baseball players think is, ‘We have the guys in this room.’ While you’re always thinking about how you can get better, you’re always looking to your left and your right and saying, ‘I believe in this guy. I believe in that guy,’” Kapler said. “One of the things I found last year was we got to the middle of the summer and our guys really believed in the guys in that room.”
A nice sentiment, but, of course, they were also wrong. The real lesson of last season is different, and one that the front office obviously took to heart. It is very hard to unslip on the stairway once you have already started down.