It used to be, they’d hang up a rug and tell you to throw a baseball at it. Assuming you could do that, they’d eventually nod and stand up and draw a three-by-three grid on it, giving each zone a number, one through nine. They’d tell you to aim for each number until you could hit them at will. And if you couldn’t do that, well, just go back to throwing at that rug as hard as you can.
And that’s how they figured if you were a fastball pitcher or a finesse pitcher. Of course, they also might have told you to base your delivery off a shot-putter or prescribed whiskey for a forearm strain.
Baseball has changed a lot. And so, it seems, have the Phillies’ priorities in looking for pitching help.
When Dave Dombrowski came to the Phillies, he spent a year with a hand on his chin, observing, and then got to work. As he addressed the team’s pitching needs by first acquiring José Alvarado, a trend emerged: He liked pitchers who could throw. Hard. That they occasionally had the aim of a machine gun falling down a staircase didn’t seem to matter.
From 2021 onward, he acquired Alvarado, Sam Coonrod, Corey Knebel, Jeurys Familia, Gregory Soto, Craig Kimbrel, and Jeff Hoffman, all of whom could throw a fastball on the other side of 95 mph, with some of them capable of hitting triple digits. Did the Phillies know each of these guys could throw that hard when they brought them in? Not always. Did every one of those acquisitions work out for them? You and I both know that they did not–and also that other pitchers were acquired in that time whose velocity was not as impressive.
The team wasn’t afraid to spend, but relievers are usually a short-term investment. They live off one or two year deals, and you never know where your most effective one will come from.
But regardless of the outcome, the Phillies had decided high velocity was what they wanted to throw at hitters late in the game. The results were occasional misfires with the consolation prize of two deep playoff runs. There are, of course, those among us for whom Yordan Alvarez’s killing stroke off Alvarado in 2022 or Kimbrel’s final offerings getting smoked, twice, into the October breeze in 2023, have overtaken any joy felt leading up to those moments. A playoff team can dress itself in disappointment, but in the end, it’s a reliever who’s going to wear it. But despite the outcomes, Dombrowski’s approach created one of the deepest pitching staffs in the league.
This winter, like all winters, the Phillies are again shopping for bullpen help on the relief market. Only this time, they’ve been perusing the finesse aisle.
This isn’t because they stopped believing in the power of the fastball. And it’s at least partially due to who’s available and how much the Phillies want to spend. But as the biggest names find homes–most recently ex-Phillies closer Hector Neris signed with the Cubs– the names we’ve seen the Phillies linked to have a specialty outside of flamethrowing.
Last week they signed Kolby Allard and reportedly showed interest in free agent pitchers Phil Maton and Jakob Junis. The Phillies winking in the direction of these three hurlers indicates that being able to throw a ball through a rug is not their sole area of focus as far as pitching talent goes.
Being left-handed will immediately get you some attention. But Allard’s trick as a pitcher in the Braves’ farm system from 2015 to 2019 was feeding hitters curveballs and change-ups until a fastball only had to be 90 mph to catch a hitter off guard. This worked a lot in the minors, but the concern from the Braves was that the 20-year-old’s 88-90 mph heater wouldn’t play as well in the big leagues as it had at Triple-A. And in time, they went from concerned to correct.
Now, Allard is 25; no longer the baby-faced soft-tosser using trickery to send hitters back to the dugout shaking their heads. He’s been photo-shopped into a Phillies uniform and is on their 40-man roster. There’s no telling exactly what kind of chance Allard will get with the Phillies, but with the Rangers in his first full big league season in 2021–with no trips to Triple-A or pandemics shortening it–Allard’s control and location-based skillset played better at home than away and against lefties than righties, but it never played very well. But regardless, the Phillies signed him to a one-year deal, seemingly believing that whatever’s been blocking Allard’s success was something they could break down.
Phil Maton you may recall from the time he gave up a hit to his brother, former Phillie Nick Maton, and promptly broke his pinky punching a locker. But he’s made his money not by making radar guns explode–his fastball tops out at about 94 mph–but by using a freakish spin rate. (His curveball comes at hitters with 3,144 RPM, which ranks in MLB’s 98th percentile). In 2023, the 30-year-old’s walk rate and K rate were nestled comfortably among career norms, but opponents’ BAA dropped to a career low of .204, and that was with his fastball at 89 mph (though lefties did hit .266 off him).
For the first half of 2023, Maton was having the best season of his career, and in many ways, he still was in September. But he allowed more walks and runs and fewer strikeouts in half the playing time, due to him getting dinged by a comebacker in August. Astros fans, always unhappy about something, became unhappy seeing Maton come into a high leverage situation in July and August. But his success last season has him projected to get a 2-year deal worth $14 million.
Finally, Jakob Junis, a new name in the ever-rare Phillies rumors that have trickled out this winter, may be the collision of both location and velocity. Drafted by the Royals in 2011, Junis was a Maton/Allard type, but in 2016 he found a new gear and really upped his arm speed. This led to him crossing over from a bullpen option to a projected No. 5 starter. Not a huge leap, but a significant one. Junis stayed with Kansas City until he hit free agency in 2022, then signed with the Giants, where things really got interesting.
While the Royals had been more interested in getting Junis out of the way to free up a spot for a young prospect, the Giants felt they had figured out the adjustments he’d need to increase his velocity and make his pitches more effective. They had him move to a two-seamer and shut down his cutter. They also helped him develop a change-up, which can make an average fastball faster by keeping batters off balance.
Junis had been trying to develop a change-up for years. It took a lot of the season, but he got the hang of it and eventually was able to throw a change without as much hand movement, giving it a disguise on the way to the plate that made it better at fooling hitters.
Junis’ appeal for the Phillies is also likely tied to his experience working in starts and relief, though his numbers in either role aren’t super comforting. But as a sixth or seventh starter and long reliever, no one’s really expecting them to be. The Phillies want depth, and with most of the bullpen and rotation jobs spoken for, they’re not going to find league-leaders submitting their resumes, they’re going to find guys like Junis who are still figuring out how to do multiple jobs.
“Throwing a great fastball is a combination of genes, coordination, and timing,” reads Nolan Ryan’s Pitcher’s Bible, “qualities that cannot be taught.”
Every pitcher wants to believe they are The Chosen One; the one who pulled their arm out of a stone or had it touched at birth by the hand of God. But Ryan, in this case, was absolutely correct. There are workouts and programs and coaching that benefit up-and-coming flamethrowers, but the best of them show up with an innate ability to throw a baseball through a rug.
“Most hard throwers are tall guys with big hands,” Ryan wrote, noting that he was naturally an exception to this rule. The reason is simple physics: They can throw with greater velocity, thanks to leverage and extension. The ball is closer to the plate when it leaves their hand. Their height makes it easier on the nickname brainstormers, as well, who can settle on “The Big Unit” or “The Big Fella” or “The Big Train” and call it a day.
Some guys start as hard-throwers and evolve into finesse pitchers later in their careers out of necessity; they age out of the upper-90s and come to rely on their wiles, like Greg Maddux–and some guys are just wily from day one, like Jamie Moyer.
Not everyone has to be the hardest thrower in the room. Some guys can hit a spot on the rug without burning a hole through it. And with a few lingering questions in their bullpen, the Phillies seem to be looking to them for a different kind of answer than they have in the recent past.
