Larry Bowa considered it once.
After a delightful series of off-day Mondays in 2001, the Phillies starting rotation had grown accustomed to a certain amount of rest. They had gone 10-5 since that cycle had started in late July, and when the Phillies found a button that worked, they jammed it as hard as they could, repeatedly. Omar Daal, Nelson Figueroa, and Robert Person would be fine, they assumed, but Brandon Duckworth and Dave Coggin were rookies who had already hit their innings total from the previous year and it wasn’t even September. So, with Randy Wolf coming off the DL, Bowa raised the possibility of a six-man rotation to keep the extra day of rest going. Bowa said they’d give it a shot until mid-September.
“Then we’ll figure out who’s stinking it up and who’s doing good,” Bowa said. “If nobody is stinking it up, then we’ll keep going.”
Matt Klentak talked about it, too.
In 2016, everyone was talking about Jake Thompson, the young hotshot starter on his way up the big leagues from Lehigh Valley. The 22-year-old had a 1.21 ERA in 11 starts. And if you remember the 2016 Phillies, then you know numbers like that were good enough to get you a job pretty much instantly. A team with 50 innings to give Brett Oberholtzer isn’t going to be picky. So, with Thompson waiting for the call, and Jeremy Hellickson on the cusp of returning from injury, the Phillies thought perhaps having them join Vince Velasquez, Aaron Nola, Jerad Eickhoff, and Zach Eflin. It wouldn’t even be a new idea, as they had gone with a six-man rotation the previous year, too, with Nola, Eickhoff, Alec Asher, Adam Morgan, David Buchanan, and Aaron Harang, and that had totally worked out, as long as you didn’t factor in the numbers or the standings.
But it wasn’t really about “success” in 2016, it was about getting a look at youngsters, giving them breathing room to get comfortable, and making sure their young arms weren’t ground into dust. For veterans like Hellickson and Harang, it was about proving that they could pitch well enough for another, better team to come along and trade for them. And everybody was feeling the heat of not just the summer, but of being ten games under .500.
“An extra day of rest would be welcome,” wrote Matt Breen in the “Inquirer,” presumably about the Phillies rotation.
And once again, here in 2024, the Phillies are talking about a six-man rotation. In practice, there’s nothing truly weird about it. Instead of looping back around to your ace every fifth day there’s another guy. The benefits were clear to the Phillies in 2001 and 2016: rest. Pitchers’ arms are taxed endlessly throughout the season, and we’ve seen key members of the current Phillies’ pitching staff waver in September and October due to the gauntlet of six months of starts.
Now, with the surprise dominance of Spencer Turnbull and the return of Taijuan Walker, the Phillies have a choice to make. Walker could take Turnbull’s spot and Turnbull could go to the bullpen, serving as a long reliever and spot starter. They could have Turnbull “piggyback” starts from Cristopher Sánchez or Walker, providing a cushion for the back of the Phillies rotation as well as the bullpen. They could simply wait until an opposing lineup is decided and make a choice about who starts, a righty (Turnbull or Walker) or a lefty (Sánchez), or which one has better numbers against the other team specifically.
Rob Thomson is playing coy, but no matter what the Phillies decide to do, even having the option of going to a six-man rotation is something of a luxury. Not everyone watching trusts every starter—Zack Wheeler has really upped his pitch count in his last two starts, Nola is Nola, Sánchez’s change-up was looking mighty hittable the last time he was on the mound, Walker allows a lot of hard contact (I didn’t mention Ranger Suarez on purpose, because Ranger Suarez is perfect, not to mention the National League Player of the Month).
Everybody has a bad day, but in the end, the Phillies have six guys who can make a start and give you at least five survivable innings of work. They’ve proven that.
So what would the benefits be for going to a six-man rotation?
- It softens the workload on the top of the rotation, keeping them healthy for the postseason.
- An extra rest for every starter, which is important when you have guys on innings limits for the season, but I don’t think the Phillies have any of those.
- Higher pitch counts per start because of the extra cushion, so maybe you see Wheeler throw 120-130 pitches if things aren’t going terribly, knowing he’ll get recovery time.
- A lower injury risk.
What are the negatives? Throwing a guy out of his routine, or rhythm; Bowa said in 2001 that a starter can lose his touch, feel, or location. Prep and routine can be incredibly important to starting pitchers, and messing with that may throw them off their game. Maybe a guy gets perturbed that his job is to make half a start before he’s replaced at the first sign of trouble.
Robert Person said he was into the idea, but he was coming off an ERA over 8.00 in the month of June. Matt Klentak liked the idea, but he was just making sure everyone knew the Phillies were going to do whatever they wanted. In past cases, including all three I brought up here, going to a six-man rotation had a lot to do with somebody coming back from injury and rest being a key benefit.
So, the Phillies have a choice to make: Six-man rotation? Piggybacking? Play the match-ups? Or perhaps a fourth, even crazier option, like the one the “Inquirer” put out there in 1989 after the Phillies added two new starters to an already crowded staff: “The Phillies could have a seven-man rotation at this point.”
