Have the Philadelphia Phillies finally found their shutdown reliever?

Tommy Hunter has turned into an elite reliever for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Just over a quarter of the way through the 2020 MLB season, and the Philadelphia Phillies still had the worst bullpen in all of baseball history. That is not an exaggeration, the team’s bullpen literally had the highest collective ERA since the stat was tracked. Multiple pitchers working out of the pen’ had earned run averages clocking in at well north of 10.00.

Now, sitting at 20-17 and just 2.0 games behind the Braves for first place in the NL East, the Philadelphia Phillies have finally found a reliever that they can trust.

For what it’s worth, Matt Klentak’s initial strategy of just “scraping by” in the relief department was an absolute disaster. He signed a variety of fringe-level free agents in the offseason, and put a majority of his stock into young guys who had no real upwards projection. Veterans we’ve never heard of before like Deolis Guerra and Trevor Kelley repeatedly blew games, and younger arms like Austin Davis and Cole Irvin were throwing batting practice caliber fastballs.

Twelve games into the season and things weren’t looking any better for 34 year old veteran Tommy Hunter. The RHP was coming off a season lost to injury, and there was some internal believe that he still had some gas left in the tank. However, with an 8.31 ERA following a loss to the Orioles on August 11th, it seemed like he was yet another bullpen arm destined to be DFA’d.

The ever confident journeyman reliever had other plans.

Following his poor outing against Baltimore, there seemed to be a shift in Hunter’s mental state. He went on record stating that he was frustrated with the amount of criticism that him and his fellow relievers were taking, he appeared to be more vocal and outspoken around his teammates, and most importantly he started pitching better.

In Hunter’s last 11.2 IP he’s allowed just one run and seven total hits, while also recording an eye-popping 11 strikeouts. He’s frequently been called upon to pitch during high-leverage situations, and he’s managed to navigate the team out of jams on multiple occasions.

During this stretch of unforeseen brilliance, the Philadelphia Phillies are also 10-1 as a team when Hunter pitches. Considering that he’s been primarily used as a 7th/8th inning arm, and sometimes even as a closer, this is a pretty significant statistic.

A lot of people have seemed quite surprised by this recent stretch of dominance we’ve seen from Hunter, but in all reality this is exactly what the Philadelphia Phillies signed him to do. When he was inked to a contract back in 2018, he was coming off a season with the Rays where he recorded a 2.61 ERA across 60+ innings. Health has always been a concern with the veteran, but when he’s not battling injuries, he’s been a fairly reliable bullpen arm pretty much wherever he goes.

Following the team’s double-header with the Red Sox on Tuesday, they will square off with the Miami Marlins in a brutal seven game series. Considering how close they are in the standings, and how well Miami has been playing as of late, this series will all but decide who makes the playoffs in the NL East. The Phillies will likely be relying on Hunter all series long to continue his recent dominance.