Former Phillies southpaw Cole Irvin thriving with his new team

A player who the Philadelphia Phillies wouldn’t even give an opportunity to in regards to last year’s starting rotation, 28 year old left-hander Cole Irvin has put together an extremely impressive start to the 2021 season. Across six starts for the Oakland Athletics, Irvin owns a 3.09 ERA, a 1.114 WHIP, and a 2.97 FIP.

For the sake of perspective, the only starter currently on the Phillies with a lower ERA than Irvin is that of Aaron Nola (2.89). Both Zack Wheeler and Zach Eflin currently sit at a 3.49.

Selected by the Phillies in the fifth round of the 2016 draft, Irvin steadily worked his way up through the Minor League system, debuting with the main roster on May 12th of 2019 – Mother’s Day. His first start in the big leagues was actually a fairly memorable one, as he went 7.0 innings, only allowing one run to cross the plate.

Despite Irvin’s fascinating introduction to the MLB, the rest of the 2019 season was not a good one for the left-hander. He only made two more starts following his debut, spending the rest of the season operating as a reliever out of the bullpen. He finished his rookie season with a 5.83 ERA and a 1.392 WHIP across 41.2 innings.

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Not great.

While Irvin remained with the Phillies throughout the shortened 2020 campaign, he barely got any Major League work. He only logged 3.2 innings, allowing seven runs in the process and finishing the year with an ERA north of 17.00. With the arrow undoubtedly trending downwards on the young southpaw, Irvin was pawned off to the Athletics during the offseason for some cash in return.

Initially, the Phillies fanbase seemed rather excited at the fact that Irvin would no longer be making appearances in red and white pinstripes. People had quickly soured on him following back-to-back below average seasons. However, in hindsight, Irvin appears to be an arm that the Phils likely would prefer to have at the moment.

Former Phillies LHP Cole Irvin is having himself quite the 2021 thus far.

Irvin has seemingly rebuilt himself with the Athletics over the last couple of months. Maybe the low-stress nature of pitching in Oakland has helped him settle in, or maybe he just needed the extra time to develop. Regardless, he’s quickly proven to be one of the better arms on a baseball team that’s jumped out to a 19-12 record.

Still pitching with rather low velocity, Irvin has really honed in on his pitch control. He’s finding the corners of the zone at a far higher rate than he was in Philly, and his walk rate is way down. Combine that with a career-high in strikeouts, and you’re looking at a very serviceable back-of-the-rotation arm.

Taking into account just how poor the Phillies’ own back-end starting pitching has been this season, I think it’s pretty safe to say that they’d appreciate an arm like Irvin in their rotation moving forward. You can only count on Vince Velasquez to get you through five innings so many times before it blows up in your face, and Chase Anderson hasn’t exactly been a beacon of success himself.

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Good for Cole Irvin battling through some early adversity though, definitely a “feel good” type of story.

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