Philadelphia Phillies: The rotation is faltering at the worst possible time

Heading into this year’s past offseason, the starting rotation ended up being a major point of emphasis for the Philadelphia Phillies. Upon being named the club’s newest president of baseball operations, Dave Dombrowski promtply went out and signed veterans Matt Moore and Chase Anderson for a combined $7 million, to go along with the $4 million that Vince Velasquez was already being paid through a previous arbitration agreement.

While the bullpen was the area that most fans had their attention honed in on following the conclusion of the shortened 2020 season, Dombrowski seemed to be operating under the belief that a better, deeper starting rotation would inversely help the ‘pen not be so tragic.

Just a few weeks into the season, and that logic completely went out the window. Both Moore and Anderson were deemed unusable after just a couple of starts, with both now residing in the bullpen full-time.

However, the Phillies were still getting some top-of-the-league type production out of the first three members of their starting rotation (Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, Zach Eflin) to kick off the 2021 campaign. While obviously the team would have preferred to see Moore and Anderson stick around past May, getting consistent strong starts from Wheeler, Nola, and Eflin was keeping them alive.

Even with Nola stringing together a handful of bad performances in May/early June, the Phillies still found themselves in a position where they had three starting pitchers in the top 15-20 in terms of fWAR around baseball.

At times, the Phillies were the only team in Major League Baseball with three starters ranked that high.

The Philadelphia Phillies trio of above average arms have picked a bad time to collectively go ice cold on the mound.

Unfortunately for the Phils, right when things were getting the hottest in the NL East, we’re finally beginning to see some consistent poor outings from the before mentioned trio.

Nola and Eflin combined to allow 13 runs in just 7.1 innings of work against the San Francisco Giants this past weekend, and Wheeler recorded the worst start of his Philadelphia Phillies career on Tuesday against the Washington Nationals, lasting just 3.0 innings.

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For a team that is so unbelievably top heavy when it comes to the starting pitching department, these types of performances simply aren’t going to cut it, and it’s putting the Phillies in danger of being relegated to a “selling” club by the time the trade deadline rolls around.

While Wheeler is the type of pitcher who will likely bounce back from his Tuesday stinker, Eflin on the other hand has been trending in the wrong direction for awhile now. His ERA has already raised .50 points since the start of June, and it hasn’t been below a 3.50 since May 7th. The Phillies lack of a competent defense has really hurt Eflin in particular this year, but he’s also on track to record a career-high in home runs allowed.

Nola’s struggles have been well documented this season, and there’s no telling what the rest of 2021 holds for him. His 7.2 innings of scoreless baseball against the Yankees on June 13th had us all feeling way better, but he of course followed that up with the shortest start of his MLB career against the Giants.

Reeling off a two-game sweep to the Nationals, with a four-game set against the New York Mets on deck, the Phillies trio of above average arms have really picked a poor time to go ice cold. This was a big week for the Phils in regards to the NL East standings, and they’re in major danger of knocking themselves out of the postseason run before it’s even really began.