Bring Back Pedro? Phils Face Tough Choices

Friday, November 6, 2009

By John R. Finger
CSNPhilly.com

If there is one thing the Phillies have going for them heading into the off-season it’s that they have five starting pitchers under contract and expected to be ready to go when spring training begins in Clearwater, Fla. next February.

However, as general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. knows all too well, five is never enough.

During the 2009 season the Phillies needed 12 different starting pitchers. More telling, the team did not have a single pitcher accumulate 200 innings and had just two pitchers make more than 25 starts.

Until Amaro signed Pedro Martinez and traded for Cliff Lee, the starting corps did not really gel together and find consistency. And even then it was a work in progress.

Needless to say, Amaro will attempt to add some depth to the starting staff during the off-season.

“I’d like to add some depth,” Amaro said. “We don’t have a ton of depth in our rotation and a lot of that will depend on Jamie’s health.”

Jamie, of course, is veteran lefty Jamie Moyer who not only is quickly approaching his 48th birthday, but he also heads into the final year of his two-year deal on the mend from abdomen and groin surgery. As of Friday, Moyer had been working out with light jogging and pool running and is expected to be ready to go full steam come February.

So when it comes depth, Amaro isn’t looking too far inward. Prospects Kyle Drabek and Andrew Carpenter are not quite there yet, and right-hander Kyle Kendrick could prove to be a bullpen piece.

As for Martinez, the Phillies have not yet reached out to the future Hall-of-Famer’s agent, though the pitcher has expressed an interest regarding a return.

However, Martinez was not as dependable as the Phillies would have liked. During the final weeks of the season Martinez pitched just seven innings after his 130-pitch effort on Sept. 13 and pitched on four days rest just once through the postseason.

That one start turned out to be the loss in Game 6 of the World Series.

“We’re not quite sure because he really didn’t do it at the end of the year,” Amaro said about Martinez’s consistency. “I’m not really sure how many times he pitched on a five-day routine, so it’s hard to tell on how he threw this year.”

Cole Hamels, on the other hand, did take the ball every five days though not with much effectiveness. After the star turn in last year’s NLCS and World Series, Hamels wasn’t very good. He went 10-11 with a 4.32 ERA during the regular season and was just dreadful during the postseason.

In four postseason starts, Hamels allowed 16 earned runs in 19 innings and his implosion during Game 3 of the World Series proved to be a significant turning point in the Phillies’ demise.

Nevertheless, Amaro looks at Hamels’ season as nothing more than a hiccup in what should be a stellar career.

“He’s a top-of-the-rotation starter who had a tough year,” Amaro said. “He had to deal with some adversity for a change. It’s the first time where he’s ever had to deal with some struggles. We fully expect him to come back and be the pitcher he’s always been.”

Why?

“I have to go on the assessment on what we see on him from a scouting point-of-view,” Amaro said. “It would be hard to find a better left-hander in the league.”

Part of Hamels’ problem in ’09 was that he not only show up for the season unprepared, but also did not develop his repertoire of pitches. Worse, relying primarily on his changeup and fastball, Hamels didn’t have great command even with those pitches.

“If you look back at last year and what he did during the stretch, he was really a two-pitch pitcher,” Amaro continued. “He had problems with his command—the command of his fastball and the command of his changeup—and if he can get that going again… ideally it would be good for him to have a third pitch, but his other two pitcher were good enough to make him one of the better pitchers in the league.”

That doesn’t mean the Phillies won’t try. Though he could not comment on whether or not the Phillies would re-start their pursuit of Toronto’s ace, Roy Halladay, one has to expect that name to gain some momentum as the hot stove heats up.

Then again, there are a lot of things the Phillies can do.

“That could be a minor-league free agent or someone we acquire through a trade,” Amaro said. “We can add some depth to our rotation and we thought we had with seven or eight guys last year, but then all of a sudden, we didn’t. You can never have enough pitching.”

Certainly the Phillies learned that fact the hard way all season long. Sure, the Phillies are better off than a lot of teams heading into the off-season, but after Cliff Lee at the top, the Phillies have a lot of question marks.

The Phillies’ are just like a piece of Swiss cheese. Sure, it might taste good, but there sure are a lot of holes.

“If we only have those five and they are healthy, we’ll be fine,” Amaro said. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to improve on that.”

For more from John Finger visit his blog, “Finger Food.”