Phillies see 'good base' for rotation despite uneven results

SEATTLE — Jerad Eickhoff concluded an extended bullpen session Wednesday morning at Safeco Field and gravitated toward Bob McClure. The Phillies pitching coach encouraged his young righthander, who turns 27 this weekend and has not pitched in a game for two weeks because of a sore back. Their chat continued from the bullpen to left field, where the two men stopped.

This is a test. The Phillies believe in Eickhoff, that he can be a piece for the future, despite his uneven 2017 season. Not an ace, but a piece. The club's rebuilding process does not hinge on Eickhoff or Aaron Nola or Vince Velasquez or Nick Pivetta. But Phillies executives have stressed a desire to grow their pitching corps rather than buy expensive and fragile arms.

The first 77 games yielded incomplete results. The rotation's 4.96 ERA ranked 13th in the National League through Wednesday. The starters were 14th in strikeout rate but sixth in walk rate. They had thrown 92 pitches per start, right at the NL average. They had logged 30 quality starts, and only two teams have fewer.

"I really believe we have a good base for the future," McClure said. "We have a stronger base than most clubs."

The emphasis is on base because no one will pretend the Phillies own a potential major-league ace, or even a bona fide No. 2 starter. There are, maybe, a dozen "aces" across the game. They are rare.

McClure looks at Nola and Eickhoff and sees two pitchers who, with good command, know how to pitch and have the aptitude to live on the edges without an overpowering arsenal. That is not easily attained. They both have flashed those abilities. But, without consistent results, it is harder to project. They may be No. 4 starters on a good team, with the upside of slotting as No. 3s.

"I think Nola is on the way back to where he was," Phillies manager Pete Mackanin said. "He went through a period where he struggled and I think he's pitched his way out of that. So that's encouraging. Eickhoff, we have to continue to wait. After what he did last year, he's in that same kind of a period. Is he going to rebound or is he going to go backward or will he stay stagnant?"

McClure is more confident in Eickhoff's future, that he is more like the pitcher who threw 197 innings with a 3.65 ERA last season.

"There's no indication in my mind that that's not the type of pitcher he's going to be," McClure said. "A guy who is going to pitch between 175 and 200 innings for you, every year. I think he's that kind of guy."

Similar mysteries apply to Pivetta and Velasquez, the two arms in the rotation with the best stuff. Velasquez, sidelined since the end of May with an elbow injury, will begin his rehab this weekend with triple-A Lehigh Valley.

Both possess fastballs that hover at 96 mph. They can throw their fastballs in fastball counts and still succeed, but that will carry them only so far. The second-half priority is to develop their secondary offerings.

Those two stand out because they do not resemble most of the Phillies starters from double A to the majors. There are no projectable top-of-the-line pitchers. Zach Eflin, Jake Thompson, Ben Lively, Mark Appel, and Thomas Eshelman could be No. 5 starters or relievers in the majors. Drew Anderson, 23, has pitched well for double-A Reading and has a slightly higher ceiling.

Below that, the Phillies have a collection of hard-throwing starters in single-A ball, led by Sixto Sanchez. But it's difficult to hinge hopes on a bunch of single-A arms.

The Phillies are not likely to spend money this winter on a free-agent starter such as Yu Darvish or Jake Arrieta, not until they believe they are closer to contention. Can they inch closer to contention without a frontline starter? One key could be the top pick in next June's draft, with big Florida righthander Brady Singer as a possible option.

McClure, for now, will value quantity over quality. He thought about 2009, when as pitching coach for Kansas City he boasted a Cy Young Award-winning pitcher in Zack Greinke on a team that lost 97 games. Brian Bannister, Luke Hochevar, Gil Meche, and Kyle Davies each started at least 22 games and none posted an ERA below 4.73. Only Hochevar, as a reliever, had a future with the Royals.

The club, after the 2010 season, dealt Greinke because the ace had more value to them in a trade rather than topping an otherwise empty rotation. The Phillies, in this instance, find themselves in a reverse situation.

It's reasonable to wonder how much the current conditions have affected the Phillies' starters. For one, they are all righthanded and feature similar styles (with the exception of Pivetta and Velasquez). They have not thrown to a veteran catcher. They have pitched with limited offensive support.

But McClure pointed to an unstable routine during the season's first two months as something to consider. Had the Phillies entered the season with the goal of contending for a postseason spot, McClure said he would have kept his best three starters on a regular schedule, pitching every fifth day. Instead, the Phillies opted to keep everyone in line, and that resulted in some longer periods between starts.

The spacing improved in June. So did, as a whole, the rotation's results.

"I don't think it was a mistake," McClure said. "It was by design. I didn't think they'd get out of tune that much."

Eickhoff did not pitch back-to-back starts on regular (four days') rest until June. The rotation had a 6.55 ERA in May and so far a 4.18 ERA in June. That upward trend has convinced McClure there are pieces to a decent big-league rotation in the current collection of Phillies arms.

"No question," McClure said. "And I definitely think Eick is one of them. He hasn't shown it this year. He showed it last year. But you know what? Pitching happens like that."