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Will Phillies tinker with bullpen? Probably not

CLEARWATER, Fla. - It was impossible to ignore last October. They called it a revolution, one that spawned dozens of think pieces and praise for forward-thinking managers who deployed their bullpens in aggressive and unconventional methods during the postseason. The modern bullpen, filled with one-inning pitchers, was dead. The era of extreme specialization was over.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - It was impossible to ignore last October. They called it a revolution, one that spawned dozens of think pieces and praise for forward-thinking managers who deployed their bullpens in aggressive and unconventional methods during the postseason. The modern bullpen, filled with one-inning pitchers, was dead. The era of extreme specialization was over.

Or not.

"If you try to do what they did all year, you would kill these guys," Phillies assistant pitching coach Rick Kranitz said. "You really would. It's just impossible to do it."

The postseason at least forced some baseball people to think about it. At the time, it felt like an inflection point. More and more teams have placed a lower value on saves, but shutdown, hard-throwing relievers have regained prominence on the open market. The Indians, Dodgers, and Cubs applied theories about high-leverage situations in the most pressure-packed environment.

Baseball, being the copycat industry it is, could duplicate that strategy in 2017. The Phillies, a rebuilding team, could be an intriguing lab for experimentation. They boast three relievers - Jeanmar Gomez, Hector Neris and Edubray Ramos - who have experience pitching multiple innings. They have another, Joaquin Benoit, who is better served as a one-inning man at age 39.

But Neris cast doubt on the idea.

"It's 162 games," he said. "If it was only for a week, that's OK. But you have to think about 162 games. It's not simple to throw two innings every time you go to the mound. You have to be ready for September. And what happens if you go to the playoffs? You don't have the arms."

That is, generally, how the Phillies' decision makers view the situation. They may attempt to condition all of their relievers this spring for multiple-inning assignments, but a sea change is difficult to foresee.

"Andrew Miller is a special case, put him aside," Phillies president Andy MacPhail said last week. "But I'm not a proponent philosophically. It's a long season. I think it took its toll just in the postseason because the postseason's a month and those guys weren't throwing at the end of the month the way they were at the beginning. I don't think that's an accident. And I sure don't think you can play 162 games like that.

"We're not that prideful that if someone demonstrates it, and really can work with it, then we'll make adjustments depending on the person."

This sort of usage is far from a new idea. Miller, in essence, filled the "fireman" role popularized in the 1980s. The height of two-inning relief stints came in 1982, which featured 2,885 such appearances, according to Baseball-Reference. In 2016, there were 1,655 appearances by relievers that lasted two or more innings, the most in the majors since 2009.

But the five teams with the fewest two-plus inning relief appearances last season all qualified for the postseason. San Francisco did it the least (34). And, conspicuously, the Cubs (35) and Indians (42) were not far behind.

The Phillies, during the regular season, had a reliever record two or more innings 55 times. That ranked 15th in the majors. When manager Pete Mackanin asked a reliever to extend, it usually came in a blowout scenario. The Phillies logged 98 relief appearances of four outs or more, which ranked 22nd in baseball.

The teams at the top of the list, generally, were those out of contention with weak starting rotations that required heavy lifting by the bullpen. That is one reason to question whether a trend is really materializing.

But there were instances when Mackanin sought a strategic advantage in pushing his best arms. Neris recorded four outs or more in nine different games. Gomez did it six times, Ramos five.

"You pick your spots and do it," Kranitz said. "I thought Pete did a good job of that."

As Gomez watched the World Series last fall, he guessed that teams would imitate the blueprint in 2017. After all, Gomez said, the trend started once Kansas City rode its bullpen full of rubber-armed relievers to a title in 2015.

"It'll depend on the manager," Gomez said.

For now, Mackanin is pleased to have an abundance of late-inning options. That was not the case last spring. Just as Gomez emerged for a few months in 2016, someone else will. And, maybe, the Phillies will tinker with established roles because there are pitchers who can handle it.

"That's beautiful," Kranitz said. "You want to have guys to be able to do the job when somebody's off. He just plugs right in."

mgelb@philly.com

@MattGelb