After taking first place back from the Atlanta Braves the Phillies find themselves a game back heading into a 2 game series with the Red Sox and a 5 game tilt with the Mets. Their month still contains 6 games against the Nationals and a trip north to Toronto. It isn’t a slog like their June schedule, but it also isn’t a cake walk. The now surging Braves get to beat up the Marlins with some semi difficult series against the Pirates, Rays, and Rockies sprinkled in. The schedule is not going to give the Phillies any breaks. But all of this is really not that relevant to the big picture, because as long as no one totally face plants the division will come down to the last 11 games. The Braves and Phillies will meet 7 times in the last 11 games. The Phillies have a 4 game interlude in Colorado and the Braves get 3 in New York against the Mets. Regardless of how far the spread is, those 7 games represent fate resting in the hands of both teams.
That is the end of September. If the Phillies can’t win the division before the end of the month, they can sure try to build some cushion going into those final games. That is where September 1 comes in. Since the trade deadline, here all of the Phillies options and recalls:
- Option Edubray Ramos
- Activate Aaron Loup
- Activate Adam Morgan
- Option Jake Thompson
- Option Yacksel Rios
- Option Dylan Cozens
- Recall Enyel De Los Santos
- Option Enyel De Los Santos
- Active J.P. Crawford
- Activate Justin Bour
- Option Zach Eflin
- Option J.P. Crawford
- Recall Hector Neris
They still have to activate Wilson Ramos, they still need another starting pitcher this week, and they still need to reactivate Zach Eflin after his 10 days in AAA purgatory. The road to and from Philly will be busy, and this is why September 1 is important. The Phillies have no healthy members of the 40 man roster who are not in AAA and ready to contribute in some way.
Let’s imagine that Knapp goes down for Ramos, Neris goes down for the extra SP (likely Ranger Suarez), extra SP goes down, Ramos goes up, then a RP goes down and Eflin comes up. That means on September 1 this the Phillies callup list:
- C Andrew Knapp
- 2B Jesmuel Valentin
- SS J.P. Crawford
- 3B Mitch Walding
- OF Dylan Cozens
- OF Aaron Altherr
- LHP Ranger Suarez
- RHP Enyel De Los Santos
- RHP Drew Anderson
- RHP Mark Leiter Jr.
- RHP Edubray Ramos
- RHP Yacksel Rios
- RHP Hector Neris
That is 13 callups bring the Phillies to 38 people on the active roster. Ben Lively is out for the year. They could be willing to give him a month of service time and pay to 60 day DL him and reactivate Pedro Florimon. Jose Taveras is working in his rehab as a reliever. He could be up as well. If Jerad Eickhoff comes back healthy they could designate one of their fringe arms or bats for him and activate him from the 60 day DL. There are a couple of paths here to a 40 man active roster in September. The Phillies would have a 11 man bench with a big pinch hitter in Bour and some interesting situational bats in Quinn and hopefully Altherr, Crawford, and Kingery. They can easily double switch and pinch hit early and often for their young starting pitchers. Additionally, they will functionally have a “hands team” to swap in a full suite of defensive replacements. They would be able to run a 15 man bullpen with functionally 4 long men in Suarez, De Los Santos, Anderson, and Leiter where they can pull Velasquez, Eflin, and Pivetta early to keep them fresh. They would only be asking there pitchers to go through an order once and get 2-ish innings. That gives them a bullpen with righty killers like Ramos, Rios, and Garcia, guys with reverse splits like Hunter and Neris, as well as some lefties they just need to deploy as LOOGYs. That is all before handing games off to a hopefully more rested Arano, Dominguez, and Neshek.
In all likelihood it is coming to be unpleasant baseball in September. The Phillies know those final games matter and they know their team is not overwhelmingly good. The Phillies have added at the fringes and in the end they are going to throw the organization at trying to make the playoffs. Who knows if it will work, at very least it will stop the puzzling near daily roster moves.