Given the fact that they're one of eight teams to have reached 60 wins this season, putting them 0.5 games back of the New York Mets for first place in the NL East, you would think the Philadelphia Phillies are unbeatable.
In most respects they are: their lineup is still top 10 in many categories (fourth in OBP, sixth in AVG, seventh in hits, ninth in runs) in spite of concerns about their aging hitting core, and their starters are among the best with their 52.0% Quality Start Percentage (first in MLB, only team above 50.0%) and 3.42 ERA (fourth).
However, there's one glaring hole in their team composition that they failed to address in the offseason, and will only get bigger if their latest rumored move materializes: the bullpen. Their relievers have a collective ERA of 4.33, the seventh-worst out of all teams in the bigs. It's a problem they've always had, one they've failed to address at every turn, and one whose solutions to it don't offer much hope.
Jesus Luzardo to the bullpen sounds great ... until you start thinking about it
Through the middle of May, Luzardo was one of the best starters in baseball with a 1.95 ERA in ten games, thus being one of the best offseason additions. Thanks to his insane strikeout rate (in those ten games, he averaged 6.7 strikeouts per outing), he was largely responsible for how good Philadelphia's starters were. And while he's still getting strikeouts at an elite level (he's at 6.4 strikeouts for the season), his run-stopping capabilities have gone down a couple of notches.
Since his last two starts of May, his ERA spiked to 6.64 in 12 games. After averaging 6.0 innings per starts in his first ten, he's gotten blown up and only lasted 5.1 since then, to the tune of a 4-8 record that has costed the Phillies.
He'll continue to be very valuable in the meantime, eating innings that their top three (
Christopher Sánchez, Ranger Suárez and Zack Wheeler) doesn't and in being available during Aaron Nola's absence. But come postseason time, these four would likely take up the rotation spots, which would leave Luzardo on the outside looking in.
That would put Luzardo in the same boat as Taijuan Walker, a promising offseason addition turned disappointment turned bullpen arm. The concept doesn't sound bad, but in Luzardo's case it would be particularly damming on two fronts. On the one hand, it's a further indictment on Dave Dombrowski for not improving a bullpen that has haunted them since the 2022 World Series against the Houston Astros, one that needed the addition of a 40-year-old David Robertson to help fix it. On the other, Luzardo is not fit for the role, considering a big part of his struggles over the last two months and a half have been pitching with runners on: for the season, he allows a .243 AVG with the bases empty, but a .284 (tied for 12th-highest in MLB) with runners on.