Philly Front Office

The Milwaukee Brewers have been around for 55 years. In that time, they have made essentially 3 trades with the Phillies. In 1972, the Phillies traded away the all-time name trio of Bill Champion, Don Money, and John Vukovich. In 2006, the Brewers took the salary of intentional-strikeout David Bell off our hands.¹ Then there is maybe the single worst deadline addition the team has ever made. On August 31, 2020 the Brewers traded reliever David Phelps to the Phillies and the season tanked.

Monday, September 1 at 4:10p – Phillies win 10-8!
Wednesday, September 3 at 7:40p – Aaron Nola vs Jose Quintana (L)
Thursday, September 4 at 4:10p – Ranger Suarez vs Freddy Peralta (R)

3 game series at American Family Field in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Before we get to Phelps, if anyone remembers the Covid shortened Phillies 2020 season for anything, it’s that this was the most atrocious bullpen you’ve ever seen. Even with only 30 games in the book, it was an all-timer in terms of bad performance. Some of the great names at the time were Tommy Hunter, Adam Morgan, Blake Parker, Connor Brogdon, Ramon Rosso, and Reggie McClain. To add insult to injury, our best reliever, Jose Alvarez was absolutely dominant…until he got hit with a line drive to the nuts and was lost for the season.

The Phillies were treading water at 15-15 at the deadline and the potent offense needed help desperately. They decided to really go for it and brought in reinforcements…

• David Hale from the Yankees; ERA with New York 3.00
• Heath Hembree from the Red Sox; ERA with Boston 5.59
• Brandon Workman from the Red Sox; ERA with Boston 4.05
• David Phelps from the Brewers; ERA with Milwaukee 2.77

That’s a pretty complete retooling for the final half of the season. So, how did it go? (deep sigh)

Hale was respectable with a 4.09 ERA, but Hembree and Workman were god awful. In 9.1 innings, Hembree gave up 7 HRs and had a 12.54 ERA, good for -.6 WAR. Why do we remember Workman as even worse despite (only) a 6.92 ERA in 13 innings? Well, because he managed 32 baserunners in those 13 innings! That’s a 2.462 WHIP. Miserable.

No one was worse than Phelps though. When he came in, we thought we had a legitimate closer on our hands. With the Brewers his batting average against was .156 with a .497 OPS. That’s elite stuff. With the Phillies, yikes. Those numbers ballooned to a .353 average with a 1.229 OPS. For context, everyone who faced him turned into steroids era Barry Bonds. For the season, he finished with a 12.91 ERA and gave up 5 HRs in just 7.2 innings. To make matters worse, the next two seasons in Toronto, he was back to normal. The only saving grace of this trade is that we only gave up 3 career minor leaguers for him: Brandon Ramey, Juan Geraldo, and Israel Puello.

The Phillies went 13-17 in the final 30 games and missed the playoffs, being beaten out by the Marlins for the Wildcard. That year the Phillies had 13 blown saves to the Marlins 5. They finished 31-29, we were 28-32. As a whole, the team finished with the 2nd worst bullpen ERA of all time at 7.06, only behind the 1930 Phillies. Imagine everyone being as bad as Jordan Romano? (shutters)

Let’s get a final roll call:

Name	Games	ERA
David Phelps	10	12.91
Heath Hembree	11	12.54
Trevor Kelley	4	10.80
Deolis Guerra	9	8.59
JoJo Romero	12	7.59
Brandon Workman	14	6.92
Ramon Rosso	7	6.52
Adam Morgan	17	5.54
Hector Neris	24	4.57

Total nightmare fuel. Be thankful of how far this bullpen has come since then.

All stats courtesy of Baseball Reference.

1. I hate David Bell so much. We dubbed him the “intentional-strikeout” as a play on intentional walk. Whenever the other team desperately needed an out, they could just give the signal and throw Bell 3 fastballs down the middle. ↩︎