The worst thing the Phillies can possibly do is allow Sunday’s misfortune to impact their handling of Alex McFarlane.
They have 22 days until the NL wild-card round begins. They will play 19 games before then. They don’t have any other options.
In a perfect world, McFarlane would not have been the guy standing on the mound in the eighth inning on Sunday afternoon. He would not have been the one watching his 100 mph, 1-2 fastball disappear over the outfield wall. He would not have suffered the indignity of seeing, feeling Ronald Acuña Jr. circle the bases, arms out like an airplane, dive bombing the Phillies’ division title hopes with a three-run home run that lifted the Braves to a 5-4 win.
It is not a perfect world. McFarlane was there for two reasons. One, he has the stuff to warrant it. Two, he is their best hope.
Nothing else matters at this point. With less than a month to go before the playoffs begin, the back of the Phillies bullpen consists of Jhoan Duran, Jonathan Bowlan, two guys who have shown that they can’t be trusted, and one guy who needs to show he can.
Interim manager Don Mattingly has no choice but to err on the side of the third guy. He needs to find out if McFarlane can handle the role.
There is a fun bit of trivia about McFarlane that is more quirky than significant but nevertheless provides an entry point to state the obvious: that the Phillies owe it to themselves, their clubhouse and their fans to spend the next month preparing McFarlane for a major postseason role.
Twelve games into his career, the 25-year-old reliever has already picked up four big-league wins. He ranks sixth on the team in that department — two behind Aaron Nola, one ahead of Andrew Painter — despite having yet to celebrate his first full month of major league service. McFarlane also has a page in the history books. Before him, no Phillies reliever had ever won four games in his first 11 appearances. In fact, over the last 60 years, only three had won two.
While McFarlane’s accomplishment is first and foremost a testament to the fluky nature of pitcher wins and their inadequacy as a measure of individual performance, deeper under the hood lies something real. It isn’t just his fastball that sits at 100 mph and has touched 102. By practically every measure of stuff and performance, McFarlane has been the second or third best arm in the Phillies bullpen since his promotion on Aug. 11. More importantly, those measures rank him among the upper tier of all big-league relievers, the realm in which legitimate postseason bullpens are constructed.
To get a sense of who a pitcher really is, you have to look at three different levels: the stuff itself, the hitters’ reaction to that stuff, and the end result. McFarlane has looked solid on all three levels.
1. The stuff
You don’t need numbers to see true sizzle. But, good golly, McFarlane’s numbers are impressive. Only two relievers in the majors have bettered his 100.2 average fastball velocity since his promotion. One of those relievers is the Dodgers’ Edgardo Henriquez. The other is Jhoan Duran.
The spin rate on McFarlane’s fastball and slider both rank among the top 10 in the majors among relievers.
2. Hitters’ reactions
Herein lies the biggest reason to be excited about McFarlane. That paradox of pitching is that you have to avoid hard contact while also avoiding walks. Plenty of guys throw hard. The real question is whether a pitcher’s stuff is putting hitters at a disadvantage. Are they getting good swings? Are those swings producing good contact?
The pitchers who have the advantage are the ones who can throw their pitches in the strike zone and still miss a bat. McFarlane has done it better than almost everyone in the majors over the last month. Opposing hitters have swung and missed at 22% of his pitches in the strike zone. That ranks 12th among relievers, just ahead of the Astros’ Josh Hader.
Contact in the zone is an important metric for McFarlane, in particular. One legitimate question about his eventual bullpen ceiling is his lack of a pitch that hitters will consistently chase outside the zone. Take Duran, for example. This season, hitters have swung at 35% of his pitches outside the strike zone. Hader is at 41%. McFarlane’s chase rate is about 29%, which is middle of the pack among relievers. His slider has played quite well overall, generating a 50% whiff rate on swings. But hitters have been laying off roughly two of every three pitchers outside the zone. All of this is per Fangraphs’ pitch split data.
3. The results
You can get results without having stuff, and you can have stuff without getting results. But the most sustainable bullpen arms generally do both. That’s what McFarlane has done in his limited sample of big league innings. His strikeout rate is rather ordinary at 11 of 34 batters, considering his fastball. But he has yet to allow an extra-base hit, thanks in large part to his ability to keep the ball on the ground. His 56% ground ball percentage ranks 19th among 96 big league relievers who have thrown at least 10 innings over the last four weeks. Two of the six hits he’s allowed have been infield hits. In general, the quality of contact has been a big positive.
Likewise with his situational performance.
Toward the end of the Phillies’ recent West Coast trip, Mattingly and pitching coach Caleb Cotham decided to begin the McFarlane experiment in earnest. One night after they called on him to protect a one-run lead in the seventh inning against the Angels, the Phillies gave McFarlane his most significant opportunity yet. Leading the Diamondbacks 2-1 in the sixth inning, Aaron Nola allowed the first two batters he faced to reach base. That prompted a call to the bullpen. McFarlane was the choice.
Three batters later, the Phillies were onto the eighth. McFarlane gave up a long fly ball to Lars Nootbaar before striking out Nolan Arenado and getting Tim Tawa to ground out weakly to third base.
These are exactly the sorts of situations that Mattingly and Cotham should be seeking for McFarlane between now and the end of the regular season. They are the exact sort of situation they thrust him into on Sunday. Three-run lead. Must-win game.
It didn’t work out this time. McFarlane came on to face the 8-9-1 hitters. Austin Riley lined out, and then Mike Yastrzemski singled to center to bring the top of the order to the plate. Drake Baldwin doubled. Acuña did what he did. It happens. The key is finding out how McFarlane responds.
For most of the year, the biggest reason to doubt the Phillies has been their lack of a solution for Jose Alvarado’s regression and Orion Kerkering’s implosion. Kerkering may have rendered himself unplayable after a two-run eighth inning against the Braves in Friday’s 5-2 loss. In his last six appearances before Sunday, he’d allowed 12 of 30 batters to reach base with seven runs allowed and just four strikeouts.
At this point, Mattingly has little choice but to operate as if McFarlane will be the man who will fill the vacuum in the postseason. A lot will depend on his ability to continue to throw strikes. But for a team that has no other options, McFarlane is one that could break right in a big way.
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