For the Phillies bullpen, there is nowhere to go except up from last season's historically bad performance. It couldn't have been easy for Joe Girardi in his first year to not only deal with a pandemic-laden season but also to try and solve the bullpen woes of 2020.
When Angelo Cataldi ask him about his experience last year, Girardi couldn't help but chuckle.
"Angelo, I really believe we could have told hitters what was coming and we would have fared better."
The good news is, this season looks a lot brighter. New president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski and general manager Sam Fuld help add several new arms to the bullpen and backend of the rotation. They are arms the Girardi feels optimistic about.
"When I look at this year, I like the stable of arms we have," said Girardi speaking to Cataldi on Tuesday morning. "My goal by the time we leave spring training is to have a 9th inning guy, maybe have two 8th inning guys and the roles are a lot more defined. We had roles at the beginning of last year and then we struggled, made a lot of changes and brought guys in that had success other places but for whatever reason, weren't having success with us. We couldn't define those roles and it became difficult.
"I like our team a lot… I look at the areas we struggled last year, it was really in our bullpen and in our rotation pitching depth. We have added a lot to that. I think Dave, Sam and their staff have done a wonderful job in giving us arms and different options."
Archie Bradley headlines the biggest bullpen addition of the offseason, but Dombrowski also traded for relievers with high ceilings like Jose Alvarado and Brandon Kintzler. He signed arms like Matt Moore and Chase Anderson that will compete for a job in the rotation, and made smaller moves like signing Hector Rondon, David Paulino and Bryan Mitchell to minor league deals.
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