I don’t know if you all know this but the Phillies bullpen was bad last year.
Actually historically bad.
Now, it’s on Phillies new president of baseball ops, Dave Dombrowski, to fix it and this afternoon was a nice step in that direction.
Today, the Phillies announced the acquisition of Jose Alvarado from the Tampa Bay Rays in a three team trade that sent minor league reliever, Garret Cleavinger, to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Let’s get into some takeaways from the move.
Jose Alvarado, when right, has one of the nastiest fastballs in the sport
Doesn’t take a baseball wiz to know that 99 with this sink plays in today’s baseball.
I mean look at this:
Babe Ruth just quit the sport thinking about even trying to make contact with that pitch.
The problem is…
The shoulder is worrisome.
As is with most power pitchers, Alvarado has shoulder issues and has spent time on the IL in each of the last two seasons with shoulder and elbow inflammation.
Alvarado saw a decrease in velo last year from 98.1 MPH in 2019 to 96.9 MPH this past season. Of course, a lot of that can probably be attributed to the shoulder issue. If he’s healthy, we should see that velo come back up next year.
Sources have said the results on his MRI were good, which is encouraging, but still even if he’s mostly healthy at the moment, it doesn’t mean a shoulder that has caused him problems in the past isn’t going to cause him problems in the future.
The right kind of gamble
Alvarado is somehow only 25. The guy they traded to acquire Alvarado, Cleavinger is 26. Between the age, the price to acquire him and the upside, this trade is a no brainer for the Phillies.
It’s mildly concerning that the Rays, arguably the smartest team in the sport, gave up on him but that could also be attributed to the fact that they’re a factory when it comes to pitching depth and he’s due for a salary increase this offseason through arbitration.
Still, this is the right kind of move for the Phillies to make. He’s a legitimate power arm, with some of the best stuff in the sport when healthy and someone that will give Joe Girardi wipe-out stuff in the 7th, 8th or even 9th inning if necessary.
There’s more work to be done to fix the worst bullpen in modern major league baseball history, but this is a step in the right direction for Dave Dombrowski.