A few days after it was first reported that Ryan Madson was having “feeling” issues with his hand (a revelation that J.R. Finger struggled mightily to extract from Charlie Manuel), news comes that the right-hander is being placed on the 15 day disabled list, retroactive to June 19th. Madson apparently sustained a bruise on his throwing hand over a month ago versus the Rangers, but only recently has it hampered his availability. Andrew Carpenter was recalled to fill his roster spot.
It’s hard to overstate the downgrade here, obviously. The Phillies have replaced one of the best relievers in the league with organizational filler. There is a chance — a chance — that Carpenter could be effective against right-handed hitters, posting a 3.86 xFIP against them in Lehigh Valley in 2010, but it’s almost certain that he’ll be deployed strictly in mop-up situations. Significantly, though, pitchers like David Herndon, Juan Perez, and Danys Baez will be bumped into more prominent roles, and the bulk of the important work will likely now fall on the shoulders of Michael Stutes and Antonio Bastardo. Both of the latter are having excellent seasons, but both have benefited from unsustainable luck thus far. Bastardo currently leads all qualified relievers with a 0.96 ERA, but several factors will work against him keeping it that low. He will not continue to limit opposing hitters to a .153 BABIP, nor will he continue to strand 99.1% of the baserunners he allows. The flyballs he surrenders have gone for home runs only 5.9% of the time so far, another number that will likely increase. Stutes, likewise, has overcome a 14.7% walk rate (league average is 8.3%) on the strength of some batted ball luck (.224 BABIP) and a very kind 81.6% strand rate.
The good news is that both pictures have excellent strikeout rates — 30.8% for Bastardo and 25.5% for Stutes (league average is 18.2%). Thanks to their ability to miss bats, ERA retrodictors are still fairly kind to them; if Bastardo and Stutes are true to their respective 3.04 and 4.01 SIERAs, that will still be plenty productive for the Phillies pen. But the organization must be cautious not to overreact to any substantial bumps in the road as these two experience regression. They also must consider whether the overall weakness of the rest of the pen — Baez, Carpenter, Herndon, Mathieson, Perez — merits resorting to an external solution in a fairly thin reliever trade market. If not, the thinness of the pen as currently constituted will make proper leveraging all the more important, and all the more difficult. Assuming Bastardo, with his elite strikeout rate, is the closer (a Charlie Manuel bullpen cannot be without a strictly defined closer), the rest of the pen should be used something like this (in order of highest to lowest leverage situation): Stutes, Herndon, Mathieson, Perez, Carpenter, Baez, based on major and minor league performance in 2010 and 2011. Carpenter and Baez may be interchangeable. It’s not pretty, and doesn’t account for platoon situations, but there isn’t really a lot of flexibility with a pen this weak. If rotation injuries hadn’t demanded the services of Vance Worley and Kyle Kendrick as starters, the story might be different.
That Madson’s DL stint is retroactive to June 19th means he can return July 4th if he feels he is ready. Hopefully this reflects an organizational opinion that the injury isn’t that serious, and the Phillies will only have to rely on a razor-thin bullpen for a few days. If not, the starting rotation will find their safety net — already made meager by an unsupportive offense — eroded even further.
