The Phillies, looking to not only improve the bullpen but also stay under the luxury tax threshold, made a trade Friday night that fit both of those requirements.
They paid a steep price in the process, however. As ace Aaron Nola was in the midst of getting pulled after surrendering four runs in the third inning against the Braves, the organization added two experienced bullpen arms. The Phillies acquired right-handers Brandon Workman and Heath Hembree along with cash considerations from the Red Sox for right-handers Nick Pivetta and Connor Seabold. The Phillies will also get a player to be named later or more cash. The initial money they received from Boston — $815,000 — nearly covers the roughly $1.05 million the two relievers are still owed this season. Workman is a free agent after the season, and Hembree will reach his third year of arbitration in the offseason and becomes a free agent after the 2021 season.
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General manager Matt Klentak confirmed the Phillies are still under the luxury tax threshold after the trade but acknowledged there isn’t a lot of wiggle room. Even so, Klentak said he doesn’t think the threshold will be an impediment if they want to make another deal.
“It’s close enough that some unforeseen circumstances moving forward could put us over even without us trying to, but if things break properly for the next six weeks, we should be able to stay under,” Klentak said Friday night. “But I’ve said before that it’s a guide, it’s not a hard barrier. So we have to see how the rest of it plays out.”
Klentak didn’t outright declare the Phillies would sit out the final days leading up to the Aug. 31 trade deadline, but this move appears to be the organization’s main and perhaps only notable upgrade to the weakest part of the roster. If the Phillies do seek another move, this unusual season could see fewer sellers because of the expanded postseason. The Phillies (9-13) had talks with Boston off and on over the past week before the deal was completed during Friday’s 11-2 loss to Atlanta.
The Phillies also made a minor deal before the game, getting right-hander David Hale from the Yankees in a trade for minor-league right-hander Addison Russ. Left-hander Austin Davis was designated for assignment to open a spot for Hale, who could be available for the Phillies on Saturday. The Yankees had DFA’d Hale on Monday. It represented the seventh DFA of the 32-year-old’s career and the sixth since 2018, including five by New York. The Workman-Hembree trade is the deal the Phillies are truly counting on to solidify the bullpen.
“On the one hand, we can look at this as though our trade acquisitions only have six weeks to pitch with us this year,” Klentak said. “But on the other hand, you can look at it and say they’re going to be with us for two-thirds of the season, which is significantly longer than a typical trade deadline would allow you, so we had to factor all that in.”
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Klentak and the Phillies deserve some credit for making a move now, not continuing to press ahead with the current mix of relievers and hoping they’d figure it out, or waiting until the trade deadline clock reached its final hours. They needed to show a sense of urgency, partly because they are a third of the way through the 60-game season. The Phillies also can’t afford to waste the prime years of their best players. Eight postseason spots are up for grabs in the National League, and their rotation has been borderline top 10 in baseball. Their flexible lineup combinations have produced numbers that are among the best in the league. Now, the bullpen must step up and deliver better results with the three additions.
Klentak expects Workman, Hembree and Hale will allow the rest of the relievers to settle into their roles and take pressure off the group.
“No one guy needs to do any more than they’re capable of doing,” Klentak said. “Now, all of a sudden, you look up and down that bullpen and you’ve got quite a few guys on any given night that Joe can turn to: right side, left side, playoff experience, big-market experience, etc., that I think we can trust. Now, I think we should be realistic. Not every pitcher is going to get outs every night. There are going to be bumps in the road, and we are not alone in this industry right now in having some turbulence in our bullpen, but we do think that the three guys we added should help to stabilize that group.”
Brandon Workman pitches during summer camp. (John Tlumacki / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Girardi learned the full details of the trade after coming off the field at Truist Park late Friday night. Next up for the manager: watching tape of his new relievers to better understand their strengths.
From what Girardi knows of Workman, Hembree and Hale, they’re all slightly different types of pitchers, which gives him more options in the middle to late innings. Workman, 32, is the most proven of the new arms. He worked as Boston’s closer the past two years, converting 20 of 26 save chances and posting a 2.65 ERA in 156 appearances over 159 1/3 innings since 2017. Workman didn’t have a great summer camp for the Red Sox and has been used inconsistently this season.
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Hembree, 31, was generally used in the middle innings by the Red Sox and would be called into games with runners on base. He’s been fairly consistent the past six years, though he wasn’t off to a great start this season, allowing six runs and nine hits in 9 2/3 innings for a 5.59 ERA. Hembree could be a useful bridge to the Phillies’ closer. Whether Workman gets a look in save situations is still to be determined. Girardi said he has not had any conversations about how to use Workman. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have another ninth-inning option besides Héctor Neris.
The Phillies see the trade with Boston as a best-case scenario in terms of the type of relievers they received. Klentak said they were open to other players, with the Red Sox or other teams, who had less experience. But ideally, getting guys who have done it before — in the majors and during the postseason, particularly for a big-market team — was an attractive part of landing Workman and Hembree. They could join the team as soon as Saturday in Atlanta, but due to the intake process, Sunday availability is more realistic.
“To me, this was our most pressing need in the bullpen, and we added three guys in one day, you know, 10 days out (from the deadline) so this could be it,” Klentak said, “but I’m not going to guarantee that this is it. Because we’ll play it out all 10 days and see what else is out there and (what) other needs present themselves, and we have a way to address them then I’m sure we’ll explore that.”
Heath Hembree delivers during a game last season. (Tommy Gilligan / USA Today)
When your bullpen has a 7.97 ERA — more than 2.00 runs more than the second-worst MLB bullpen — a team’s leverage is going to take a hit in trade talks. It wasn’t a secret the Phillies had a desperate need to improve the bullpen. The rest of the league knew the Phillies’ weakness and what they sought. When internal options within the 60-player pool didn’t pan out or were undesirable choices, the Phillies were forced into an uncomfortable spot in terms of the talent they would have to give up.
The deal marks a disappointing conclusion to Pivetta’s time in the organization. The Phillies were never able to fully harness the potential of Pivetta, whom they acquired from the Nationals in a late July 2015 trade for Jonathan Papelbon. He seemed like an ideal candidate to thrive in a bullpen role, where his fastball would feature higher velocity and he could focus on a two-pitch mix for success. Instead, he resisted the role dating to last season. Pivetta, 27, didn’t have a good attitude about the opportunity, and the desired velocity bump never happened in 2020. The last image of Pivetta in a Phillies uniform sufficiently summarizes an underwhelming four big-league seasons with the team: Girardi was seen talking to him on the bullpen phone before he entered in the ninth inning of a Phillies blowout Aug. 10 and subsequently allowed six runs in one-third of an inning. A demotion to Lehigh Valley followed.
So, what was this about? “I just wanted to explain to him why I was bringing him in the game,” Joe Girardi said. “Because he hadn’t pitched for five days and I thought he needed to pitch.” pic.twitter.com/Yfd49qhvT0
— Matt Gelb (@MattGelb) August 11, 2020
Pivetta goes down as one of the biggest “what-ifs” from the Klentak era. The problem has never been his stuff; it will sting the Phillies if Pivetta is finally able to put it all together with the Red Sox. He was supposed to become a back-end-of-the-rotation arm, or at the very least, useful in the bullpen for the next couple of years. He finishes with a 5.50 ERA in 396 1/3 innings and 92 appearances, including 71 starts. So, why didn’t it work out with Pivetta?
“Boy, I wish I had a good answer to that question,” Klentak said. “I don’t know. We have a lot of people in this organization that have tried to answer that very question. We’ve worked with Nick to try a lot of different things. He’s enormously talented, and we’ve seen flashes of that both as a starter and as a reliever, just never quite able to see the consistency from him in our uniform.
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“That doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen for him because there’s a lot of talent in that kid, and I will be rooting for him from a distance. But sometimes it just doesn’t work out. And we’ve held on for a long time on that one trying to try to make it work and working with him, and Nick has worked his tail off on his end as well. But at this juncture, with the way that the rest of our club is performing and with the ability to add the two relievers that we did, we thought it was a trade we had to make.”
The Phillies also lose an intriguing arm in Russ, who has an above-average fastball that can hit 96 mph, which he pairs with a splitter. Russ would have been a potentially interesting choice to call up at some point this season if the relievers continued to falter, though not being on the 40-man roster was a hindrance. Seabold, a third-round pick of the Phillies in 2017, was rated the team’s No. 16 prospect by The Athletic’s Keith Law. Seabold projected to be a No. 4 or 5 starter, which was partially reliant on further developing a better swing-and-miss pitch.
Losing pitchers such as Russ and Seabold could come back to hurt the Phillies, whose Triple-A depth takes a hit. It puts more pressure on them to develop the arms they do have, an area in which they haven’t produced great results in the past few years. If the Phillies are going to get on track this season, it must start soon, with their new relievers in the fold.
“It’s on all of us as a team,” Girardi said. “You just can’t say the bullpen. I and the coaches have to do the job. The training staff has to their job, the offense, the defense, we need to play better. We just added three pieces, and so we need to go get it done.”
(Top photo of Brandon Workman: Bob DeChiara / USA Today)