SAN DIEGO — Zach Eflin’s No. 56 jersey hung Saturday in the locker he occupied Friday, when he pitched six strong innings in a Phillies loss, but Eflin was absent because he was no longer a member of the active roster. He was across the street, at the team’s hotel, and he had 72 hours to report to Triple-A Lehigh Valley.
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“Sometimes one guy takes it on the chin so that 25 guys as a group and as an organization and as a team can prosper,” Phillies manager Gabe Kapler said. “Our responsibility to the Phillies organization is to get every possible marginal advantage, and this gives us a marginal advantage by having an additional player on the roster.”
This was but one transaction in a season filled with hundreds of them, and it was not a transaction without precedent. This, instead, is a classic baseball tale in 2018. Every team attempts to manipulate its roster. The teams with younger rosters have more opportunities to do so. The Phillies, for example, have operated a bullpen shuttle between Philadelphia and Allentown all season. Their depth is one reason they are where they are.
But there is a delicate balance with every transaction that pushes the roster rules. These are the facts: Eflin, who has a 3.57 ERA, will not miss a start. He stands to lose about $20,000 and nine days of big-league service time. The Phillies, in exchange, played Saturday with an extra bench player. They will carry that extra man through the remainder of this series in San Diego and into next week’s two-game set against the prolific Boston Red Sox.
“We’ve talked all year about the importance of value at the margins,” Phillies general manager Matt Klentak said. “We’re tied for first place. It’s the middle of August. You never know when an extra bench spot or bullpen spot will be the difference in a game. One game might make all the difference. So that’s why we did it.”
And, still, it raised a few questions: Is the marginal gain of an extra bench player worth antagonizing an important piece of the roster? Does this one roster move cause some negative reverberations through a clubhouse? Are the Phillies protecting certain players and not others? Should the players be excited that their front office is doing everything it can to help them reach the postseason? Why didn’t the players’ union collectively bargain more protection for players as front offices discovered more and more roster loopholes? If other teams competing against the Phillies are exploring those advantages, shouldn’t the Phillies do it, too? Is it best to oversee a roster with one’s head or heart?
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Are we overthinking it all?
“Today was an understandingly extremely tough day for Zach,” Tom O’Connell, his agent, said in a statement to The Athletic. “While this transaction on the surface seems purely administrative, it caught us by surprise and is tremendously disappointing. Major-league starters have a strict routine that they adhere to that allows them to be successful; this roster move affects that. While the club may feel that they are doing what’s best for the organization, they also lose sight of the human element and how it will affect the player.”
Kapler, when asked how Eflin reacted to the decision, offered a different version.
“I mean, he’s an absolute pro,” Kapler said. “That’s who Zach Eflin is. He’s a professional through and through. He understands that we’re going to try to get every marginal advantage through the end of the season that we possibly can, and right now, we have to believe that the division is going to come down to one game. If that’s true, having an additional player on our roster that we can use right now is that marginal edge.”
When a player is optioned, he must spend 10 days in the minors. In recent years, the league implemented a rule that permitted teams to add a 26th man for doubleheaders, and that rule allows teams to recall a player who has spent fewer than 10 days in the minors. That is the loophole the Phillies will use here. Losing the service time now could affect Eflin’s future earnings, depending on the salary arbitration process, but the nine lost days will not move him to a different arbitration group.
The path of least resistance would have been to demote either J.P. Crawford or Scott Kingery to the minors for three weeks when Justin Bour was added Saturday to the 25-man roster. Both rookies are bench players now and could benefit from some regular at-bats in the minors before September arrives.
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Kapler outlined a hypothetical scenario in which he could now manage a game with his different personnel.
“If Maikel Franco leads off the sixth inning with a base hit in a 0-0 ballgame,” Kapler said, “we might be able to use Scott Kingery to run for him in that situation with the understanding that we have a shortstop still available.”
That is a prelude to September baseball, when the Phillies could carry a 35-man roster with aggressive pitching and defensive replacements. The Phillies’ strength is their depth, and there is logic behind the move to keep an extra player over Eflin. The Phillies ran out of position players twice in the past two weeks during long games. Maybe the extra bench bat helps. Maybe not.
The Phillies employed a similar tactic last August when they demoted Nick Pivetta after an 11-strikeout performance in San Diego. Pivetta did not miss a turn — he returned, as Eflin will, as the 26th man for a doubleheader — but he lost money and service time. He was not happy about it. There are no signs that he harbored ill will.
Eflin must report to Lehigh Valley, and he could do his between-starts work there. He’ll pitch one of Thursday’s games, then return to the minors. Maybe, in October, he will start Game 3 of a postseason series. Maybe it will be because the Phillies tested the edges of their roster and squeezed as much as they could from it. Maybe the roster machinations meant little. But there are two sides to every transaction, and the head can feel something different than the heart.
Correction (10:54 p.m.): This story was updated to reflect accurate financial and service-time implications for Eflin. A player on an optional assignment added as a 26th man receives big-league service time for that day as well as a day toward his 10-day option clock. So Eflin will lose nine days’ worth of salary and service time.
(Top photo: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports)
