Tuesday night marked Harper’s 394th game with the Phillies, and it ended like so many others: with the bullpen fumbling a late-inning lead. How can this keep happening?
ATLANTA — Bryce Harper stood with his back against a wall in a hallway adjacent to a funereal locker room within the Phillies’ clubhouse here late Tuesday night and said all the same things about leaving behind the sting of aSurely, he has the whole spiel memorized.
It’s pathological. The relievers have changed, from Tommy Hunter and Pat Neshek, to Héctor Neris and David Robertson, to Brandon Workman and Archie Bradley. Seranthony Domínguez is the only member of the 2022 bullpen who remains from 2019. So, too, have the managers and pitching coaches. Gabe Kapler and Chris Young made the calls in 2019. Since then, it has been Joe Girardi, first with Bryan Price and now Caleb Cotham.
True. And the Phillies are well-practiced at resilience. Often, though, the roots of a late-inning crusher are planted during the previous game, which is precisely how ninth-inning novice Nick Nelson wound up on the mound with the game on the line Tuesday night. It only reinforces the need for a deep bullpen, and the Phillies have neither developed enough pitching in the minor leagues nor found undervalued relievers outside the organization to give Girardi ample options.
The reasonable second-guess was Girardi’s choice to stick with Nelson over lefty José Alvarado, whose typically erratic command is offset by his late-game experience. But Girardi reasoned that he preferred Nelson against the Braves’ string of right-handed batters.Phillies’ Dave Dombrowski defends play of center fielder Odúbel Herrera: He’s ‘done OK for us’
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