Unsung Heroes Fueling Phillies Playoff Drive

PHILADELPHIA, PA — When you looked at the new and improved Phillies roster on Opening Day this year, several new names popped out as major difference makers. Namely, big free agent signings Jake Arrieta, Carlos Santana, Tommy Hunter, and Pat Neshek, along with rookies Scott Kingery and J.P. Crawford.

All (save the injured Neshek) have shown flashes of brilliance, but all have struggled at points, and in the very least, none of those new Phillies can be honestly pointed to as the reason the team sits just half a game out of the Wild Card race with the season nearly halfway over.

Those reasons are the men filling out the back of the starting rotation: Zach Eflin, Vince Velasquez, and Nick Pivetta.

Part of why the Phillies bullpen has been under such a microscope this year is because the way the bar has been set by the starting rotation. The bullpen has blown games, yes, but they've blown games the team never would've had a chance to win if not for the dominance of those three.

Without a reliable rotation, sustained success is nearly impossible. Hitters - whole teams - inevitably go through hot and cold stretches. You need pitchers who can allow you, every once in a while, to win a tight, 3-0 game over the best teams in baseball, like Eflin did with the Yankees on Wednesday night.

None of this is to minimize the importance of the six Phillies listed at the top of this story, who will inevitably be a major part of the team's future success. Nor is it to minimize what established stars like Aaron Nola, Odubel Herrera, Rhys Hoskins, and others have done. But there is something extra special about what Eflin, Velasquez, and Pivetta are doing right now, and it is in part because of where they came from.

They were not luck of the draw draft picks or multi-million dollar free agent signings. All three are the fruits of one of the darkest four-year periods in recent Phillies history. Eflin came from the Dodgers for Jimmy Rollins, Velasquez from the Astros for Ken Giles, and, most satisfying of all, Pivetta from the Nationals for Jonathan Papelbon.

All three were question marks heading into the year. Velasquez's ERA is still high at 4.69, but he's been very good in ten of his fifteen starts. Eflin has a 3.02 ERA and five straight wins, including Wednesday's against the Yankees, and can no longer be ignored. Pivetta, with a 4.06 ERA and 101 strikeouts in 84 innings, has been the next most consistent guy after Nola.

In a real way, the hefty emotional price of trading away a franchise icon and two star closers, and willingly diving into the bleak rebuilding waters of the past few years, cost more than any free agent or draft pick. And that cost has now been vindicated.

Every stellar performance from those three feels something like justice, like a rebalancing of the universal baseball scales. The reckoning's been in the wind for years. Perhaps all that's needed to complete the arc is a little help from fate: give us a Phillies versus Nationals playoff series this year, and put Pivetta on the mound to start the deciding game.

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