Boom, bust or both? Dave Dombrowski’s offseason bullpen math is Phillies’ biggest question in 2025
The only predictable thing about bullpens is that they will determine the outcome of your season. The Phillies have the formula, but the uncertainty is always there.
Few things warm the heart like the snap, crackle, and pop of rawhide meeting leather on a mid-February morning. The poets can have their buzzing bees and birdsong and tinkling streams. The real sounds of spring echo across empty diamonds from rubber mounds outside the outstretched shadow of BayCare Ballpark’s left-field wall. It is there that you will find the best entertainment of the spring.
There is only so much one can glean from the daily 12-gun salute that awaits eyewitnesses to the Carpenter Complex’s bullpen sessions in the early days of spring training. Building one’s arm back from the winter slumber is a process, longer for some than for others. There is a reason pitchers and catchers report early. Home plate has a funny way of shrinking with a real live batter on its flank. It will be months before we have enough information to assess the aptitude of this Phillies pitching staff.
One thing we do know: The Phillies need it to be a strength.
They signaled as much with their actions this offseason. As budgets shrink, priorities are revealed. The Phillies added $26.75 million in salary this offseason. All but $10 million of it went to pitching.
That dollar total does not include the value of the prospects that Dave Dombrowski dealt to the Marlins for arbitration-eligible Jesús Luzardo, who agreed to a one-year, $6.225 million contract after the trade. Nor does it factor in the losses of Jeff Hoffman and Carlos Estévez, who signed multiyear deals elsewhere, each worth $11 million per season. That’s roughly the combined total the Phillies will pay their replacements: $8.5 million for Jordan Romano, $4 million for Joe Ross.
The biggest question of the looming summer is whether that math will add up.
You can talk about batting order and lineup balance and Dombrowski’s decision to add the left-handed hitting Max Kepler. You can talk about the 12 runs the Phillies managed to scratch out in four NLDS games last October. You can argue that, given the names and track records and salaries, this Phillies offense should have more in the tank than the fifth-highest run total in the National League. They are all valid areas of inquiry. But none will be as determinative as the bullpen.
That’s not exactly a bold statement. You can make it about most teams this time of year. Most times, you will be proven correct. Last year’s World Series featured two of the six best bullpens from the regular season, according to ERA (Dodgers fourth, Yankees sixth). On the other end of the spectrum, you had the Rangers, Diamondbacks and Blue Jays, three of the year’s biggest busts, each in the bottom six.
Bullpens are a roster architect’s eternal torment, the place where best-laid plans become kindling. Year-to-year success is so wildly variant that it is practically a game of chance, except the house doesn’t always win. The only predictable thing about bullpens is that they will determine the outcome of your season.
The Phillies and their fans know this as well as anybody.
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In 2023, the Phillies ranked 19th in bullpen ERA in April and May, then ranked third the rest of the season. Then, in the NLCS, they blew late-innings leads in Games 3 and 4 en route to blowing the series. The roller coaster was even wilder in 2024: third-worst ERA in the majors in April, best ERA in the majors in May and June, then 23rd the rest of the way.
Last year’s second-half numbers were partially a function of their MacGyvering of the fifth spot in the rotation. Duct tape, bubble gum, and bullpen games. But there was plenty fraying on the back end. José Alvarado struggled mightily. Hoffman posted a couple of crooked numbers. The Phillies traded away Seranthony Domínguez and Gregory Soto and traded for Estévez.
In short, things have been very much in flux since right around the All-Star break. The unknowns are enormous.
Alvarado is coming off a season in which he posted a 4.09 ERA with a dramatic plummet in his strikeout rate: from 13.0 per nine in his first three years with the Phillies to 9.2 in 2024. In front of him are Romano, Orion Kerkering, and Matt Strahm. The first two are the biggest keys.
From 2021 to ’23, Romano was one of the best closers in baseball. He averaged 32 saves per season for the Blue Jays with a 2.37 ERA and excellent rate stats.
“It was definitely a frustrating year,” Romano said last week of his 2024 season, when he pitched only 13⅔ innings because of an elbow injury. “You work all offseason and you have hopes of having a really successful year and contributing. When it’s the opposite of those things, it’s tough. But, at the end of that, it’s pretty motivating.”
Kerkering is where most of the rest of the upside lies. His numbers were excellent in 2024: a 2.29 ERA with 74 strikeouts, 17 walks, and two home runs in 63 innings. But, in sum, the year was something short of a breakout. Nearly half of his batters faced came in low-leverage situations. He pitched in the eighth or ninth inning in 18 of 64 outings.
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The formula goes something like this: Romano pitches like the three years before the last one and gives the Phillies a best-in-class closer. Kerkering becomes an equally dominant setup man, with Strahm mixed in according to matchups. From there, the Phillies rotation does much of the heavy lifting, with Luzardo eating up a lot of the innings that last year went to the front of the bullpen. Andrew Painter joins the mix down the stretch, while Ross handles multiple innings.
The upside is certainly there. So is the uncertainty, as it is always.