The Phillies are headed to a ‘point of pain’ with their bullpen. Could they have avoided it, and what’s the fix?

CHICAGO — As sure as azaleas bloom, the question crops up every April in front offices across baseball: When is it no longer too early to make judgments about the roster?

“I usually have said 40 games,” Dave Dombrowski said.

Seems reasonable. One quarter of the season is enough of a sample to form substantive conclusions and leaves time to enact changes. Dombrowski has tweaked rosters this way for nearly 40 years, the last five with the Phillies.

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But rather than circling back in another few weeks, Phillies officials are discussing the bullpen right now. Heck, given the team’s win-now stakes this season, they might as well have begun asking this in spring training: Whom do you trust to get the last out of a playoff series?

And if that pitcher isn’t on the roster now (spoiler alert: he’s probably not), there’s a natural follow-up: How much would you give up to get him?

That last question, or a variation of it, might have been rattling around owner John Middleton’s mind two months ago when he was asked how far he would be willing to push a projected $307 million payroll that is already above the highest luxury-tax threshold.

“That’s just money,” he said. “I think the bigger thing is when you’re talking about trades. Trading prospects for someone like Roy Halladay or Cliff Lee is different than trading them for somebody who’s not nearly at that level.”

It’s a long way from here to July 31. But Dombrowski has been through four trade deadlines with the Phillies and acquired three relievers: Ian Kennedy in 2021, David Robertson in 2022, and Carlos Estévez last year.

Considering the Phillies dragged a 5.56 bullpen ERA — second-worst in the majors behind only the Nationals — into Wrigley Field this weekend to face the NL Central-leading Cubs, it’s a safe bet Dombrowski will be shopping for a late-inning reliever again.

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The market won’t take shape for weeks. It’s too soon even to distinguish the buyers and sellers, or to know which players will be available. Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley, eligible for free agency after the season, figures to be in the conversation for several contenders.

File away this name: Jhoan Durán. The Twins were 9-16 through Thursday despite their closer’s 1.74 ERA in 11 appearances. Durán, 27, averages 100.3 mph with his fastball and is under team control through 2027.

But would the all-in Phillies push a shiny prospect chip — Aidan Miller, for example — into the middle of the table to have Durán protect ninth-inning leads for the next 2½ seasons?

Hold that thought. For now, let’s chew on this: Why has the bullpen undergone so much change in the last 10 months, and yet, the Phillies still appear to be at least one reliever short?

At last year’s All-Star break, the Phillies bullpen consisted of Jeff Hoffman, Orion Kerkering, Seranthony Domínguez, José Ruiz, lefties José Alvarado, Matt Strahm, and Gregory Soto, and place-holding long reliever Michael Mercado.

Nine months later, half of that group is gone.

Never mind that the Phillies had the third-best bullpen ERA in the majors (3.32) through a July 11 sweep of the Dodgers. Domínguez and Soto had slid out of manager Rob Thomson’s circle of trust. Soto, a former closer with the Tigers, was especially unhappy with not being used in the highest leverage.

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So, the Phillies remade the bullpen on the fly with a series of deadline trades. They sent Domínguez to the Orioles for outfielder Austin Hays and acquired Carlos Estévez from the Angels for two minor league pitchers. And after picking up lefty Tanner Banks from the White Sox, they flipped Soto to Baltimore for pitching prospects Seth Johnson and Moisés Chace.

Although the Phillies gave up swing-and-miss stuff from Domínguez and Soto, they believed they were getting more consistency from Estévez and a better fit with Banks.

It didn’t work out. The relievers’ collective ERA rose to 3.77 over the final two months of the season, and the bullpen melted down in the divisional round loss to the Mets.

Domínguez-for-Hays was regrettable, too. Hays strained his hamstring, then came down with a kidney infection and played only 22 games for the Phillies, who didn’t offer him a contract in the offseason. Domínguez is a key piece of the Orioles’ bullpen and hasn’t allowed a run in 8⅓ innings this season.

After the postseason, Hoffman and Estévez became free agents, and Dombrowski reiterated this week that the Phillies “thought that we’d probably sign one of them.” He said the team pursued Hoffman, in particular, “very aggressively,” claiming that they even made an offer early in the offseason.

“At the time,” Dombrowski said, “he was still looking for more dollars.”

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The Phillies pivoted. They made a one-year, $8.5 million offer to Jordan Romano, the former All-Star closer who unexpectedly became a free agent when the Blue Jays didn’t offer him a contract after an injury-marred season. He passed a physical and signed on Dec. 9.

Hoffman, meanwhile, lingered on the market. He reportedly agreed to a five-year, $48 million deal with the Braves that was nixed over concerns about his physical. The Orioles had similar reasons for reportedly backing out of a three-year, $40 million contract.

Eventually, Hoffman landed with the Blue Jays — essentially to replace Romano — for three years and $33 million.

“I can’t tell you that the number he ended up signing for was substantially different than the one that we ended up offering him,” Dombrowski said this week. “But he wasn’t prepared to take that at that time. [Hoffman’s agents] just thought they were going to get much more.”

As Hoffman’s market evolved, the Phillies didn’t circle back, according to a major league source, an indication that they were content to replace him and Estévez with only Romano, even though it still takes one plus one to equal two.

(Estévez got a two-year, $22 million deal from the Royals.)

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“We just moved off [Hoffman] and did Romano because we thought Kerkering was ready to step up and, I don’t want to say take on more because his role has been important,” Dombrowski said. “But pitch more at the back and high leverage.”

So far, it appears to have been a miscalculation. Romano has exhibited erratic velocity and command en route to a 13.50 ERA through 11 appearances. Kerkering had a rough week, allowing five runs on five hits and three walks in his last two outings.

Oh, and Hoffman? Entering the weekend, he had a 1.46 ERA and was 5-for-5 in save opportunities.

The Phillies’ bullpen problems run deeper than an accounting error on the free-agent market or a trade with the Orioles that didn’t pan out.

It might be a stylistic problem.

Last year, Phillies relievers combined for a 26.5% strikeout rate through the All-Star break, the third-highest mark in the majors behind the Mets (26.9%) and Guardians (26.7%). But after the break, once they moved on from Domínguez and Soto, the bullpen’s strikeout rate dropped to 23.6%, 18th in the majors.

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Entering the weekend, Phillies relievers ranked 18th with a 21.9% strikeout rate. After Strahm (33.3%) and Alvarado (32.1%), there’s a considerable drop-off.

(Hoffman and Domínguez had 40.9% and 33.3% strikeout rates, respectively.)

There isn’t always a correlation between swing-and-miss stuff and overall bullpen success. But the former can help lead to the latter. Last season, the Guardians ranked first in bullpen ERA (2.57) and third in strikeout rate (26%); the Braves were third in bullpen ERA (3.32) and second in strikeout rate (26.6%).

Dombrowski maintains that the Phillies didn’t prioritize one specific quality when they undertook their bullpen remake last season.

“I don’t want to sound dismissive, but just get outs. That’s what we’re looking to do,” Dombrowski said. “I don’t care if you throw left-handed, right-handed, underhand, overhand. Get outs, you know?”

So, the Phillies will continue to work with Romano to get him back on track. His average fastball velocity has ticked up to 97.1 mph, 96.6, and 97.0 in his last three outings after sitting at 94.9, 95.0, 96.0, and 93.5 in the four appearances before that.

“I feel like my stuff’s really trending up,” he said after giving up a double to Pete Alonso and a broken-bat walk-off single to Starling Marte in Wednesday’s 10-inning loss in New York. “Results are just not there.”

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The Phillies also believe Johnson’s fastball-slider combination will play up in a relief role. This week, they moved the 26-year-old righty to the bullpen at triple-A Lehigh Valley, and he dialed up his fastball to 98 mph in his first appearance.

“We don’t have a lot of bullpen depth,” Dombrowski said. “Sometimes you need to fix things internally before you go externally.”

It’s what teams do early in the season before they reach what some executives describe as a “point of pain,” where they must give up value to fill a need. To get Robertson in 2022, it cost them pitching prospect Ben Brown, Saturday’s starter for the Cubs. Last year, they offset the prospect cost for Estevez by making the Soto trade.

The Phillies will almost certainly get to that point with their bullpen again this year. But it’s worth wondering if they could’ve avoided it.