Torts’ influence on the Flyers, a Phillies starter who should go to the ‘pen, and other thoughts

First and final thoughts …

There’s a tendency throughout professional sports now, when it comes to evaluating a team’s decision to acquire or retain a player, to judge the move largely on the length and expenditure of the player’s contract.

In a league with a salary cap, this tendency is completely understandable; a bad contract can hamper a team’s “optionality” and roster flexibility for years.

A similar discussion has surrounded the Flyers’ recent commitment to defenseman Cam York, whom they signed to a five-year extension that has an average annual value of $5.15 million. York is just 24 and was a first-round pick in 2019, so there’s obviously reason for the Flyers to believe that he can be an excellent player for a long time.

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They’ve made quite an investment in him already, and if he doesn’t develop as they hoped he would, the contract is reasonable enough that another club would likely be willing to take him off their hands for the right price.

The facts that the York contract might turn out to be a mistake, however, and that the Flyers could correct it relatively easily, obscure the basic truth of what general manager Danny Brière and team president Keith Jones did: They thought enough of York to give him the extension in the first place. And that’s the most interesting aspect of the decision, because every available piece of evidence over the last three years indicates that, given the choice, former head coach John Tortorella would not have extended York’s contract.

Tortorella was purportedly integral to the Flyers’ evaluation process as they underwent their rebuild. Yet York — a player whom Tortorella benched more than once, who got into an altercation with Tortorella that reportedly “crossed the line” — is still here and presumably will be for a while. And Tortorella isn’t.

Maybe that creative tension that was said to be bubbling among Brière, Jones, and Tortorella wasn’t as heavy on the creativity as we might have been led to believe.

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You don’t have to be a baseball savant to know that the Phillies’ starting rotation is their greatest strength and the best reason to think they can make a deep playoff run.

But that reality doesn’t mean that Dave Dombrowski, Rob Thomson, and the rest of the organization’s brain trust won’t have a tough call to make, vis-a-vis that pitching staff, come October.

Even if the Phillies secure a bye straight to the National League divisional round, their race to the World Series will be a sprint, not a 162-game marathon. Given how terrific Zack Wheeler, Cristopher Sánchez, Ranger Suárez, and Jesús Luzardo have been, it would be a waste to designate one of them as a “fourth starter” for the playoffs. Theoretically, in the best-of-five NLDS, that No. 4 arm, and most likely one of the Phillies’ top pitchers, might not even get an opportunity to take the mound.

The MLB postseason is a live-for-today, survive-and-advance deal, and any team has to maximize its chances of winning by using its best players and pitchers in the most important games, situations, and moments. To that end, it makes sense for the Phillies to move one of those four starters to the bullpen. (Unless you want them to rely on Jordan Romano in big spots, in which case, there are plenty of good mental-health professionals out there who treat sadomasochistic disorders.)

Wheeler is arguably the best starter in the majors — perhaps the best pitcher, period. He’s not going anywhere, obviously. Luzardo is the Little Girl with the Curl of the group: When he’s good, he’s very good, but when he’s bad, he’s horrid. Risky.

Suárez has pitched out of the bullpen in the postseason before; he recorded the final outs of the 2022 NLCS. But in a close game’s late innings, a pitcher who can induce hitters to swing and miss — a pitcher who can strike hitters out — takes on more value, and Suarez’s drop in velocity this season reduces the likelihood that he can be that kind of shutdown guy.

That leaves Sánchez, who is fanning 9.5 hitters per nine innings this season and whose changeup has become one of the best put-away pitches in the majors. It’s counterintuitive, yes, to consider moving a starter as good as Sánchez to the bullpen, but it might be the best thing for the Phillies once they start playing the games that matter most.

Jeez. When I was an intern, way back in the summer of 1996, I took American Legion box scores over the phone and made the nightly newsroom run to Wendy’s or the local pizzeria — and when I got the order right, it was a big win. Thank God I wasn’t responsible for overseeing the health and rehabilitation of the most important Sixers draft pick of the century.

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