A Breakdown of the Archie Bradley and Jose Alvarado Acquisitions and Why We Should Expect Them to Succeed in 2021

A Breakdown of the Archie Bradley and Jose Alvarado Acquisitions and Why We Should Expect Them to Succeed in 2021

By: Dan Primiani

Former Diamondback Archie Bradley will most likely slot into the 8th or 9th inning for the Phillies in 2021.

    In just about a month, pitchers and catchers will report to major league camps in Florida and Arizona, intent on preparing for the upcoming 2021 MLB baseball season. It's been a turbulent past few months with the sport having to navigate through Coronavirus restrictions and a plethora of rule changes and modifications, but hope springs on the horizon with commissioner Rob Manfred pledging that teams should ready themselves for a full one hundred sixty-two game schedule. With that in mind, it is necessary for teams to begin readjusting their mindsets in composing their rosters and deeper starting pitching rotations and bullpens will be necessary to plod through six months of monotonous baseball action. For teams lacking particularly strong starting rotations, the onus of responsibility for providing quality innings will fall on the bullpen. And that is where we find ourselves with the 2021 Philadelphia Phillies.

    By and large, the pitching in Philadelphia was terrible last year. Looking beyond the woes of the bullpen (believe me, enough has been said already about the historical ineptitude of Phillies relief pitchers), the pitching staff as a whole compiled a 5.14 ERA. As I've said in articles before, earned run average is a statistic that only begins to scrape the surface of the true tale of a pitcher's effectiveness, but lets try a few other numbers on for size: Phillies arms gave up 550 hits in 497.0 innings (fourteenth worst in the National League), they yielded 1.45 HR/9, and, combined, were allowing just about 13.4 baserunners per game. The league's fourth-highest scoring offense was wasted on a team that blew thirteen saves and whose starting staff lacked the ability to pitch deep into games, thus forcing the Phillies to expose their greatest weakness: their bullpen. Thirteen blown saves. Let that sink in: thirteen times the Phillies were winning the game only to watch their bullpen implode and cough up the lead. The season was only sixty games long; thirteen blown saves constitute over 20% of the season (21.7% to be more precise). One out of every five games was lost due to the bullpen. What can the Phillies do to prevent this scenario from repeating in 2021?

    Bringing in outside help is one solution and the Phillies have begun the process of rebuilding their 'pen by trading for former Tampa Bay Rays set-up man/closer Jose Alvarado as well as bringing in free agent Archie Bradley. Both moves should, conceivably, shore up the late innings for the Phils and provide at least a modicum of consistency and the importance of that cannot be understated. The Phillies rotation currently consists of Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler, Zach Efflin, Spencer Howard, and Vince Velazquez. In my mind, Nola and Wheeler are about as close to sure-things as you'll find in the majors; you can expect six to seven innings every time out from these two. I'm still not sure what my belief is in Zach Efflin; he's been a part of the Phillies rotation since 2016 in some way, shape, or form and the results have featured just as many highs as there have been lows. At minimum, he does provide you with the potential to usually provide around six innings of allowing two to three runs an outing. Not great, but not terrible. Spencer Howard and Vince Velazquez both ooze talent, but are at different trajectories in their careers. Howard is the team's #1 pitching prospect and has just begun to scratch the surface of his full potential. Velazquez, well, we've seen what we need to see of him and his career has really plateaued since 2018. He'll put up three to four shutout innings and then be knocked out of the game by the fifth. Case closed. The reality is that the Phillies are going to need consistent production from their bullpen to account for the backend of their rotation and I fully believe that Jose Alvarado and Archie Bradley are going to fill a need that the Phillies have had for the past few seasons.

    Archie Bradley has put up a 3.07 ERA since converting full-time to the bullpen in 2017 and his career GB% (groundball percentage) rests at 47.3%. For someone who will be pitching half of their games at hitter-friendly Citizens Bank Park, it's crucial that you limit opponent fly balls and, instead, keep the ball on the ground. The winds swirl up in the second and third levels and what might be a flyout in one park may end up in the seats in Philadelphia. Therefore, Bradley's groundball-inducing tendencies should play well in Philly. Another stat to take note of is Bradley's opponent exit velocity (EV) of 86.7 MPH; essentially, when opposing ballplayers make contact with Bradley's pitches, they aren't particularly squaring them up and the still-young right hander has decreased opponent exit velocity in each of the years that he has been in the majors. The last thing you want to do as a reliever is come in with guys on base and immediately give up hard contact. Bradley's strikeout numbers won't overwhelm you by any means, but he still possesses the requisite mid-90s fastball and low 80s curveball that can make some batters miss. His fastball has always had above average arm side run on it, so it makes sense that he's been able to be particularly tough on righties throughout his career. The data that Statcast and Pitch F/X has been able to compile on Archie Bradley give me hope that he'll be able to continue producing at a very high level moving forward.

    Jose Alvarado is the Phil's other primary acquisition to their 'pen thus far this offseason and, while recency bias may leave us a little wary of placing too much faith in the hard throwing lefty, it wasn't long ago that he put up a 2.1 WAR season out of the bullpen. In 2018, Alvarado held his opponents to a .180 batting average, struck out 30.4% of opposing batters, and gave up only one home run in 64.0 innings. I think any Phillies fan would kill for numbers like that from a relief pitcher after the debacle last year. During that 2018 season, Alvarado's sinking fastball averaged 97.3 MPH and, while the movement wasn't elite (despite some amazing highlights of his fastball, sabermetrics actually measure his sinker as having slightly below average movement) on that pitch, his calling card has always been his top-end velocity. Combining elite velo with just enough movement enabled Alvarado to establish himself as a dominant set-up man.

    The script flipped a bit in 2020 as Alvarado struggled to a 6.00 ERA and seventeen total baserunners allowed in just 9.0 innings. What was the cause for his struggles? By all accounts, Alvarado still maintained his elite velocity in 2020. His fastball still clocked in the 96th percentile for fastest among MLB pitchers. If his calling card, his velocity, still plays in the upper echelon of the MLB, what was the difference? Well, this is a little tough to explain, but here's my theory. Alvarado's curveball radically changed it's trajectory last year; in year's past, it had much more of a true 12-6 nature with the movement being straight down. Downward movement is inherently more difficult for a batter to pick up. Anyone who has faced high level competition will tell you this; it's harder to pick up the spin of a true 12-6 curveball than it is to discern that tight, red eye that's indicative of a slider or sweeping curveball. Why? It's simple really. A fastball has backspin while a 12-6 curve has topspin; they look virtually identical to a hitter until it's too late. Last year, Alvarado's break flattened out with him losing about four inches of vertical movement from the pitch while picking up about 3.5 inches of horizontal motion. As I said before, it's easier to pick up side-to-side movement than true vertical motion, so hitters had a much easier time laying off of Alvarado's curveball and were able to sit on his fastball which, albeit coming in at an elite speed, is still statistically below-average in terms of movement. This is the same issue that we've seen the past few years with Craig Kimbrel; as Kimbrel's curveball became easier and easier to lay off due to his inability to consistently throw it for strikes, hitters could sit on the heat and, regardless of who you are, it's a lot easier to hit when you have a pretty good idea of what you're looking for (just ask the Astros...). 

    Why the sudden change in Alvarado's curveball? Well, speaking from experience as one who suffered a torn labrum in their throwing shoulder and tried to continue pitching through it (spoiler alert: it didn't end well), an injury can impact a player's performance in several ways. Jose Alvarado struggled through both elbow inflammation in 2019 as well as shoulder stiffness and weakness throughout the 2020 season. I believe this is the primary culprit behind his decline in productivity. While Alvarado's velocity may have not been particularly affected by his elbow and shoulder woes, the ability to stay on top of one's pitches and to finish out in front of your throwing motion, both of those abilities can be severely impacted by an arm problem. Weakness in your shoulder forces you to compensate and either allow your hand to cut off your throwing motion (with your fingers falling off the side of the ball as you throw it) or, in the worst cases, result in you pushing the ball more so than throwing it. It's self-preservation; you don't want to further injure your arm so your body responds unconsciously by altering the way you throw. Ditto with an elbow injury. Your body won't physically allow you to extend and torque your arm in the way that you've grown accustomed to and that you need to in order to maximize the spin you impart on the ball. Throwing a baseball isn't a natural motion. I've said it once and I'll say it again. The human shoulder wasn't meant to flex and torque itself in such a way that's required to throw a baseball at a high speed. Therefore, any injury to the shoulder is going to affect the way you perform on the field. I imagine that in trying to play through injury, Alvarado unconsciously was altering the way he threw his pitches, with him probably cutting off his curveball, thus resulting in the horizontal break rather than vertical movement. My feeling is that if Alvarado enters the 2021 season with a clean bill of health and a shoulder free of distress, there is no reason he shouldn't return to the performance levels we saw him at in 2017 and 2018.

    So where does that leave us? Well, for one thing, the Phillies are much better equipped to be successful in the late innings in 2021 than they were at the onset of 2020. Just look at the names in the 'pen on the Phil's 2020 opening day roster: Austin Davis, Deolis Guerra, Tommy Hunter, Cole Irvin, Trevor Kelley, Reggie McClain, Adam Morgan, Hector Neris, Jose Alvarez, Ramon Rosso, Nick Pivetta. You can't tell me that Jose Alvarado and Archie Bradley won't be more successful than that motley crew. My sense is that the Phillies aren't done yet acquiring fresh arms for their bullpen; it wouldn't surprise me to see them pick up one or two more veteran arms either on major league contracts or minor league invites to spring camp. Certainly, things can only get better than the way they were in 2020 and I think that the Phillies are on the right path to redeeming their bullpen.

Image courtesy of diamondbacks.com.