The suspension of Jose Alvarado has cast the bullpen into an entirely different light. Long thought to be the Achilles’ heel of the team, they have actually been much better of late. Looking at several different statistics can put them into whatever context one wants to put them in.

For example, if you were a believer in WAR by position, Fangraphs has the team as the 6th best set of relief pitchers with 2.0 fWAR.* However, it doesn’t take much more than a button click to reset the filters with the ERA range and you see that they fall to the bottom third in the league with a collective relief ERA approaching 5. Another readjustment and the team goes back to the top third of the league by FIP (3.68) See? Bend the numbers to fit your own narrative.

It’s still a wildly inconsistent set of arms that Rob Thomson calls upon in the late innings, helped by the fact this superior starting pitching is able to handle the first five to seven innings for themselves, putting the relievers in fewer situations in which to frustrate the fanbase. Yet since the calendar flipped to April 21 (a completely arbitrary point that I chose), the team’s ERA for the relievers stands at 3.36, it’s FIP at 2.97, it’s K/9 at 10.41 and it’s fWAR at 1.8. They’ve been very good of late.

Of course, Alvarado has to be included in that group and for right now, they are going to have to march on without him. It’s a hole that will not be filled easily, but there is probably someone who gets hot enough over these next 80 games that the performance that Alvarado was having can be approached from within, either by some combination of a reliever from the minor leagues or by someone that is currently in the rotation. We’ll just have to wait and see.

It’s this finagling with the roster that can let the team focus in trade talks at the more pressing needs that they have – the platoons in left and center fields.

In left field, the combination of Max Kepler, Weston Wilson, Edmundo Sosa, basically anyone who has played the position this year has given the Phillies an OPS of .704, good for 18th in the game. In center field, that same number is .612, 26th in baseball. While it may seems like it is going to be a good idea to continue running out platoons at those positions, the fact is that it is untenable for them to keep trotting out those platoons. If they are going to expend any kind of prospect capital in a trade for an upgrade, bolstering either one of those two spots is their best bet to move forward.

Now, those numbers might be thought of as a bit misleading as they take everything into account. It’s a conglomeration of same sided hitting against same sided hitting, platoon advantages and alike, all rolled into one number. A deeper look at it shows that the platoons are, well, you look:

Max Kepler vs. RHP: 134 PA, .220/.313/.373, 4 HR, 11 RBI
Johan Rojas vs. LHP: 35 PA, .281/.324/.406, 1 HR, 5 RBI
Brandon Marsh vs. RHP: 65 PA, .211/.292/.333, 1 HR, 8 RBI

Well, maybe it’s just Rojas that has been fine performing as the platoon should, in theory, be working.

The numbers just aren’t good enough for the production you would expect in a platoon advantage. It could be that the scouting reports are out on the hitters, it could be that the hitters just aren’t good enough right now to be performing anyway. For a team that has had its struggles on the offensive side of things once the October push begins, not getting the kind of numbers a team would want from two third of the outfield is going to be an issue. It’s why upgrading the outfield, at either one of the left or center field spots, should be at the top of their shopping list come July.

Of course, there has be players at those positions that are available to be brought in and right now, that market is looking somewhat thin. Maybe there will be a gamechanger that comes up for trade that the Phillies will wish to push a few chips in for; we’ll have to see how that all shakes out. But there is one thing that looks somewhat fair to assess: the chances that Alvarado’s production is replicated from within are better than their chances of improving the outfield with a player in the organization.

*All stats through Monday’s game