NEW YORK — In the week that he admitted has felt like a month since clinching a playoff berth, Rob Thomson has focused most on preventing bad things from happening to his team. Orion Kerkering’s outing Saturday night was a chance to see a good thing happen.
Kerkering allowed an unearned run in his third big league appearance, with a hit and a walk. But after the first three guys reached base, down 11-4 in the fifth inning of Game 2 of a doubleheader, Kerkering roared back to retire the top of the Mets lineup in order. That included back-to-back strikeouts of Rafael Ortega and Ronny Mauricio before getting Pete Alonso to pound out to third.
It may have been the lowest of low-leverage situations. But it added to the limited intel the Phillies have on the young right-handed reliever at the big league level.
“Just being able to trust my slider as much as I can,” Kerkering said Sunday at Citi Field. “A lot of hitters recently have been taking a lot more pitches with it so they’re trying to read it more and ambush it. I just trust it – if they’re going to swing or not, it doesn’t matter, just keep attacking them no matter what.”
The Phillies entered the final series wanting one more look at Kerkering before making a postseason decision. At this point, it appears clear he’ll make the playoff roster. The only question is his role.
Saturday didn’t necessarily teach Thomson anything new about the 22-year-old, but rather reinforced his readiness for the moment.
“It was good to see him work out of a jam there and go punchout, punchout, groundball against the first three guys in the lineup,” Thomson said. “… He can get the top-of-the-order hitters out. He’s pretty good.”
Kerkering admitted feeling a “little kid moment” seeing Alonso, one of the game’s best right-handed power hitters. But that was soon put aside to go about his business. He peppered Ortega and Mauricio with four sliders each, then threw five sliders to Alonso around a high fastball to change his eye line.
“I think he’s confident with the stuff that he has and knows he can get guys out with it,” catcher Garrett Stubbs said. “He can fill up the zone with these pitches. You never know what they’re going to do when they have big-time names come up to hit. In that situation, he just goes right after the guy.”
The fifth-round pick in the 2022 draft has had an unprecedented 2023 season. He started in Single A, making 27 appearances in Clearwater and Jersey Shore. A 21-game stint in Reading with a 2.05 ERA led to his promotion in September to Triple-A Lehigh Valley, where one outing convinced the Phillies they needed him and his elite slider for the playoff push. He debuted Sept. 24 against the Mets and got the win Wednesday against Pittsburgh.
If Kerkering makes the roster for Tuesday’s wild card round opener at Citizens Bank Park, Kerkering could join a rarefied group. According to FanGraphs, only 17 pitchers in the wild card era have pitched fewer than nine innings in their first major league season and then made a postseason appearance that fall.
The group includes Ryan Weathers and Shane McClanahan, who made their big league debuts for San Diego and Tampa Bay, respectively, in the 2020 postseason. Five of the 17 occurred in 2020, skewed by the short season and the lack of a minor league campaign. Only seven made more than one appearance in that first postseason, and McClanahan was one of four to make four or more.
Dylan Lee is the best recent example, for the 2021 Braves. The lefty debuted Oct. 1, threw two innings and made the postseason roster, where he tossed three appearances in the NLCS and World Series. He was 27 when he got the call, though, having reached Triple A for the first time three years earlier.
Such relievers have been hit or miss. The gold standard is Francisco Rodriguez, who threw 5.2 innings in the regular season before going 5-1 with a 1.93 ERA in 18.2 innings for the Angels on the way to the 2002 World Series title.
Others had rockier introductions. Brandon Finnegan and Hunter Strickland both threw seven regular season innings in 2014 before finding each other on opposite sides of that World Series with ERAs north of 7. Bryan Abreu, who’s since become a key cog in the Astros bullpen, made the 2019 postseason roster after 8.2 regular season innings and struggled in his only appearance in those playoffs. At 22, with a hard slider and a high-90s fastball, Abreu is a good comp for Kerkering, both entering the season as top-10 but not top-5 organizational prospects.
Either way, Kerkering is trying to settle into a big league clubhouse as quickly as possible, enjoy his first taste of the majors and take what comes.
“Just not think about it and just keep doing what I’ve been doing all season and try to keep throwing it the best I can, no matter what,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I’m on the playoff roster or not. (It’s) just being able to get this experience the last week and have fun with it.”
Source: Berkshire mont