Have the Phillies built baseball’s deepest rotation?

Have the Phillies built baseball’s deepest rotation? originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

If it can remain mostly intact over a six-month regular season, the Phillies’ starting rotation has a chance to be the very best in baseball in 2025.

The group was already beginning from a position of strength with Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, Cristopher Sanchez and Ranger Suarez before adding another lefty in Jesus Luzardo. It’s a rotation with an ace (Wheeler) and four guys who have shown over the last two seasons that they can be No. 2-level starters.

The only pitching staff in baseball that accrued more Wins Above Replacement last season than the Phillies was the Braves. The Phils ranked second in the majors in groundball rate, generated the second-highest chase rate from their opponents and had the fifth-best strikeout-to-walk ratio.

And keep in mind, that was for a staff that had no No. 5 starter and struggled mightily anytime it had to use one the final two months. After Aug. 1 last season, Taijuan Walker, Tyler Phillips and Seth Johnson combined to allow 58 earned runs in 38 innings over nine starts for a 13.74 ERA.

Those three and many other depth pieces will be at spring training, which begins for pitchers and catchers on Wednesday, but barring a rash of injuries they don’t figure prominently into the Phillies’ 2025 rotation plans. The team has its group of five plus Joe Ross, a veteran swingman with 86 career starts signed just before Christmas to a one-year, $4 million contract.

After adding Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos to kickstart this era of Phillies baseball, it was a team built around power. Now it’s a team built around the rotation. There are only a handful of teams in baseball, after all, that can claim to go more than three-deep in high-quality starters: the Phillies, Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Mariners and Yankees.

The Phillies have their aforementioned five.

The Dodgers have Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin. You could argue this group has more upside than the Phillies, but no member of the Dodgers’ rotation has proven himself as a consistent, durable, year-over-year 30-start guy. Glasnow’s career innings is 139. Excluding the shortened 2020 schedule, Snell has averaged 138 innings per full season since 2018. Sasaki will be a 23-year-old rookie. Yamamoto missed two months during his rookie season and made just three starts longer than six innings. Gonsolin didn’t pitch in 2024 because of late-season Tommy John surgery the year before. May hasn’t pitched since early 2023 because of an elbow injury and esophageal tear.

Arizona was the surprise landing spot for Corbin Burnes, who signed a six-year, $210 million contract. He joins Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Eduardo Rodriguez and Brandon Pfaadt in a solid rotation featuring multiple workhorses. There is a bit less swing-and-miss on this staff compared to the other four.

The Mariners have an enviable rotation with Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Luis Castillo, Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo. Castillo aside, they’re all between 25 and 27 years old. According to the Seattle Times in early December, the Phillies sought Kirby or Gilbert from the Mariners while discussing an Alec Bohm trade and were understandably denied. Gilbert and Kirby have become two of the top 10 pitchers in the American League and are under three and four more years of club control, respectively.

The Yankees pivoted after losing Juan Soto to the Mets and bolstered their pitching staff, signing Max Fried and trading for closer Devin Williams. The Yankees’ rotation is one of the deepest in baseball with Gerrit Cole, Fried, Carlos Rodon, Luis Gil, Clarke Schmidt and Marcus Stroman, who was moved to the bullpen down the stretch last season. Cole’s health will go a long way in determining their success. Last year was the first full season since 2016 that he didn’t make at least 30 starts.

Health from the rotation has been a major advantage for the Phillies, one that is often overlooked because you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Wheeler has missed just six starts the last four years. Nola hasn’t missed a start since 2017. The Phillies haven’t had to navigate a month or two of a season without them, and you wonder while crossing your fingers how many consecutive years they can avoid such a scenario. There are legitimate reasons why both have been able to stay on the mound. Wheeler has a fluid delivery with repeatable mechanics and never looks like he’s rearing back for extra velocity. Nola’s had a rubber arm all these years while also adjusting his routines during the season and offseason to better preserve himself.

“Definitely thought about that and I hope I age well, for sure,” Nola said a year ago when signed to a $172M extension. “I’m going to do everything I can to stay durable. I feel like I have some ways I can make myself healthy and stay healthy, but it’s all about what I need to do and don’t need to do. If I’m too tired, there’s no set thing I have to do every single day anymore. I learned early in my career that doesn’t work for me. Finding my routine early in my career has helped me out a lot.”

It’s helped the Phillies out a lot, too. They’re hoping Wheeler and Nola can continue to defy Father Time and the inevitable injuries that develop for pitchers with these sorts of consistent workloads, but if the worst-case scenario does occur, the team is better equipped to withstand a temporary loss. A year ago at this time, Wheeler, Nola and Suarez were the Phillies’ only trustworthy starters. A Sanchez breakout and Luzardo acquisition later, the picture is much different. The Phillies also hope to incorporate top prospect Andrew Painter into their pitching staff around midseason, barring any setbacks during his first-half ramp-up.

“Good or bad, I’ve always felt that the best chance to win is to throw a quality starting pitcher out there every single day if you can,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said last month. “It gives you the odds to win. We just felt that by acquiring Luzardo, that gives us that capability.

“For us, we talked about trying to get our team better in any way we possibly could. We think he is a big upgrade for us. You would never call him just a fifth starter, he’s better than that.”

One might say the Phillies still don’t have a fifth starter, just in a good way.