Phillies officials walked past a group of reporters in hushed tones in the tunnel outside the home clubhouse after Saturday night’s win.
A morning later, the secrecy made more sense.
Jose Alvarado has been suspended for 80 games without pay and will not appeal after testing positive for exogenous Testosterone. He took a supplement over the offseason to lose weight and was seemingly unaware that it contained a banned substance.
To make matters even worse, Alvarado will also be ineligible for the 2025 playoffs. He’ll be able to pitch in regular-season Games 126 through 162 and that’s it. He’s already left town.
Even with Alvarado, the Phillies already needed more relief help. It has stuck out as their top need, one that was likely to be addressed at the trade deadline.
But the trade deadline is 10 weeks away. Sunday’s news could and perhaps should expedite the Phillies’ process of finding another high-leverage reliever.
It won’t be easy. Top relievers are hardly ever traded this far out from the deadline and you’d have to overpay to complete a deal soon.
Want Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley? Well, it’s going to cost more than a rental ordinarily would, especially now.
Want A’s closer Mason Miller, who isn’t a free agent until after 2028? Well, it might very well cost both Aidan Miller and Justin Crawford, the Phillies’ top two position player prospects.
The reason sellers hang on to their top trade candidates until close to the July 31 deadline is because demand doesn’t decrease, it typically increases. Bidding wars ensue. Acquisition costs rise.
“I can’t even answer that yet. That’s still a while away,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said when asked how the Alvarado news will affect the Phillies’ trade deadline.
“It would be like if we had an injury. If you had an injury and knew a guy was going to be out for a while, well how do you deal with it? You talk about a lot of different things and there’s short-term and long-term.”
The Cardinals, the A’s, the Rays with Pete Fairbanks, the Orioles with Felix Bautista and Yennier Cano, the Nationals with Kyle Finnegan, they all have little incentive to act now unless they’re bowled over.
These teams all know the Phillies are in win-now mode, lost their best reliever and won’t want to waste a year in the primes of Bryce Harper, Zack Wheeler, Kyle Schwarber and the rest. Dombrowski was asked Sunday about that lack of leverage.
“If you make somebody the right offer, I don’t think that will make a difference,” he said.
“We’ve already been talking to people so it’s not gonna force anything different. There are very few clubs in position that they want to make trades right now to get rid of players. Most clubs are in a postseason race at this time. We’ve already done a lot of work and have information that we’ve been gathering behind the scenes well before this.”
Alvarado provided so much to the Phillies’ bullpen. He was their primary closer but also the reliever they’d use if a dangerous left-handed section of a lineup was due up in the eighth inning. His mere presence is unsettling to opposing managers and hitters who have almost no time to react to his 100 mph average fastball, 99 mph sinker and 94 mph cutter.
Alvarado showed up in spring training this year already throwing triple-digits. He said several times in March and April that he’s never felt better, that there’s nothing about his routine he wanted to change. He was on track to make his first All-Star team. He had by far the lowest walk rate of his career, 1.8 per nine innings compared to 4.9 prior. Now it’s all washed away.
In the short term, Alvarado’s absence drastically increases the importance of lefty Matt Strahm and right-handers Jordan Romano and Orion Kerkering. Strahm dealt with a left shoulder impingement in spring training and pitched with lower velocity early this season but was sharp Saturday night. Manager Rob Thomson remarked after the game that it was the best Strahm’s stuff has looked in 2025.
Romano is trending in the right direction as well. He’s made seven straight scoreless appearances, four of them 1-2-3. Romano has picked up two saves during that run and figures to be the primary closer moving forward unless Thomson uses him in the eighth inning against a right-handed pocket and saves Strahm for the ninth.
Tanner Banks goes from being the third lefty in the bullpen to the second. He’s held left-handed hitters to 5-for-28 (.179) on the season.
“We’ve had big injuries in the past — Harper, Schwarber, J.T. (Realmuto) — and guys pick it up, that’s what they do around here,” Thomson said.
“It’s a loss, no doubt. It’s really out of our control. We’ve just got to move on. We’ve got really good pieces here that can pick up the slack.”
