Before the Phillies could get into a pennant race again, they had to rejoin the arms race. It seemed in a blink of an eye they went from having Four Aces in their starting rotation to five blank spaces.
That absurdly low 2.86 ERA the starting rotation posted in 2011 has not been below 4.41 in the last three seasons, and the Phillies’ starters have not posted an ERA in the top half of baseball since 2012.
That should change immediately with the pending free-agent addition of Jake Arrieta. With Arrieta and Aaron Nola at the top of their rotation, the Phillies have a chance to be a top-10 starting rotation again.