CLEARWATER, Fla. – Go to the lockers of the Phillies’ starting pitchers on the first day of spring training and they will all tell you the same thing. Their goal for the 2018 season is to pitch 200 innings. Get there and the likelihood is fairly high that they will have had a solid, if not spectacular season.
Never mind that none of them have ever logged that many innings in a single season before and forget the fact that 200-inning pitchers have become an endangered species. The mindset, according to the pitchers, their manager and their pitching coach has to remain the same even as the game, especially in the pitching department, has so drastically changed.