REPORT: Phillies add a helping Hand to the bullpen

Seeking more bullpen help for manager Joe Girardi, the Phillies add a lefty reliever that miiiiiiight be cooked.

Man this team loves giving out $6 million.

2021 was an odd year for Hand. He played for three different teams - Washington, Toronto, New York Mets - in the season, performing decently for two of them and awfully for one. In the National League, he was fine, throwing 56 innings for the two NL teams, registering an ERA near 3 and a FIP near 4, but when he was in Toronto, hoo baby he was bad. The Blue Jays got him at the trade deadline to help their bullpen and he rewarded them by allowing an OPS of 1.012. His strikeout rate was halved there and his home run rate was up past 7%!

That’s just amazing actually.

He earned his placement onto waivers where he was picked up by the Mets. He was ok there, but at that point in New York, it was too little, too late. They were out of the playoff picture and he was just giving them innings.

The reason this is going to be met with skepticism is his peripherals. They, uh, leave something to be desired.

If they see something they can fix or believe he can bounce back to his 2020 form, this is a good pickup. For now, we’ll just give it another “meh” as a move.

We’ll have more to come on this and other transactions.