He’s been on a heater of late
There are times when a reliever is called up by the Phillies from the minor leagues and we around the writer’s parts are immediately skeptical. Too often have we seen a minor leaguer come up and make any kind of impact, particularly from the relief pitching side. It’s a spot in the team’s development system that they have had a bit of a blind spot in, one that has been seemingly addressed with their most recent draft haul of prospects. They keep having to trade for relievers every deadline, mostly due to their not being able to bring up quality relievers from the minors.
When Max Lazar was called up by the team in May, it was following Mick Abel’s stellar debut, a transaction that signaled the team needed a fresh arm in their bullpen, someone that could be optioned right back down in the game of minor league reliever roulette. His first four appearances were nothing to write home about, six and a third innings where he gave up four runs, walked five and struck out six. Those are numbers that suggest a pitcher that, since he has minor league options, he can ride the bus between Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia as many times as the CBA allows.
Yet he’s stuck around.
And guess what? He’s actually been pretty good lately.
Since giving up those four runs in 6 1⁄3 initial innings, he’s only allowed four in his next 16 1⁄3 innings. He’s inherited 10 runners (one of them a ghost runner on Monday night), yet has not allowed a single one of those inherited runners to score. One might think that the manager would put more faith in him, which is easy to check on. The average leverage index in those first four appearances of 2025 was 0.52; since, the aLI has climbed up to….0.53. Of course, context is important there since many of those appearances in June had a leverage index that had zeroes until the hundredths place, so it’s better to see how he’s been used in the month of July. That shows an aLI of 0.84, a number that indicates a growing trust from the dugout, a number that is reflected in his last five appearances:
7/8: aLI of 1.05
7/11: aLI of 0.27
7/18: aLI of 3.74
7/20: aLI of 0.01
7/21: aLI of 4.06
This doesn’t tell the entirety of the story, but it does give something of a snapshot of the trust that Rob Thomson is starting to show in Lazar. Monday night is decent example, but there has to be a bit more of the story given. When the game was still in regulation, Thomson used his three trusted relievers first – Tanner Banks, Orion Kerkering, and Matt Strahm. Yet when the tenth inning called, it was not Jordan Romano being called on, it was Lazar. You might say that Romano had pitched the previous day, but so did Lazar. In fact, Lazar had thrown more pitches on Sunday (19) than Romano did (6) and still got the call over him. It was an interesting decision and, as it turns out, the correct one.
He’s getting outs by not doing anything special. His fastball doesn’t have great velocity, averaging 94.1 miles per hour, his knucklecurve doesn’t really stand out when it comes to the types of things that we look at like spin rate, etc., but he’s been getting outs. Monday night, he started getting more swings and misses than he has in the past, which is a great sign for his stuff. It showed up big time in the tenth of Monday’s game when he got Jarren Duran on a pitch that Lazar doesn’t throw much at all.
The team needs as much relief help as possible. Once the postseason starts to get in their sights, there will be some sorting out as far as who would be trusted to pitch in those situations that call for the highest amount of trust from the dugout. It’s still a long way off and Lazar could very well revert back to something resembling a recyclable pitcher, but if he keeps up his current pace, he’ll give them another solid option to use.
They sure can use it.