MLB Trade Rumors broke the news Sunday: the Phillies are promoting right-hander Alex McFarlane, giving the 25-year-old a real shot at his major league debut. It's not exactly a mystery why Philadelphia is going this route. The bullpen just got torched in a 6-1 loss to the Mets, with starter Alan Rangel lasting only 4 innings before 4 relievers combined for 208 pitches trying to cover the rest of the game.
MLB Trade Rumors first reported the Phillies were bringing McFarlane up.
The bigger issue isn't one bad night, though — it's that Brad Keller was just diagnosed with a torn UCL, gutting a bullpen that still has Jhoan Duran locking things down at the back end but not much depth behind him. That's the opening McFarlane is walking into. This is the same guy who's been sitting 99-100 mph and touching 102 down in Double-A Reading, running a 2.06 ERA across 32 games with 12 saves in 35 innings this season. MLB Pipeline has him ranked as the Phillies' No. 17 overall prospect.
McFarlane's path here hasn't been a straight line. Philadelphia took him in the 4th round back in 2022 out of the US Virgin Islands, and for years he was viewed as a starter with a legit three-pitch mix — a fastball that grades as a 70 on the 20-80 scale, plus a slider and changeup that both flash plus. The problem was always command; he walked 6.8 batters per 9 innings in 2023, and his long arm action in back never got easier to repeat. Then Tommy John surgery wiped out his entire 2024 season.
The move to the bullpen full time this year looks like the fix. Multi-inning relief lets McFarlane lean on pure stuff instead of grinding through a lineup 3 times, and the results in Double-A back that up. This is also McFarlane's second call-up of the season — he was up briefly before without getting into a game, then got optioned right back down. Whether he actually sees the mound this time depends on how quickly the Phillies need to plug the Keller-sized hole.
None of this is a savior narrative — it's a taxed pitching staff during the trade-deadline stretch reaching for the hardest thrower they've got in the system. But with a healthy Duran anchoring things and a fastball that touches triple digits waiting in the wings, Philadelphia at least has an interesting arm to throw at the problem while it figures out the rest of the deadline.