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The Baseball Gods Can Be So Cruel
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Phillies reliever Orion Kerkering made his way back to the big leagues yesterday and debuted against the San Francisco Giants after rehabbing through an injury this spring training. That’s good!
He immediately faced a slow dribbler back to the mound and looked just as befuddled as he did on the final play that ended the Phillies 2025 season in heartbreaking fashion. That’s bad!
Oh boy. OH boy oh boy oh boy. You can see the gears turning in his brain during and after the play. The hesitation to grab the grounder, the befuddled look on his face after everything was botched yet again…NOT GREAT GANG! Worse still, Kerkering proceeded to induce a flyout, walk a batter, induce another flyout for the second out of the inning, and then give up a two-run triple to effectively put the game out of reach for the Phillies.
To be fair to Kerkering, the Phillies were already down 4-0 on a night when they couldn’t get anything going offensively, but his season debut certainly didn’t do much to instill confidence in the fanbase for an uber-talented relief pitcher who never seems to be able to put a full inning together. There were far too many instances of this exact same thing in 2025 when he would get two outs and be unable to close out an inning, allowing backbreaking runs in huge spots.
The book on Kerkering has always seemed to be that his stuff is electric, but he gets in his own head and wilts when the spotlight is the brightest. For a seemingly high-leverage reliever, he’s abysmal at stranding inherited runners, allowing 44% of them to score in the 2025 season, a top-20 worst percentage among MLB relief pitchers. One of the worst pitchers at stranding inherited runners last year? Our old friend Jeff Hoffman, who allowed 82% of the 11 inherited runners he faced to score in the 2025 season.
Kerkering also isn’t wonderful when he gets a rare opportunity to close out a game. In 11 save opportunities last season he blew seven of them, only converting 36% of his opportunities.
Hopefully this is just a blip on the radar for the young relief pitcher, who the Phillies are obviously relying on for some big spots for the year, but it did little to make fans forget about his blunder from last year.
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