March 05, 2026
Eric Hartline/Imagn Images
The Phillies will get the benefit of having Jhoan Duran for a full year in 2026.
Baseball is back — and so are most of the Phillies.
After a dominating 96-win season in 2025 and a devastating early exit to the eventual World Series champions, the Dodgers, the championship window is still open for the Phils, but for how long?
The Phillies will enter 2026 with the fifth best World Series odds (+1500, via FanDuel). Expectations are still high, as is the level of talent in the clubhouse.
Sticking to their organizational mentality that keeping the window open requires keeping the core together — while also opening up some space for an infusion of young talent — a largely familiar group will be returning to comprise the 26-man roster when camp breaks in March.
As we do every preseason, here's a deep dive into each position on the roster and its outlook heading toward Opening Day. Today, it's a look at Jhoan Duran, Brad Keller, and the bullpen.
Throughout Dave Dombrowski's tenure as the president of baseball operations, he could never seem to get the Phillies' bullpen right.
The club definitely moved forward from the historically bad degrees their relievers were pitching to in 2020 and for a good chunk of 2021, but even then, you could never dependably count on the bullpen for clutch outs in the past couple of years, and in some of the worst-case scenarios, you couldn't even trust them to preserve empty bases and comfortable leads (see Jordan Romano).
There have been numerous shortcomings holding this era of the Phillies back from a World Series, but consistently chief among them has been their bullpen, which Dombrowski has continually tried, yet failed, to correct.
But maybe the Phillies finally have something.
Getting Jhoan Duran at the trade deadline from Minnesota last year gave the Phillies their first unquestioned closer in quite a while, which in turn established much clearer roles down the rest of the list of Philadelphia relievers.
He wasn't perfect, sure, and the Phillies still fell short in the postseason again, but Duran is back for 2026 and the Phillies will have the benefit of a full year of that clearer structure because of it – you know, plus that 100 mile per hour heater he can throw and the few extra arms Dombrowski brought in to shore things up over the winter.
Here's a look at the Phillies' projected bullpen heading toward Opening Day, along with each reliever's 2026 projections, via FanGraphs:
| Pitcher | Throws | ERA | BB/9 | K/9 |
| Jhoan Duran | R | 2.67 | 2.84 | 10.83 |
| José Alvarado | L | 3.30 | 3.71 | 10.52 |
| Brad Keller | R | 4.20 | 3.53 | 8.10 |
| Orion Kerkering | R | 3.49 | 3.30 | 9.94 |
| Tanner Banks | L | 3.85 | 2.55 | 8.48 |
| Jonathan Bowlan | R | 4.16 | 3.02 | 8.54 |
| Kyle Backhus | L | 4.31 | 3.64 | 8.61 |
| Zach McCambley | R | 4.47 | 4.07 | 8.64 |
Duran returning as a true and effective closer frees up and takes a bit of stress off of hard-throwing lefty José Alvarado, who missed much of last season from an 80-game PED suspension and can come back to a more traditional setup role.
Similarly, notable free-agent signing Brad Keller can also take on the late innings as a right-handed option.
Bowlan, who came back from Kansas City in the Matt Strahm trade, is an arm that Dombrowski said the Phillies expected to have in their bullpen this year. His role will likely leave him with the middle innings, alongside Kerkering (returning), Backhus (trade with Arizona), McCambley (Rule 5 draft pick, if they keep him), and Banks (returning), whose appearances can push through multiple innings.
Backhus and McCambley are relative unprovens, and low-cost gambles by Dombrowski that maybe their diamond-in-the-rough types of depth finds.
Then, of course, there's Kerkering, who has always brought some nasty breaking pitches, though with some inconsistent command, and now the mental hurdle of overcoming last October's season-ending gaffe.
Elsewhere down the 40-man roster and into the minors, with minor-league option years left, there's Chase Shugart (1), Seth Johnson (1), Max Lazar (2), and Nolan Hoffman (2) among the immediately notable names.
It's a lot of lower-profile pitchers, but the hope for the Phillies is that enough of them will step up and stick to support Duran, Alvarado, and Keller at the backend to fully flesh out a relief corps that can be trusted.
The Phillies, after all, have been trying for years, but could never quite get it right.
Bullpens are rarely ever for the long-term and turnover is inevitable.
The Phillies, though, will have Duran and Keller through 2027, Alvarado through this season, and Banks and Kerkering under team control for several more years each.
Something to note, however, is the Phillies' approach in the draft last summer, when they went heavy on high-velocity pitchers, highlighted by first-round pick Gage Wood.
Now, Wood is a right-hander the Phillies intend to have as starter, but there is a chance that the Arkansas star's path to it can be as a major-league reliever to start.
Then behind him were second-round pick Cade Obermueller out of Iowa, third-round pick Cody Bowker out of Vanderbilt, and several more D1 NCAA arms who can throw a hard fastball and figure to have a faster track to the majors if what they're being called for is just an inning or two.
Part of the Phillies' longstanding bullpen issues, too, was that they always had to scramble after fixes from the outside.
Theoretically, it's much easier to keep your relief corps stable when there's always someone progressing along in the pipeline to call up, which star first baseman Bryce Harper said he admired about the Dodgers in their ability to do so consistently a couple of weeks ago.
Maybe last year's draft for the Phillies was the start of getting that system established for themselves.
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