The Phillies are paying for a bullpen mistake that looked questionable in the winter and looks even worse now.
Brad Keller was supposed to help stabilize a relief group that already had too many holes. Instead, the right-hander has delivered uneven results and now faces a likely season-ending injury after being diagnosed with a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching arm last week. For a team that entered the offseason desperate for bullpen help, it’s the kind of outcome that turns a modest gamble into a brutal miss.
Philadelphia handed Keller a two-year, $22 million deal after his breakout season with the Chicago Cubs. That came on the heels of a rough 2024 split between the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox, when he posted a 5.44 ERA in 41 ⅓ innings. The Cubs got the version of Keller the Phillies were betting on: 68 games, a 2.07 ERA and 75 strikeouts.
But the bigger point is what that contract represented. The Phillies needed late-inning help, and they spent the same money the division-rival New York Mets gave to Luke Weaver. That comparison is now impossible to ignore.
Weaver’s path has been a lot more winding. He arrived in the majors with the St.
Louis Cardinals as a first-round pick in 2014, later went to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the Paul Goldschmidt trade, and then bounced around to the Royals, Reds and Mariners before the Yankees gave him a real shot at the end of the 2023 season. Once he got that opening, he ran with it.
In 2024, Weaver threw 84 innings over 62 games for the Yankees and posted a 2.89 ERA with 103 strikeouts and only 26 walks. He followed that with a 3.62 ERA in 64 appearances the next season. His numbers have dipped a bit since a June hamstring injury, and he allowed five earned runs across three playoff outings after recording one out, but his overall body of work in New York was still strong: 162 innings, a 3.22 ERA and 191 strikeouts over a little more than two seasons.
This year, Weaver is back in top form with the New York Mets. He has a 2.03 ERA in 38 games, while Keller has a 4.02 ERA in 32 appearances for the Phillies. That gap matters, especially when the whole point of the offseason move was to buy reliability.
Relief pitching is fickle, and the Phillies know it better than most. A good year can disappear fast, and the source of that volatility is part of why late-inning arms are so hard to trust. Track records still matter, though, and Weaver’s is looking a lot sturdier than Keller’s.
Now Philadelphia is left with a damaged bullpen and a costly contract tied to a pitcher who may not be back this season, or much at all in 2026. If the Phillies want to make a meaningful bullpen addition at the trade deadline, they may have to give up prospect depth they do not really have. That’s the ripple effect of the Keller decision - and the reason the thought of Weaver keeps hanging over this team.
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