TRADED NEWS: Reds have completed the deal of a top 23 year old veteran.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how some of the Cincinnati Reds top pitching prospects had been struggling. In the time since a few of them have been trending in the right direction. But since the last time we talked about that, things seem to have gotten worse for Connor Phillips. Sunday saw Phillips take the mound for Triple-A Louisville and he gave up nine runs on 11 hits and two walks in just 3.1 innings.

Among those 11 hits were three home runs. He’s now given up 12 of them on the season. Last season he threw 40.1 innings with Louisville and allowed one.

He’s thrown 50.0 innings this year for the Bats and nearly every single thing has gone backwards. He’s given up 64 hits, walked 46 batters, hit five more, and he’s struck out just 45. Phillips ERA is now up to 9.00 through 12 starts. Before Sunday’s start he had walked at least five batters in five consecutive starts.

It hasn’t just been that his control has been poor, but he’s been very hittable. Diving into the data, Phillips has been a different pitcher this season when it comes to his pitch usage. His fastball usage is down 9% from 62% to 53%. He’s throwing his curveball 4% less often, too. The change up usage is also down – but he’s rarely thrown it in either of the last two years. His slider usage, though, is up from 21% to 36%.

Phillips is throwing significantly more sliders this season but the results are significantly worse when he does. Guys are swinging at the pitch less often this year. And when they do swing they are swinging and missing a lot less frequently, too. In 2023 his whiff rate on his slider (swings and misses/swings) was 20%. This season it’s half that. His whiff rate on his fastball is down half a percentage, and it’s up on both his change up and his curveball. Opposing hitters are just taking advantage of the slider far more in 2024 than they’ve been able to do so in the past.

There’s a lot more going on with just the increased slider usage. While control and consistency with it has always been one of the issues on the scouting report for Phillips, he’s gone from below-average control to bottom of the barrel control this season.

With the struggles he’s had this year and the seeming lack of any improvements it may be time to consider something else. Sending him back to Double-A where he could perhaps find better performance may help. The organization took a struggling Christian Roa and moved him from the rotation to the bullpen a little more than a month ago. Roa is older and more experienced, but they seemed to feel that move made sense. Many scouts have felt that there was a chance – some even felt it was a good chance – that Phillips would wind up in the bullpen due to his control issues.

He’s still just 23-years-old, but the control hasn’t really improved at any point in his career outside of the two-and-a-half months in Double-A last year when he and the rest of the league’s pitchers were able to use a pre-tacked baseball as MLB wanted to experiment with such a thing but not at the expense of big league games.

It’s unclear what the answer is to help get Phillips back on track. But what is clear is that right now he’s struggling nearly every time he takes the mound and in more than one way. Something is going to have to change.