Philadelphia Phillies Bullpen Flamethrower Lighting Up Spring Training

The Philadelphia Phillies have a flamethrower in their bullpen and he is only throwing faster by the day, proving his worth for this season.

Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Jose Alvarado pitches against the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park. / James A. Pittman-Imagn Images

The Philadelphia Phillies have generally had a quiet offseason, adding a few pieces such as Max Kepler, Jesús Luzardo, and Jordan Romano to the mix for the 2025 offseason.

However, some of their in-house talents have been improving recently, and that may be the reason behind their choice to focus on development rather than external additions.

One of the players taking notable strides this offseason has been reliever José Alvarado, who has done a phenomenal job increasing his velocity and has looked spectacular on the mound this spring in the opportunities he has had.

Over the course of the 2024 season, his fastest pitch topped out at 101.0 miles per hour, however, against the Detroit Tigers on March 15, he threw a pitch that hit 102.4 miles per hour.

This type of velocity increase, especially when he had already been in the league for seven seasons, is extremely difficult to do, especially considering he's added almost one and a half miles per hour to a pitch. That's hard to do for prospects that have room to grow. For a veteran who already has wear on his arm takes enormous levels of dedication to his craft.

His pitching changes have brought him immense success this spring as well, as in six games he has pitched six innings, accruing a 0.00 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, 15 strikeouts to three walks, and he has only allowed two hits.

This is impressive given his 2024 season was not one of his best, putting up a 4.09 ERA, 1.249 WHIP, 63 strikeouts to 28 walks, and he allowed six home runs in the process of accruing 13 saves.

Granted, this was also his largest single-season sample size as a pitcher since 2018 with the Tampa Bay Rays, so he likely needed some time to adjust to handling that type of workload, throwing 61.2 innings as opposed to 41.1 in 2023.

Alvarado also lost a decent amount of weight this offseason, and stated this was the, "best shape of my life." This is likely part of what contributed to his velocity uptick, as well as getting used to this new physical form he is in and potentially changing his delivery somewhat around it.

With the bullpen remaining relatively similar to the 2024 season, aside from the additions of Romano and Joe Ross, the Phillies will need some of their own pieces to step up in 2025, and it seems Alvarado is ready to do so.

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