Luis Arraez Will Not Be On Phillies’ Wild Card Roster

The Phillies made the postseason but they will try to fend off Atlanta in the Wild Card round without a key bat. Manager Don Mattingly has informed reporters, including Todd Zolecki of MLB.com, that infielder Luis Arraez will not be on the roster. Fellow infielder Otto Kemp will be taking his place. Arraez departed Thursday’s game after an obvious on-field injury when trying to avoid a tag on the basepaths. The team later announced that Arraez has suffered a left ankle sprain. Despite the injury, the Phils didn’t immediately place Arraez on the injured list for the final games of the regular season. They wanted to wait to see how the ankle responded with a few days of rest. It appears that the ankle is still enough of an issue that the club will try to get through at least one playoff round without him. If they survive, perhaps he can rejoin the club for future rounds, if his injury status improves. For as long as he’s out, the Phillies will be without an important bat and deadline pick-up. The Phillies sent minor leaguers Ramon Marquez and Marty Gair to the Giants in order to acquire both Arraez and reliever Caleb Kilian from San Francisco. Thus far, that trade hasn’t worked out especially well for Philadelphia. Kilian made four appearances, allowing five earned runs in 3 1/3 innings, before hitting the IL with a left oblique strain. Kilian was later transferred to the 60-day IL and isn’t eligible for reinstatement until next week. Even if he’s healthy by then and the Phillies are still alive, they might not add him to the roster. Arraez has also seen his production slide after the trade. He had a .324/.360/.440 line with the Giants before the swap and then a .278/.309/.369 line after. Despite that drop, it’s not good for the Phillies to lose him, especially since the decline was probably about luck. Arraez has a career batting average on balls in play of .326. That’s well above average but related to his line drive approach. He had a .327 BABIP with the Giants but that has been at .273 with the Phillies. The club rearranged their defensive alignment to accommodate Arraez. He took over at second base, which bumped Bryson Stott from second to third. That pushed third baseman Alec Bohm over to first and first baseman Bryce Harper back to right field. In the club’s final three games, while Arraez was hurt, they mixed that up. Stott was back at second. Bohm and Edmundo Sosa covered third. Bohm and Harper covered first, with Bryan De La Cruz getting a start in right. They will probably do something similar against Atlanta. Kemp will almost certainly be on the bench. He has only 75 games of big league experience. He spent most of this year on optional assignment, only getting into 13 big league contests. He hit just .080/.148/.080 in 27 plate appearances. His Triple-A batting line of .227/.334/.402 looks okay at first glance but was subpar in this year’s supercharged offensive environment in the International League, leading to a 95 wRC+ for Kemp. He has experience at every position outside of center field and the battery, so he gives the club lots of cover for injuries or substitutions. The Phils are going into this week’s series with a few less-than-ideal situations. Since they struggled to lock down a playoff spot in the final days of the season, they had to use Cristopher Sánchez on Friday and Zack Wheeler on Sunday. Aaron Nola pitched on just two days’ rest on Saturday and only went an inning. Sánchez will probably start game two of the series but Wheeler may not be available until the NLDS. For the first game of the Wild Card round, Jesús Luzardo is going to start, per Lochlahn March of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Luzardo just returned from an IL stint related to shoulder inflammation. He tossed one inning yesterday. He probably can’t go too deep in the game, so Andrew Painter will probably be the bulk guy. Photo courtesy of Bill Streicher, Imagn Images