He came to Philadelphia with little fanfare. Did you think he deserved some?
Look at the photo above. That photo was taken on October 3, 2015. It was the first game of a doubleheader that day since it had rained the day before and the powers that be demanded that the Phillies and Marlins both play 162 games. History marks it as something of a nondescript affair. Neither team was anywhere close to a playoff spot, which explains why there is more blue in the picture than any other color you can see. It was so unimportant and noneventful that even Baseball Reference, that great database of just about anything related to the game, doesn’t even have an official attendance listed.
The starting pitcher in this game was Aaron Harang, also pictured above.
It was the last game in the major leagues that Harang would pitch.
Harang was signed, mostly with little fanfare, on January 5, 2015.
Phillies sign 36-year-old right-hander Aaron Harang to 1-year, $5M deal. http://t.co/zvnivxP6Pc pic.twitter.com/NcQQFVOnQZ
— theScore (@theScore) January 5, 2015
There wasn’t much one could say about this signing other than maybe he would eat a lot of innings. Ian Riccaboni, then of Phillies Nation, had little to say about it when writing it up officially, but there was a certain portend of doom to cap off his summary:
Yet, fans should exercise slight caution with Harang as it relates to pitching for the Phillies. Over 61% of Harang’s balls are put in play via line-drive or fly balls which could spell trouble. The Phillies had one of the National League’s worst defenses by any metrics, Baseball Reference, FanGraphs, or otherwise.
How right was Riccaboni? In that final game of Harang’s career, he allowed a home run to Jeff Mathis, the backup catcher who that season hit .161/.214/.290 and who mustered a career 48 OPS+.
Yet the goal for Harang that season was clear. He was to give the team innings and starts in a rotation that willingly gave Jerome Williams major league chances (ed. note: you’ll hear about Williams later in this series). When signed, that much was laid out clear by Ruben Amaro, Jr., then general manager of the Phillies:
Aaron brings a wealth of experience and durability to our rotation…[h]e had a very solid season for the Braves last year and will complement the lefthanders in our rotation nicely.” 1
Totally plausible. By this time, everyone saw the writing on the wall and knew the team needed to be rebuilt from the foundation up. Whether or not Amaro knew that teams were doing signings similar to this one in order to have trade chips in July, we will not know. He had other trade chips to worry about, both of them lefthanded and in the starting rotation as well.
Of course, Cliff Lee would also never pitch again, but I digress…
The rotation was thin and they needed arms. They didn’t harbor any ideas of being a contender, but they still had that air about them that a rebuild was not something they were fully committed to. If and when Cole Hamels was traded, that would be the signal that they were ready to enter the dark times, but once 2015 dawned on the organization, he was still there, games were still on the schedule and innings needed to be covered. Enter Harang.
*Quick side note: the team was also heavily in the running for Wandy Rodriguez as well during this same time period. He ended signing a minor league deal with Atlanta. Maybe they did think they could contend.
Harang would start the season in fine fashion. In eleven starts through May, he was probably the best starter by numbers the team had. He was sporting a spiffy 2.02 ERA through 71 1⁄3 innings once May concluded and had some numbers that suggested it wasn’t all that much a fluke. Yet one stat – a .255 BABIP – suggested the tougher roads were ahead. Those roads were driven the next month. June wasn’t kind at all where in five starts, he had a 7.28 ERA in 29 1⁄3 innings and looked every bit the journeyman he was at that time. Still, he could have had something resembling trade value if he were to pitch better as the deadline rolled around. Pitchers slump all the time for starts at a time, then suddenly find it again. There was at least some consideration that Harang would figure it all out, but July didn’t start off much better than June had ended.
Following June and his first start of July, Harang looks almost as difficult to trade as [Ryan] Howard or Chase Utley. 2
Little did they know that Harang was hurting. Place on the injured (then called disabled) list the day following a disastrous 14 hit, eight run in five inning outing, it was his foot that finally did him, plantar fasciitis the culprit. He admitted that it had been bothering him for some time, but for the Phillies, it was a chance missed where they would be unable to recoup anything of value for him in a trade with another team.
Instead of pitching for a contender, Harang was forced to slog it out the remainder of the season with the clearly rebuilding Phillies, giving them much needed innings in a march toward September that wouldn’t see Cole Hamels with the team, nor would Chase Utley or, if you’re a real sicko, Jonathan Papelbon.
It was a rough time. He wasn’t good, but he took the ball. On a team as bad as the Phillies were during August and September of that season, there is honor in that.
In the end, though, we can honestly say that Harang did his job. The team had very little to choose from as far as options to soak up innings. Hamels was on his way out the door, Lee was sitting at home and collecting a paycheck while being unable to pitch. We’ve already talked about Jerome Williams, but these are other names that made a start for the Phillies that season.
- Adam Morgan
- Aaron Nola (yay!)
- David Buchanan
- Sean O’Sullivan
- Jerad Eickhoff
- Chad Billingsley
- Severino Gonzalez
- Alec Asher
- Dustin McGowan
- Kevin Correia
- Phillippe Aumont
It’s a rogue’s gallery of fungible arms aside from Nola and Eickhoff. As it always is, someone had to the play the role of “veteran innings eater” and Harang was the perfect person to do so.
He just got hurt.
And hammered.
And so it was, on that October day against the Marlins, the career of Aaron Harang drew to a close. He would not pitch again in the major leagues and quietly went away. His one season in Philadelphia, during that fateful season of 2015, was nothing that will be remembered fondly, but he was another in a long line of starters that made a one year pit stop here and did not much of anything.
There was a time when Harang was a good major league starter. He finished fourth in the Cy Young voting in 2007! Yet Philadelphia was not kind to him and he was forced to face his own baseball mortality. It wasn’t pretty and he probably deserved a better ending.
It just wasn’t to be.
1 Lawrence, Ryan. “Veteran Harang Joins Rotation on 1-Year Deal.” Philadelphia Daily News, 6 Jan. 2015, p. 39.
2 Lawrence, Ryan. “Slumping Harang Seeing Value Drop.” Philadelphia Daily News, 2 July 2015, p. 52.