Jake Arrieta’s signing has not been as bad as you might think for the Phillies | Bob Brookover

A week ago when the Phillies left Citi Field and went their separate ways for a few days during the All-Star break, Jake Arrieta had to return to Philadelphia for an examination of his aching right elbow. That probably was not high on the list of ways he wanted to spend baseball’s brief break from games, but at least he was told he could keep pitching despite the marble-sized bone spur that was attached to his elbow joint.

That was good news for the Phillies for a number of reasons. Start with the fact that they are paying the 33-year-old righthander $25 million to pitch this season, and even if his numbers have not lived up to that exorbitant price tag, he is still one of the five best pitchers they have in their organization. You could argue, in fact, that he is still one of the top 30 starting pitchers in baseball and far from being a free-agent bust.

To his credit, Arrieta took the ball Sunday and pitched through some serious pain. He delivered five strong innings during the Phillies’ 4-3 walk-off win against the Washington Nationals that came courtesy of Maikel Franco’s one-out home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. Arrieta allowed just one run on four hits and confessed the entire process was uncomfortable.

“It’s not good,” Arrieta said when asked to rate the pain he felt during his 50th career start in a Phillies uniform.

And apparently it’s not going away either, at least not until he goes through a surgical process that he’d like to push back to the offseason. He said the most painful pitch for him to throw is his cutter, which he threw just once Sunday.

“It’s going to be a pretty consistent theme,” Arrieta said. “It’s going to be painful. The good thing is I’m not going to injure it any further. We’ll get it taken care of when the time is right, but I can do what I did today for us a lot. Sometimes it’s going to be even better, so the pain is just something you get used to.”

What Arrieta did Sunday was good and I’d argue he has been better than a lot of people might think during his first 50 starts with the Phillies. He is one of only 21 pitchers to have made at least 50 starts in the last two seasons and one of only 32 to log at least 275 innings. His ERA among those 32 pitchers is 24th in baseball. He has not been an ace, but guys like him do not grow on trees or mounds.

Still, if he can only cover five innings or less each time out from now until the end of the season, it could create some problems for a bullpen that already has its share of them.

“We’re going to have to read how he’s doing in the game and how he’s feeling,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “I asked him in about the third inning … and he said, ‘I’m doing all right.’ When Jake is fully healthy, it’s ‘Yeah, I’m great, give me the ball.’ In this particular situation, he still was prepared to keep going out there for us. He will always do that. But we have to monitor it closely for the good of Jake and for the good of our bullpen and for the good of the Philadelphia Phillies.”

The other thing that must be monitored for the next 16 days is the state of the trade market for starting pitching. With Arrieta pitching in pain, it would be a major boost if general manager Matt Klentak could land at least one quality big-league starter before the July 31 trade deadline.

It was disappointing, in fact, to hear team president Andy MacPhail return to default mode Friday afternoon when the subject of starting pitching arose.

“We had to give up some arms to improve our team here,” MacPhail said. “But we still have some interesting arms in the system that I think are going to contribute down the road. How soon that is and how long it takes for them to make the adjustment to be consistent at this level, we’re going to find out. The only way you find that out is getting them out on the mound. But I still believe if you have to be active in free-agent pitching, that’s a dicey market to be in.”

The team president is wrong on this matter and to understand why all he has to do is look at other major-league rotations, especially the ones with high payrolls. The Nationals, for example, have had no fear about signing free-agent pitchers and they appear quite happy with the work that Max Scherzer and Patrick Corbin are doing for them.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, who arrive in town Monday for the start of a four-game series against the Phillies, have the best rotation in the National League and it helps that homegrown Clayton Kershaw, Walker Buehler and Ross Stripling are part of it. But the foreign free-agent signings of South Korea’s Hyun-Jin Ryu and Japan’s Kenta Maeda have been a big part of the team’s run of six straight trips to the postseason.

The New York Yankees do not have a rotation of homegrown arms and neither do the Boston Red Sox or Houston Astros.

It’s dicey to try to build a starting rotation by pushing prospects through the farm system. Most teams can’t do it and if the Phillies want to move from a potential wild-card team to a potential World Series winner, they are going to have to enter the free-agent pitching market this offseason.

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