Phillies’ pitching woes aren’t going away. As trade deadline nears, 2020 is as big a puzzle as 2019. | David Murphy

They say that one of the good things about sports is that there’s always next season.

For the Phillies, though, it sounds less like a promise and more like a threat. At least, it should sound that way to their fans, who have spent the majority of the season watching opposing hitters treat the outfield seats like some sort of percussion instrument.

Heading into the series opener Tuesday with the Tigers, Phillies pitchers have allowed home runs to 4.4 percent of the batters they’ve faced. How ridiculous is that number? A batter who homered in 4.4 percent of his plate appearances would hit 28 home runs in a season of 650 plate appearances.

Scouts like to talk about guys with 25-plus homer pop. That’s every single batter the Phillies have faced this season, one through nine, pitchers included.

If the balls really are more tightly wound than usual, maybe it’s just because they’ve seen what happens when a Phillies pitcher throws them to the plate. Tightly wound? Try watching Ranger Suarez pitch in extra innings on television. Welcome to our world, balls.

And welcome to Matt Klentak’s world, because he’s the guy responsible for fixing this mess.

With the Phillies trailing the Braves by 7½ games, salvaging 2019 should be at the bottom of the priority list. At this point, the best-case scenario looks like a one-game playoff to get into the real playoffs, and that would be a silly thing for which to sacrifice any legitimate future assets.

But the pitching problem is not going away. It was present last year at this time, and the overwhelming odds say that we’ll be writing the same story next July if Klentak can’t come up with a way to add at least one and probably two playoff-caliber starting pitchers from outside the organization.

As has been the case for more than a decade, the Phillies can’t count on getting much help from within. Apart from Aaron Nola, who was a ready-made major-leaguer when drafted, the Phillies’ minor-league system has not produced a legitimate top-four starter since, what, J.A. Happ? If not him, then it’s Cole Hamels.

Former top pitching prospect Sixto Sanchez is pitching well in double A, but he’s doing it in the Marlins system after having been traded for J.T. Realmuto. The current system features two potential blue-chippers, but Adonis Medina has seen his strikeout rate plummet after making the jump to double A, and Spencer Howard is still in single A.

Therein lies the real intrigue of the next nine days. While it doesn’t make sense for the Phillies to trade a potential future big-league contributor for two months of Madison Bumgarner, they don’t have a choice but to scour the trade market for controllable arms who could be available for the right price.

The most obvious candidates include the Tigers’ Matthew Boyd, the Rangers’ Mike Minor, and the Diamondbacks Robbie Ray, all of whom would be under contract for opening day 2020. But none of those three offers the combination of certainty and service time that would mitigate the risk of paying a blockbuster price.

When the Cubs included Eloy Jimenez in a midseason deal for Jose Quintana in 2017, Quintana was 28 years old, in the midst of his fifth straight season of 32 starts, and under club control at a well-below-market rate for the following three seasons.

Boyd would come with three more seasons of control, and he might be worth the risk, but he allows a ton of home runs and at 28 years old has yet to log more than 171 innings in a season. If he continues his current trajectory, the lefty could give the Phillies the exact piece they need to stabilize their rotation and take the next step toward contention. But is it worth trading Alec Bohm to find out? What if Bohm’s future is at first base?

A lot depends on the Phillies’ plans for the offseason. The starting-pitching market will be among the more robust in recent memory, featuring a legitimate ace in Gerrit Cole, a couple of former Cy Young winners in Bumgarner and Rick Porcello, and a handful of intriguing value plays (Zack Wheeler, Jake Odorizzi, Tanner Roark).

Problem is, free agency is a crapshoot, a measure of last resort. Before 2018, three pitchers signed contracts of $50 million-plus guaranteed, and Jake Arrieta has been the best of the bunch.

Yu Darvish is walking more than four batters per nine innings. Alex Cobb has disappeared. Heck, the guy whom the Phillies rescued from the Brewers’ minor-league system to start against the Pirates on Sunday signed the 10th-richest contract that offseason.

The Rangers hit big on Mike Minor, who would look awfully nice behind Nola right now, but virtually every other signing of consequence went bust.

Therein lies part of the reason for the Phillies’ reluctance to dive into the free-agency pool this offseason. How inflated was the pitching market? Anibal Sanchez had a 6.09 ERA in 2016 and 2017, then spent the final two months of 2018 on the injured list, then signed a two-year, $19 million contract this offseason. But, then, Sanchez has actually done a passable job for the Nationals this season.

Same goes for Lance Lynn with the Rangers, Charlie Morton with the Rays, and Mike Fiers for the Athletics. Happ has struggled in the AL East and Garrett Richards hasn’t thrown a pitch. Matt Harvey, Trevor Cahill, and Derek Holland have all been busts. So has Japanese import Yusei Kikuchi. Apart from C.C. Sabathia, those were the top 11 starters available. Better than last year. Still, a crapshoot.

The one thing we do know is that the Phillies will need to do something to address their pitching woes before we can consider them a viable threat for the National League crown. It’d be nice if we could suspend disbelief for the rest of 2019. But 2020 should be an even bigger concern.

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