{"id":2206563,"date":"2025-12-20T10:47:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T10:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2206563"},"modified":"2025-12-20T10:47:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T10:47:25","slug":"phillies-shuffle-bullpen-trading-matt-strahm-to-royals-for-jonathan-bowlan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/phillies-shuffle-bullpen-trading-matt-strahm-to-royals-for-jonathan-bowlan\/","title":{"rendered":"Phillies shuffle bullpen, trading Matt Strahm to Royals for Jonathan Bowlan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p>The Philadelphia Phillies continue to reshuffle their bullpen, trading left-handed reliever Matt Strahm to the Kansas City Royals on Friday. The Phillies acquired 29-year-old pitcher Jonathan Bowlan from the Royals in return.<\/p>\n<p>The Strahm trade comes one day after the Phillies officially <span class=\"link\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/philadelphia\/news\/brad-keller-philadelphia-phillies-contract\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">signed reliever Brad Keller<\/a><\/span> to a two-year, $22 million contract.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t begin to express what you&#8217;ve meant to me and my family over the last three years. I came to Philadelphia because of you,&#8221; <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MattStrahm\/status\/2002106769208979764\/photo\/1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Strahm wrote on social media<\/a>. &#8220;The atmosphere, the passion, the expectation to win. There&#8217;s something truly special about this city and the mentality here. I wanted nothing more than to bring a World Series back to Philly, and I&#8217;m sorry I fell short of that goal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Strahm will make $7.5 million in 2026 after his option vested when he reached 60 innings pitched. The 34-year-old was a 2.0 bWAR player last season with the Phillies, posting a 2.74 ERA\u00a0 in 62 1\/3 innings over 66 appearances. His velocity on his four-seam fastball dipped about 1 mph from 2024, and he increased his slider to compensate. He used his slider 31.9% of the time last season, compared to 19.4% in 2024. Still, the lefty was one of manager Rob Thomson&#8217;s reliable leverage relievers.<\/p>\n<p>Strahm has been a mainstay in the Phillies&#8217; bullpen since he signed here as a free agent in December 2022. He finishes his Phillies career with a 2.71 ERA over 212 2\/3 innings and 188 games. He made 10 starts for the club in his first season.<\/p>\n<p>One of Strahm&#8217;s most memorable moments as a Phillie came on July 10, 2024, when he <span class=\"link\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/philadelphia\/news\/strahm-ohtani-phillies-dodgers-60-wins\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">struck out Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani<\/a><\/span>\u00a0in the seventh inning with inherited runners on the corner. The Phils escaped the inning and beat the Dodgers, 4-3, for their 60th win of the 2024 season.<\/p>\n<p>The Phillies essentially replaced Strahm in the bullpen with the righty Keller, who broke out as a high-leverage reliever with the Cubs last season. Keller made changes and saw his velocity tick up. Keller uses his changeup to get lefties out. Last season, left-handed hitters hit .223 with a .569 OPS off Keller.<\/p>\n<p>Bowlan, who the Royals selected in the second round of the 2018 MLB draft, appeared in a career-high 34 games last season. He posted a 3.86 ERA in 44 1\/3 innings over 34 games and one start. Hitters had a .230 average against him. He was able to get righties out, but struggled against left-handed hitters. Bowlan held right-handed hitters to a .182 average and .505 OPS while lefties hit .288 with a .933 OPS off him.<\/p>\n<p>According to Baseball Savant, Bowlan throws five pitches, but primarily uses his four-seamer (33.4%), slider (31.2%) and sinker (17.3%). He also added a changeup and curveball to his arsenal last season.<\/p>\n<p>The 6-foot-6 Bowlan averages 96.1 mph on his sinker and 95.5 mph on his four-seamer.<\/p>\n<p>He held hitters to a .161 slugging percentage on his sinker, which ranks second in baseball among pitchers who threw at least 100 sinkers last season. The first? Keller, who held hitters to a .147 slugging percentage on his sinker.<\/p>\n<h2>Phillies acquire Kyle Backhus from Diamondbacks<\/h2>\n<p>Hours after trading Strahm, the Phillies made a second bullpen move Friday. Philadelphia acquired 27-year-old lefty Kyle Backhus from the Diamondbacks for minor league outfielder Avery Owusu-Asiedu.<\/p>\n<p>Backhus struck out 22 batters in 25 1\/3 innings over 32 appearances last season with the D-Backs.<\/p>\n<section class=\"content__body--footer\">\n<\/section>\n<p>  <!-- data-recirc-source=\"queryly\" --><\/p>\n<aside class=\"component list recirculation component--type-recirculation \">\n<p><h3 class=\"component__title\">More from CBS News<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<section class=\"content__body--footer\">\n      <!-- tags --><\/p>\n<section class=\"content__tags\">\n<\/section>\n<\/section><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.cbsnews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Philadelphia Phillies continue to reshuffle their bullpen, trading left-handed reliever Matt Strahm to the Kansas City Royals on Friday. The Phillies acquired 29-year-old pitcher Jonathan Bowlan from the Royals in return. The Strahm trade comes one day after the Phillies officially signed reliever Brad Keller to a two-year, $22 million contract. &#8220;I can&#8217;t begin [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2206564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[21849,43627,23982,357712],"class_list":["post-2206563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-baseball","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia-phillies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Phillies-shuffle-bullpen-trading-Matt-Strahm-to-Royals-for-Jonathan.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2206563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2206565,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206563\/revisions\/2206565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2206564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2206563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2206563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2206563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}