Phillips Rewards Marlins’ Patience With Rotation Experiment

MIAMI — After having one of the worst outings in his Miami Marlins tenure, there was nowhere to go but up for Tyler Phillips. 

The entire experiment regarding his return to the starting rotation was in question after giving up eight runs against the Philadelphia Phillies a week ago. Anything would’ve been considered a bounce back on Monday against the Texas Rangers. 

“I don’t think you could have gotten much worse than the last one,” Phillips said. 

With the Scottish Tartan Army behind him, Phillips pitched six innings for the first time, allowing only two runs with four strikeouts in the Marlins 4-3 loss against the Rangers. His two runs allowed came on a home run by Ezequiel Duran in the fourth inning.

“Tyler was terrific,” Marlins manager Clayton McCullough said. “A real bounce-back outing. The strike throwing, I think it was 60 strikes out of almost 90 pitches. [The Rangers] were very aggressive early on him, and I think that played well for Tyler because he was in the zone with a variety of pitches and was able to keep them off the barrel for the most part.”

Phillips was a starting pitcher during his rookie season with the Phillies in 2024. He posted a 6.87 ERA in eight appearances (seven starts) and emerged with the Marlins in 2025 in a trade for cash. 

Phillips became a fan favorite by emerging from the bullpen aggressively slapping his face before dealing damage to opposing batters. With a 2.78 ERA and 1.15 WHIP in 54 appearances, Phillips was one of the better bullpen arms on a Miami squad that spent the entire season in postseason contention with ascending talent. 

With the starting rotation suffering injuries and loss of depth, the Marlins tried to stretch Phillips out into such a role. He already spent much of the early part of this season pitching 2-3 innings out of the bullpen. 

Describing his recent outing as “everything I throw moves,” Phillips threw 86 pitches and made it past six innings for the first time since he threw a complete game shutout against Cleveland on July 27, 2024, with the Phillies. Pitching that deep is still a work in progress thus far in the experiment. 

“I started running out of gas a little bit,” Phillips said. “Which I think is not normal for me. Getting up to 90 pitches started to get a little taxing for me.”

Scotland is set to play Brazil in the World Cup on Wednesday, which led to the supporters and tourists marching into loanDepot park and raising the attendance to 20,008, a rarity as far as weekday Marlins games go. 

“I love energy, man,” Phillips said. “Scotland, the Tartan Army, if it was up to me, I’d be paying those people to come to games. It was unbelievable. From the second that I walked out and up the dugout, I felt it in my chest, like it felt great.“ 

Phillips restored faith in his place in the Marlins rotation, one that is still led by Sandy Alcantara, and is expecting Eury Perez to return from injury and Max Meyer to eventually return from the Bereavement List. 

Speaking of Alcantara, the Marlins ace is set up to break the franchise record for career strikeouts on Tuesday. Alcantara (7-4, 4.18 ERA) currently has 1,008 punch-outs, but the first 10 came during his debut season with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2017. 

He will match up against Cal Quantril (3-0, 3.68 ERA), who does not at all resemble the pitcher who couldn’t make it the entire season with the Marlins last year. 

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