By Matt Rappa, Sports Talk Philly editor 
The Tampa Bay Rays are among Major League Baseball's hottest teams, winning eight straight games, 13 of their last 17 and 17 of their last 25. After starting the season 4-13 — tied for the worst record in franchise history — the club is 66-48 since, and sit nine games out of the second American League Wild Card spot behind the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners.
Part of what has helped the Rays get out of their early-season funk is a new strategy set out by four-year manager Kevin Cash, the "opener" — using relief pitchers to start the game in lieu of the traditional five-man rotation.
Monday evening, Phillies Vice President and General Manager Matt Klentak told reporters that the club has considered the strategy, and discussed "whether something like that makes sense."
"There are some things going on around the league that we have considered, most notably in Tampa. … I think the simple conclusion is, we have five starters right now who give us a really good chance to win a baseball game every night that they pitch," Klentak said. "Does that mean we would never consider an 'opener' or something a little bit different? No, but right now, the guys that we run out there every day, I don't know that we have to consider that."
The Rays have used 16 different starting pitchers this season. Of those starters, 12 have also been used out of the bullpen, with only Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and the since-dealt Chris Archer and Nathan Eovaldi exclusively used as a starter. In comparison, the Phillies have used just nine different starting pitchers this season, with only Nick Pivetta, Vince Velasquez, Enyel De Los Santos and Drew Anderson appearing once each as a reliever.
Pivetta (136 innings), Zach Eflin (100 2/3) and Aaron Nola (169) have all thrown career-high marks in innings pitched already this season, with 32 games to go. Likewise, Vince Velasquez needs just two more innings pitched to match his 131-inning career high. When asked of the concern of the Phillies young rotation arms "exceeding their workload," Klentak said the club is still "all not that worried."
Read: Phillies' Eickhoff to Join Club on Sept. 1 as Long-Man Reliever
"I think we're in pretty good shape there. I do think the fact that we've been able to carry an eight-man bullpen all year, and mostly an effective eight-man bullpen that will grow in a few days to something beyond eight, I think is only going to further enable us to take care of our starters and get them out of there earlier, if necessary," Klentak said. "Obviously, if they are pitching well and efficiently, then we can continue to push them."
This season, the Phillies bullpen has posted the ninth-best K/9 (9.34) and WAR (3.9), 14th-best BB/9 (3.40), 15th-best left-on-base percentage (73.1 percent), 16th-best ERA (4.09) and 17th-best HR/9 (1.10). The staff had a 13th-best 4.3 WAR all of last season.
"Just think about the eight [relievers] we have here right now, plus solely the guys on the DL that can come back next week. All of a sudden, you're going to be running out a 10 or 11-man bullpen of quality, high-leveraged relievers," Klentak said. "I think that will give Kap and the pitching guys a lot of confidence to make moves when they need to. You add onto that with some additional call-ups, I think that will only reinforce that position."
"Could we consider piggybacking? Maybe. But, I think right now, it's more of a matter of the depth that our pitching staff possesses and we take a lot of comfort in that."
