Key for Phillies is to build a better bullpen

FIFTEEN HUNDRED. It is the number that haunts every major league general manager, that disturbs his sleep and then badgers him every morning of the long, long season. It is always there, as he replays the previous night's game in his head, as he pours a second cup and opens his laptop and plows through the reports, the nocturnal submissions that his minor league people and his scouts stayed up late to write.

Fifteen hundred. Give or take, it is the approximate number of innings a baseball team will play every year.

And somebody has to pitch them.

The last two seasons, no team has ridden its starting pitching longer and harder than the Phillies have. In 2010, they led the majors with 1,035 1/3 innings pitched by their starters. In 2011, it was an even-bigger 1,064 2/3 innings. No National League team going back to 1998 - as far back as the mlb.com stats take you - leaned that heavily on its starting pitching.

This will be the issue in 2012. As we fixate on the Phillies' batting order and the approach and that stuff - as we all pretend that it is possible for 30-something-year-old players to reinvent themselves, overnight, en masse - it is important to remind ourselves that the only transformation that is both necessary and realistically feasible is this:

From a rotation-heavy approach to more of a balanced approach. That is, an approach that features the bullpen more often.

Given that Roy Oswalt, one of the Four Aces, has been discarded (at least for now), it is time to take a hard look at this issue. This is where general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. needs to change, forgetting about trying to re-sign Oswalt at a lower price, or obtaining a significant fourth starter and, instead, stocking his bullpen with a whole new slew of pretty good, midpriced guys. This is where manager Charlie Manuel needs to change, too, accepting the notion that there will be many nights when seven innings and 92 pitches from a starter with a 4-2 lead will have to be enough.

It is a philosophical question: Shouldn't Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels be enough? Assuming Joe Blanton is healthy again - a significant assumption, and maybe the biggest question of this offseason - shouldn't a combination of Blanton, Vance Worley and Kyle Kendrick be enough to pick up the rest of the starts?

And wouldn't all of them benefit from a touch less work? And wouldn't the entire operation be better served if the organizational approach to stocking the bullpen consisted of one word: more?