Zach Eflin says the Phillies are ‘going to do this’ for Corey Phelan, who died of cancer

Just 20 days ago, when the Phillies were playing the Braves, Corey Phelan walked on to the dirt behind the Citizens Bank Park batting cage a few hours before the game.

Phelan, who signed with the Phillies as a minor league free agent in 2020, was battling non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in Manhattan, and had recently visited the team when they were in New York to play the Mets. But he preferred watching the Phillies at home, and tried to make it to the ballpark as often as he could.

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He spotted pitchers Zach Eflin and Kyle Gibson and briefly said hello. Phelan was diagnosed in April and had been undergoing chemotherapy treatments for a few months. His doctors initially told him he would receive treatment for two years, but lately, he’d been feeling better, and was optimistic that he could return to the field as soon as 2023.

He told Eflin that he would undergo one more round of treatment, and could get cleared a month after that. But over the past week, things took a bad turn. On Wednesday night, Phelan passed away at 20 years old.

The Phillies will hold a moment of silence for Phelan before Game 3 of the NLDS against the Braves on Friday, but beyond that, Eflin said the Phillies will play in his honor moving forward.

“That’s a common denominator on this team — we’re going to do this for Corey,” he said. “We’re going to play hard like we always do, but with Corey on our minds.”

Eflin and Phelan had a special connection, and not only because they were both pitchers. Eflin lost his older sister Ashley to leukemia when she was just 7 years old. When he first met Phelan earlier this season, they exchanged numbers and stayed in touch. He would check in with him periodically.

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“He would congratulate us on wins that we got,” Eflin said. “He always made sure to tell us that watching our games really kept him going and have faith and kept him strong.”

Eflin knows firsthand how cruel and unpredictable cancer can be. But it didn’t make the loss of Phelan any less crushing.

“It’s honestly just gut-wrenching,” Eflin said. “He was standing right there a couple of weeks ago, telling us about how much better he was feeling and how in high spirits he was, getting ready to start working out again and get ready for the baseball season this year. Everyone in this organization is feeling that loss. It’s just absolutely heartbreaking.

“He was mature beyond his years. For someone to go through something like that at such a young age, it forces you to mature. It forces you to be strong, to be an inspiration to other people. And he did all of that. He’s always going to have a special place on this team. It’s honestly hard to put words together because he was such a good young kid.”