This paper presents the application of dynamic phasor analysis to understand the effect of passive phase imbalance schemes on the torsional modes of a turbine-generator system. These schemes have been proposed in the previous literature as subsynchronous resonance (SSR) countermeasures. Dynamic phasor analysis of the unbalanced system yields a linearized and time-invariant model which facilitates eigen-analysis. It is seen that large levels of phase imbalance can cause a significant movement in the subsynchronous network modal frequencies. Therefore, in specific cases, SSR can be avoided due to detuning of the torsional and network modes. However, the analysis also shows that damping torque in a series compensated network is negative at subsynchronous frequencies even with phase imbalance. Therefore, phase imbalance cannot be a general countermeasure to the problem of SSR.