The package in question is eapi 5, which specifies that patches are to be applied during src_prepare(), however an inspection of the ebuild reveals that it's applying patches during src_unpack(). If I'm not mistaken, this is a standards violation. Reproducible: Always
I'm going to look into if this is reasonable to change as part of the other eclass changes I really should start to do soon.
I observed 4.8.0 during the prepare phase, it appears that it's being run. Closing as fixed.