Actually, they've played pretty well after an awful May.
Losing a lot of close games, which is good, since it means they're competitive but may still end up with the #1 pick, the best of both worlds for a rebuilding team.
If you're competitive you don't need huge improvements to make an Atlanta type turnaround.
They're getting closer to building a solid 8 and a young starting rotation.
There are ups and downs, but with Franco slowly turning it around, Hernandez back, you can see what a solid lineup can look like in the future.
Problem is they have too many young players with growing pains, but Stairs is slowly teaching a group of hitters not chosen for their plate discipline how to work an AB.
Nola is finding his groove, and while the rest are struggling, all have good enough stuff once they settle down and learn how to pitch.
Even in the bullpen, they have the same problem, lots of live arms but few who are consistent pitchers.
Some of the improvement will come from maturity, some will come from guys in AAA and AA ball, some will come from trades as Klentak moves out players he thinks will never learn to play the right way.
The thing with rebuilds is it looks ugly until suddenly it doesn't, older fans have seen this a few times, you watch Schmidt hit .198 and ask how this loser is the future of the team, then he blossoms into a HOF player.
You watch an absolutely dismal team in 1972 despite a year for the ages by Carlton, and 4 years later they're winning 100 games.
Now a rebuild can be botched, Phillies were awful from 1994-2000, and after that the FO dumped Abreu and muddled through for 7 more years.
But I don't see any problems with the current FO, no panic trades, trading for LA allocations, handling the draft professionally, implementing organization wide philosophies on hitting and pitching.
It's just that year 2 of a rebuild is usually really ugly, it's great to have high draft picks, but unless you focus on college players, even top picks take 3-4 years to get to the majors.
It will speed things up if a great college player is available next summer, but for a sustained rebuild, you need more than a couple #1 picks, you have to build depth throughout the organization.