General Discussion

California_Dreamin 2017-06-05 18:33:16 UTC #641

Surprise, surprise...Eflin put on DL yesterday. Someone speculated that he must be hurt since his performance had so dramatically dropped recently. Anyone know if its knee or arm related? Not sure which of the two I prefer.

bigegypt0417 2017-06-05 21:57:24 UTC #642

It's his elbow...so this keeps getting better.

Austinfan 2017-06-05 22:38:28 UTC #643

Which is why Klentak stresses you can never have too much young pitching and why he's wary of paying big money for FA pitchers.
Whereas when position players get hurt, they often bounce back the next year, with pitchers, a shoulder can be a career ender and TJ can be a two year process of getting back to 100%.

Though it seems that the Phillies are getting better at catching these injuries before they turn into TJ surgery.

andyb 2017-06-05 22:56:24 UTC #644

Not sure Klentak is more wary about spending free agent dollars on pitching. There is no evidence of that. There were no significant free agents on the market last time.

Of course one can never have enough pitching, young or otherwise. Everybody needs 8-10 starters to get through a year these days. The Phillies biggest problem is still lack of quality. Lots of #4 and #5 options at the moment.

julio 2017-06-05 23:36:54 UTC #645

This should answer your question, CD. Sorry it's not a better answer...

Austinfan 2017-06-05 23:49:09 UTC #646

And an interesting quote I don't remember seeing at the time:

“Organizationally [on-base percentage] is something we’re really going to need to focus on, not only for this season but for the foreseeable future,” said Klentak. “In the same way that we talk about controlling the strike zone on the mound, we need to do so in the batter’s box as well. Improvement in that area is going to be critical for us, and whether that comes in the form of promotions from the minor leagues, in the form of trades, or in the form of free agents, I think we’re going to have to consider all of that in order to make our team better. Adding veterans to a rather young club, I think that more often than not that’s going to be a good idea.”

tom81 2017-06-06 01:46:17 UTC #647

I'm still taking credit for jump starting him, 3-4 so far tonight with 2 doubles and a HR. He has raised his OPS .100 in three days!

tom81 2017-06-06 02:01:15 UTC #648

Nice game by Eshelman and the Pigs, 12-1. Eshelman has been great so far this year at both levels. Hope it translates at the next one.

andyb 2017-06-06 02:09:15 UTC #649

Developing starting pitching depth and spending on quality free agents are two separate things. There is nothing in that article (which is speculation about the top of the market) that suggests the Phillies will not compete there. All Klentak is saying is that pitching is risky. Which kind of goes without saying. He knows this team cannot win without quality. Every GM is wary of spending big bucks on free agents to some degree. That wariness decreases however when you have the money and you are getting quality. Klentak knows we need depth from within. He has built that up to some degree. He also knows he has a bunch of 4/5 starters at the moment and it is a long way (and not a sure thing) till we get to Sanchez and Kilome.

andyb 2017-06-06 15:06:34 UTC #650

The Ringer with a fairly pessimistic article on the current state of the team.

Austinfan 2017-06-06 15:20:14 UTC #651

He lost me when he said they spent five years trading everyone.
Uh, they didn't start trading people until the summer of 2015, they let a couple player walk as FAs, but kept their head buried in the sand.

And of course, we're seeing regression to the mean, suddenly the bats are on fire.

They're basically in the third year (maybe second if you count from after the 2015 season) of a rebuild.
In baseball, it usually takes five years from rock bottom because even the top draft picks take 3-4 years, and most HS players 5-6 years to make it to the majors.
There have been some surprises (Altherr) and some setbacks (Franco) in the majors, as well as the minors.
Which is pretty normal in a rebuild.

Philsmania 2017-06-06 15:33:21 UTC #652

Here's another sobering article by Bob Brookover from Sunday's Inquirer. Last week, Klentak conceded that while current times are difficult to stomach, one must realize that the Nationals, Astros and Cubs went through it earlier this decade or late last decade. Brookover's counterpoint is that while that is true, the Phillies, unlike the others at comparable points, have not accumulated superstars in the making. The other teams did it with luck (the Nats getting the 1-1 in successive years when game-changers Strassburg and Harper were available), brilliant drafting and astute trades (ie, the Nats getting Gio Gonzalez from Oakland in a fire sale, the Cubs getting Arrieta, Hendricks and, I'll add, Rizzo in steals). Similar game-changing developments have not happened so far.

andyb 2017-06-06 15:40:56 UTC #653

His basic premise is correct though. Our first wave of young players are simply not that good. We got a little false sense of competitiveness when Franco, Herrera, and Eickhoff really overperformed their talent base. We also have not gotten good performances from our two most important young pitchers, Nola and Velasquez.

Making excuses by saying we are in year X of a rebuild do not hold that much water. We stopped trading prospects for older talent in 2013. This is year 5 of that general progression even if it took a couple of years to get into high gear trading players. And even if you start from the premise that we started in 2015, we are in year 3 and should show more progress than we have.

We are paying for the period from 2009-2013 where we lost all of our high draft picks, did not spend aggressively overslot when we could have, and did not take advantage of the international market when we could have. Value is fine, but value players like Franco usually have something wrong with them tool-wise that gets exposed.

It is true that there was not that much Klentak could do to help the current solution. Some of his small moves like Buchholz did not work so that is on his record. And he also has not taken advantage of our cash position as well as the Braves have, and we have more cash than they do. Where are our Dansby Swanson and Touki Toussaint deals? Giles was one but we could have done more. We also missed the opportunity internationally this year to spend more. Klentak's leash is getting shorter as it should, even if he is not that responsible for the current team. He could have made it better and he has not.

andyb 2017-06-06 15:42:15 UTC #654

This is key. We seem to have lots of #4 and #5 starters and complementary offensive players that do not look like future stars. It is a problem.

Philsmania 2017-06-06 15:46:28 UTC #655

We've had a knack for having guys who looked awesome and excited us coming out of Reading only to dramatically hit a wall at LHV and tumble both in the prospect rankings and in our expectations (Williams last season, Crawford, Alfaro & Cozens this season). It would be nice to have a prospects who doesn't miss a beat at that level.

andyb 2017-06-06 16:02:49 UTC #656

Time for CD to remind us about Derek Fisher....

Seriously I think we did relatively well in our two big prospect deals for Hamels and Giles. The Hamels deal did give us high end prospects though Thompson's stuff has unfortunately backed up on him. And the Giles deal was about Velasquez who has given us a shot at a high end starter even if he has not gotten there yet. The Appel part of that deal looks to be a mistake now. Whether we should have realized at the time it was a bad gamble is harder to say.

Where we have erred in our rebuild I think is we took the pedal off the metal. We should have done more deals. Hellickson staying was defensible, but maybe not in the best interests of the rebuild. We also had opportunities to deal others like Neris, Franco, Herrera, and Eickhoff. The criticism was that deals like that would keep pushing off the rebuild. But perhaps those deals could have been players at their high water mark of value who may not be parts of the eventual 2019 contending team. We got less aggressive. Maybe we should have torn the team down even further. We could have always gotten more Saunders and Kendricks to fill out the roster spending only money.

Austinfan 2017-06-06 16:11:04 UTC #657

We did not start rebuilding in 2013, we blew a great opportunity to retool while players like Utley and Lee had trade value.

The Phillies hired Almaraz after the 2014 draft
They hired Klentak after the 2015 season.

Almaraz finally shock up the scouting department after the 2016 draft:

Not sure why it took so long, probably a combination of evaluating personnel, Klentak taking over, and maybe some scouts becoming available.

But what's clear is that there was no commitment to rebuilding until the summer of 2015 when the fire sale was ordered to begin.
And the organization didn't clearly move on until Klentak was hired that fall.

So calling this the 2nd year of the rebuild is accurate, 2013-15 was more "running in place," holding on to the veterans too long but no longer trading young assets (probably becuase they had little of value).
And given the absymal quality of the drafts from 2006-2013 there was very little talent in place for a rebuild, if it wasn't for LA signings (Franco, Galvis, Hernandez), Rule 5 (Herrera), and salvaging the Pence trade (Joseph) this team could be as bad as the 62 Mets. RA fortunately didn't blow his trades and landed some talent (Eflin, Pivetta, Thompson, Eickhoff, Alfaro, Williams,) the farm system would be pretty bleak above A ball.

andyb 2017-06-06 16:24:58 UTC #658

It was not official, but the rebuild started when we stopped trading prospects to have an older team compete. It did not start with Klentak as big trades for Hamels and Rollins happened the year before.

All this does not matter as it is semantics though. Klentak has made some mistakes and missed some opportunities. Nothing fatal, but to ignore that is to ignore reality.

And even if this is year 3 of the rebuild, we should not be a 100-loss team. Or even a 92-loss team.

Philsmania 2017-06-06 16:33:26 UTC #659

Amaro's best body of work as Phillies GM probably came during his last calendar year as GM (offseason after 2014 through his firing in September 2015). The only question is how much of that was him and how much of it was Gillick actually pulling the strings.

DurhamBull 2017-06-06 16:44:12 UTC #660

Wasn't CD banging the drum during the off season to trade Rupp while his value was high? That's starting to look like a good call (assuming the Phils would have gotten good value).