General Discussion

DurhamBull 2017-06-25 16:59:39 UTC #942

I'm not against trading Franco, but as the article that Lawman posted states, the Phils would certainly be selling low. Besides, who is going to play 3B if Franco's gone? Blanco and Galvis already have day jobs. Ty Kelly? Pedro Florimon? I guess it won't make much difference; the Phils aren't going to make a wildcard run even if they had 1981 Mike Schmidt at 3rd.

Patchmk88 2017-06-25 17:07:43 UTC #943

Personally I'd like to keep Franco till next year to see how a year under Stairs does for him. He doesn't strike out a ton so if he can learn how to lay off sliders and wait for pitches to hit I think he can turn it around. Now if we got an offer that blew us away, I'm all for trading him.

andyb 2017-06-25 17:51:43 UTC #944

That is just not true. Every year there are trades like that:

2016
Will Smith for Andrew Susac AND Phil Bickford (former number 1, still only 20)
Josh Fields for Yordan Alvarez ($2 million international signing)
Tyler Clippard for Vicente Campos
Fernando Rodney for Chris Paddack

There are of course deals for Chapman and Miller and Melancon who were more valuable than Neshek but the 4 above are not really more valuable. In all cases they got players at least in the same range of talent as Pivetta.

2015
Sam Dyson for Cody Edge and Tomas Telis
Kevin Jepsen for Alexis Tapia and Chih-Wei Hu
Joakim Soria for JaCoby Jones (Pirates 10th prospect)
Pabelbon for Pivetta
Tyler Clippard (again) for Casey Meisner
Steve Cishek for Kyle Barraclough

There were other setup guys dealt in these years for similar returns though it is harder to compare because they were not in 1-player deals. Relievers like Neshak have significant value and there are trades for prospects that are in teams top 10-20 every single year.

The Phillies also have the advantage of picking up every single penny of salary owed Neshak which makes him more valuable than some of those above deals where salary was not picked up.

EDmuch 2017-06-25 19:57:25 UTC #945

I see no reason whatsoever to be so down about Neshak. From what I have read there is a 7th inning in both playoff and WS games. So a champion could still use a shut down 7th or 8th inning guy. And since there appear to be multiple teams interested in him, Neshek should get us a solid prospect back in a trade.

allentown 2017-06-25 20:33:22 UTC #946

I don't get the total unwillingness on the part of so many posters to hold Klentak, Middleton, and the other powers that be responsible for anything. Yes, it is a good thing that we are past the old regime. That doesn't make the new regime automatically golden. They are guys with whom the Phillies ownership are comfortable, so there is some cause for concern up front. They must be judged for what they do.

If you sign $65 million of vets to make the team respectable/flip and choose not to spend 150% of your international allocation and choose not to sign over-23 international players, then those decision will have a major impact on the rebuild. Given the Phillies record, it is obvious that the vets did not make this season's team anything approaching respectable. If you are also going to excuse in advance a failure to trade any of these vets for good prospects, then you have excused spending $65 million foolishly rather than to forward the rebuild.

I don't think the vets are providing $multi-millions of intangible help to the young players.

LoneStarPhan 2017-06-25 20:40:30 UTC #947

Watching the game today against Arizona and we see again the seemingly lack of good baseball instincts as Franco leads off with a double and then gets picked off second. Sure, it happens, but with the Phillies it just seems to be happening all the time. Good plays nullified by bone headed disappointments.

allentown 2017-06-25 22:47:26 UTC #948

This happens a lot in AA and AAA as well. There do seem to be deficiencies in instruction. We don't have a ton of guys who are good base runners or good bunters or control the strike zone well.

DurhamBull 2017-06-25 23:45:24 UTC #949

Pitcher goes 3-1 on Joseph, then walks Franco, then Herrera swings at the first pitch and hits into a double play.

LoneStarPhan 2017-06-26 00:08:08 UTC #950

The more I see, the more I think there is a need to shake up the organization. Fundamentals should be second nature. Sure, mistakes will be made, but really, they have to improve or the "rebuild" may be permanent.

Another loss to the Diamondbacks today. Outstanding pitching for ten innings but when I saw Ramos coming on to pitch the 11th, I pretty much figured the game would be ending. Ramos now 0-7. Today, 2 outs, 2 hits, and a walk. I guess we can take some consolation in not seeing a long home run.

flyers19rw 2017-06-26 01:18:08 UTC #951

LSP has hit one problem square on the head-the lack of fundamentals on this club. There are far too many brain cramps being made by this bunch and it's more than one or two guys doing it. When Mackanin took over the club, AIR, he mentioned that the club would be playing better defense and fundamentally sounder baseball. Sorry but I'm still waiting. If he can't get this through to these guys, either he goes; they go or both. Management can't expect the fans to pay to watch this type of play. It has to stop.

bkeich 2017-06-26 01:37:30 UTC #952

zambonir:

And let's not forget - Hellickson wasn't that good! He was adequate. At this time last year his ERA was 4.41 (he got better later in the season). It would have been nice to get the Robert Hernandez return for him but that's still entirely possible, and given the state of the team and the rotation this year I don't think it is a bad thing that he came back. I would have been fine watching Adam Morgan instead but I don't think most people would have been.

The trade deadline is basically a TV show invented by ESPN, of course it's great to get assets when you can but it's hardly a true GM measuring stick in the big picture. So few of the moves made then turn out to be important in either direction. I'm much more interested to see if the new analytics approach is worth a damn and what he does this off-season (both in trades and FAs).

Hellickson was, at that point, one of if not the best starting pitcher available. It was a weak market in that area, we should have gotten something for him. If a deal fell through at the last minute I am tempted to ask "why was there not an alternative option" and "why wait so long that you cannot make a move now". My boss would not accept me saying, "the customer just wasnt able to get the project funded" and have no alternatives for work and have to lay people off. Business people must have contingencies, and Klentak's was to offer the QO. Well, that is great, but I wasnt surprised when Helllickson accepted it, why was he? Now Hellickson's value is 1/3 what it was a year ago probably (estimate) and the team spent a large amount of money with no real return. It was a failure on his part in my opinion.

I know what you mean about the trade deadline being invented for TV, and agree to a degree. They hype certainly is, but it is still a way for bad teams to get assets. If you take away all the Hot Stove like aspects of it, it is still a part of the business that Klentak has not demonstrated success in, and I would argue he has demonstrated poor performance to date. A couple good deals changes that.

I am sure AndyB said it, I suspect most of us have said that also and I know I did before the season. The Harrison dump demonstrated to me that Klentak understands and has done well with this, I join in well, eveyones, hope that he finds a good "we will take on your problem for an asset" use of the excessive profit the team is turning. It was actually me that started the discussion of how big the Phillies profit was last year (obviously with the help of a professionally investigated article).

I don't consider Klentak a failure, I consider his performance at the trade deadline (and period leading up to it) last year a failure. For Example, He took the obvious and correct player in the draft, none of us left round 1 saying "WTF". I just think that in order to rebuild you have to succeed at trade deadline time, it is very important because it is the most likely time to acquire a near-ready player for an asset that has no value other than that trade.

allentown 2017-06-26 02:30:10 UTC #953

I am not arguing that Klentak is a failure. I am arguing against this notion that because he is not RAJ we can't criticize him for errors of omission or commission. He has made such errors. He is in a rebuild. He had $65 million to spend. He is responsible for what he achieved with that $65 million.

Philsmania 2017-06-26 02:34:51 UTC #954

The Marlins backing out of the Hellickson deal was no excuse for Klentak just as Ed Wade had no excuse back in '99 when the Yankees backed out of the Andy Pettite deal. Gotta have a backup plan.

andyb 2017-06-26 10:37:11 UTC #955

That is kind of where I am too. He had a good start. He made the organization serious about analytics. All good things.

But since then there has been some inaction (like with Hellickson last year) and poor free agent signings. If we are spending $65 million to flip players then he should be judged by the quality of those signings/trades and while there is bad luck involved, the three biggest acquisitions this for money were Hellickson, Buchholz, and Saunders. He needs to turn that $40 million into something or it is a legitimate bad mark on his record.

We are on a path to dealing Neshek and I think we get something decent (several teams have already offered). I think he is gone in the next week or two because his value is the highest it will ever be. We'll see what we get before evaluating Klentak on that.

Slinging_Southpaw 2017-06-26 11:45:29 UTC #956

Just wondering. How are you going to evaluate Klentak on the return he gets on Neshek, if he's traded in the next couple weeks?
I'm sure we'll never know what the other offers he passed on were. We've been going back and forth on what we think he is worth, but no one here really knows.
If the return seems a little light(in our minds), many will say he should have waited. Unless we're all blown away(unlikely), some will still say he handled it poorly.

allentown 2017-06-26 12:45:44 UTC #958

I'm not sure you can evaluate each phase of Klentak's job on each of the acquired vets. As you say, we have our own idea of what Neshak is worth and can compare to that. On the bigger picture, we know what Neshak cost us and can compare that to value generated. Neshak added value to our team as a reliever, so that must be factored in. Neshak will be a win. On the still bigger picture, we can look at cost to acquire -- production -- trade return on all of Klentak's off-season additions, including Hellickson, and see if they were 'worth' the cost as a group. I think that is the fairest evaluation.

julio 2017-06-26 13:54:10 UTC #959

Agreed, allentown. I don't think you can evaluate a GM's performance on signing/flipping veteran players, one player at a time. Investing in a veteran with the hope of flipping that veteran later for prospects is a bit like a venture capitalist investing in startup companies; some of these investments will prosper, and some will go south. It's the nature of the business. If Klentak invests/gambles on a half-dozen or more veterans over a period of a couple years, and all of them go bust, then I think you can draw a reasonable conclusion about his performance in this area; but you can't really reach a credible conclusion on the basis of one or two. Each of these signings is a roll of the dice; over time, we need a reasonable success rate - but if you're holding out for 100% success in this game, you'll always be disappointed.

Austinfan 2017-06-26 15:13:15 UTC #960

And you have to do that in the context of what was available, Moniak wasn't a great pick at #1, but there was no great pick that year, so he took a good player to buy another good player (Gowdy).
Last off-season the FA pickings were pretty slim (and excluding those who won't even consider signing with a losing team, even thinner), one reason he traded for Kendrick and Buchholtz.
It was cheaper to pick up bad salaries than to sign bad contracts.

allentown 2017-06-26 15:30:41 UTC #961

I don't think this changes a thing. He still had the choice of making these moves or not making them. He didn't have a contending team, desperate to fill one last hole, forcing him to take the best of what was on offer. He could have spent this money on the international market. He should be evaluated based on the production/trade-value of what he acquired vs what he spent. In the case of Moniak, there was no obvious Harper, which is more often than not the case, but somebody still had to be the 1.1.

julio 2017-06-26 15:48:35 UTC #962

Maybe it's me - but I find the last two posts... somewhat confusing. Austinfan throws in an irrelevant comment about Mickey Moniak, but his second paragraph seemed to follow the current discussion. You can agree or not.

Allentown replies that Klentak could have spent on international signees instead of veterans (his ongoing complaint)... and then says Klentak "should be evaluated based on the production/trade-value of what he acquired vs what he spent." Well, yeah; he will be. But allentown's comment ignores the point I made earlier - that you cannot evaluate attempts to sign/flip veterans individually, because these efforts are by definition highly risky. You evaluate the overall effort, over time. If you insist on trying to reach a conclusion before you have adequate data... well, you're violating one of Sherlock Holmes' basic principles.

Now, you can argue that the Phils shouldn't undertake to sign/flip veterans for prospects, because of the risk - you can argue that that money should just be spent elsewhere. That seems to be allentown's core argument. I'm not at all sure it's credible, though; it's based on the assumption that they had a finite amount spend, and spent it on Buchholz/Kendrick/Saunders, instead of on a Cuban or two. My instinct is that they weren't so constrained by dollars - that they pursued the veterans for possible flipping as a policy choice, and declined to pursue certain Cubans, for the same reasons.

Why? Possible reasons:

1) They wanted to try to put a credible lineup on the field in Philadelphia (Saunders/Kendrick/Buchholz), because they don't believe in deliberately tanking? They saw these signings as a way to hopefully improve their on-field performance in 2017, and possibly garner some future value through a mid-season trade or two. It hasn't worked out (yet), because Buchholz broke down and Saunders collapsed - but that's the risk they took.

2) They may simply not believe that the value now available in over-23 Cubans is worth the expense, given that most of the best such players defected and cleared the market prior to this winter. Is that wrong? I don't know; time will tell. But there's no point in obsessing about what the organization failed to do in past years - the only relevant question is whether there was value they passed on this past winter.