2017 Season Phillies News/Notes/General Discussion

[Philsmania]

I agree about 1,000% that Hellickson should have been traded at last year's deadline. Not so sure the claims that Rupp and Gomez should have been as well are realistic though. Both came out of nowhere and other clubs may not have been sold on them like we were. This year, they've basically gone back to oblivion from whence they came. Despite the fact that Alfaro has been mediocre this season, I would not be the least bit surprised if he and Rupp essentially trade places next April with Alfaro starting for the Phillies and Rupp starting for the Pigs.

[Austinfan]

Let's see how Galvis finishes the year, he's steadily improved as a hitter from two years ago, and he definitely has a better swing.
I think part of the problem for Galvis has just been maturing emotionally, not getting too aggressive after he hits a couple dingers, and not getting too anxious when he's in a slump and digging a deeper hole. Stairs has made some tweaks to his mechanics that seem to have helped.
If he's a plus .700 OPS hitter he's a pretty decent SS for any team.

[BostonRoss]

In determining how much value to assign to performance, I also look at all the moves as a whole and ask whether or not the GM achieved his intended purpose. Like when we traded for Pence at a point we had the NL East lead basically locked up -- he was acquired to allow us to have a good enough OF to win another WC and to be the younger guy performing well enough to extend the string of winning. We bombed in the playoffs and Pence wasn't good at the start of the following year up to the point he was traded. I view that trade as a failure, not because Pence didn't play very well in the final months of the season in which he was acquired -- he did, but the playoff goal was missed and Pence was not good the next year.

Applying that to this year's moves. The goal was to add vet talent to make this year's team respectable and then to flip that talent for prospects. Part one of the goal, regardless of some of the guys performing reasonably well, was not even close to being met, because the Phillies are very far from being respectable. So, no credit from me for part one and all of the value of the $65 million spent on these acquisitions needs to come from the value of the flipped players. Kendrick has played well when healthy, but is now hurt again.

I have a hard time understanding rating a decision solely based on the outcome. A couple of weeks ago, I was playing blackjack and decided to hit when I was holding 15 and the dealer had a face card showing. I busted, but the dealer ended up having 20. I made the right decision, but there was no decision i could make to win that hand.

In baseball, we don't know the odds like we do in blackjack, but it seems really likely to me that having Pence increased the probability of winning a championship in 2011. Once can question the price paid, but I don't see how having Pence couldn't have added value to that team. Just because the team failed doesn't mean a bad decision was made.

The same holds for the current situation although we don't really know the outcome yet. As andyb pointed out, the reason the 2017 Phillies are not respectable is not because the veterans failed; it is much more due to the regression of younger players who seemed to have promise. In this case, there really was no price paid; we gave up no prospects to acquire Kendrick, Nava, Hellickson, Buchholz, Neshek, Benoit, and Saunders. Furthermore, until this year's trade deadline has passed, we can't evaluate these acquisitions as a group.

Another point that is worth considering is that it's easier to evaluate moves made, like the Pence trade, because we know what the alternative was. We don't know what the alternative was to keeping Hellickson last year. It may have been getting a player who is worse than a player we might get for him this year. Or it might have been getting a worthless player. Klentak may have had my blackjack hand.

[Austinfan]

Blame it on Cain
Don't blame it on me
Oh-oh, oh, it's nobody's fault
But we need somebody to burn

That's how I feel when I read posts the last few weeks.
Face it, rebuilding sucks. Young players don't progress in a linear fashion, some don't progress at all.
It's tough waiting for all those prospects to arrive so we can field a competitive team.

They're finally doing things right, accumulating talent, using analytics, being patient.
Doesn't mean things will turn around quickly, but at least they're no longer digging a deeper hole.

[allentown]

Two different questions. You made a reasonable bet. You lost. You may prefer to salve your soul by asking question #1: "Was the bet I made reasonable?" Yes, it was. That does not change the answer to question #2 "Did I win the bet?" No, you lost.

So, judging whether a person or team won or lost its bet is not at all an issue of whether or not it was a reasonable bet to make. Some bets win and some lost. You lost. That doesn't make you a foolish or incompetent gambler, but it does make you the loser of that bet.

If Klentak made his bet on the vets to: 1) make the 2017 Phillies a respectable team and 2) add young talent for flipping, then he clearly lost on #1 and the jury is still out on #2, but the burden is now greater on #2, since we washed out on #1 and the value of the prospects now has to be $65 million in order to make the bet.

Does that make Klentak a fool to have made this bet? I don't know. One has to assess the prospects of the team with and without the added vets. Was the team good enough, but with clear enough deep holes, that adding these vets could reasonably be expected to make a significant difference and raise the 2016 Phillies up to respectability? We certainly had a big hole in the OF. I thought adding 1 OF made sense. Adding 2 was likely to block a guy, I thought Altherr, perhaps Quinn or Williams.

What was lost? Could the $65 million have been put to better use? I'd have spent it on Cubans and going to 150% of our international allocation or on a youngish front-end FA. That's another gamble and might well also see us as losers. IMHO it was the better gamble to take.

[flyers19rw]

I honestly think the very future of the Phils is hanging in the balance right now and if the Mac Brothers in Crime are around past this year I will be convinced that the Phils have yet another ineffective of good ole boys ruining the franchise.

I'm sorry but its time to let Mackanin and his crew go. Its just not working with them and the players. I'm not absolving the players but the product on the field is just not MLB quality.
The Phans are not stupid. They see this for what it is as a catastrophe. Its so bad that it can't be called a rebuild.
Who replaces Mackanin is anyone's guess. Most likely it will be Wathan but it could be someone else. Frankly I'd like to see it be someone who has not had long term ties to the Phillies who can work with younger players and will bang home fundamentals. Whatever, a change is past due.

[allentown]

Oh-oh, oh, it's nobody's fault
But we need somebody to burn

I'm seeking a better strategy to advance the rebuild, not a scapegoat.

[Austinfan]

I don't think there are that many things Klentak can do differently at this point.
1) Aren't a lot of Cubans left, and they're no longer bargains
2) You can trade for LA allocations, IF someone is willing to make a deal at a reasonable price
3) He's shown he can move money up and down the amateur draft.

As far as trades, Phillies don't have much of value right now, you don't sell low by trading prospects, you have to get them to the majors and increase their value, which is why I don't fret about Rupp, if he didn't improve, he didn't have that much value last year, the downside to these guys isn't low unitl they become 3-4 WAR players like Hernandez (teams don't trade blue chip prospects for 1 WAR starters). Yes, they'll get something for Kendrick, Neshak, Nava, Hellickson (if he keeps pitching well), but nothing exciting.

Sometimes you're constrained by reality - at this point all they can do is patiently wait for prospects to arrive - this winter they have to make a tough decision between Hoskins and Joseph (he's not moving to 3B, isn't quick enough), but the OFs are a year or two away from trade bait - no one is breaking the bank for Cozens until he show he can hit the curve on a regular basis. And so on. If Kingery is ready, Hernandez is a possibliity if he comes back healthy.

There just isn't much they can do other than just keep adding talent.
Better coaches will help, but usually you have to be already on the upswing before you can hire them, because if they're good, they have other opportunities.
Free agency is a couple years away, you don't overpay for mercenaries, you wait untl the team is good enough that its attractive to the kind of FA that will be a good fit on and off the field.

[allentown]

There just isn't much they can do other than just keep adding talent

Yes, that is all they can do and that is enough. That is why it is practically criminal GM malpractice that we let slip by us the chance to grab one of the Cubans and to trade for 50% more allocation. Those are ways to add extra talent. We should skip no way to add young and youngish talent. I include young 23+ talent, which we also let get past us. I agree with Julio that with the change to 25+ that this is another option which has left town for the next couple years, because of the age increase. With a small MLB budget, of which $65 mill was almost thrown at iffy FA rentals, this past year was the year we should have grabbed these opportunities. Missed opportunities delay the rebuild. The Braves are better than us at both the MLB and farm levels and, ultimately we must surpass them to reach the WS. They gambled big time is this past draft and have literally a 3-4 player draft. It will be interesting to see whether we or they won the 2017 draft.

[zambonir]

People keep talking about international players as if they are an infinite resource. There are only so many of them. I would also think that there is a cap on how many players the Phillies have room to develop, whether in an academy or in Clearwater. I just am not going to buy that it was all about money given the current payroll (with or without the $65 million), or some philosophy left over from Bud Selig and Bill Giles. Maybe the Phillies had some guys they wanted and were rejected. Maybe they did try to make an allocation deal and couldn't get it done. Maybe Sal really didn't have other players he wanted. Maybe he did but other people in the front office overruled him. There are just so many different things that might have happened. You have a GM who clearly believes in stockpiling as much young talent and assets as he possibly can (or so he says), You have a team that's nearly 50% Latin-American players. I don't see how a few million would have been the thing to keep them from gettting more when they spent that last year on better meals for the minor leaguers.

I just wish one of the writers would ask someone (Klentak or Almaraz or Sal), since we talk about this so much.

The rebuild has slowed, but they won't sit out these next two free agent classes. They will follow the Cubs' Jon Lester (or Phillies' Thome) model and get someone early. And they will fill a few spots just like they did this year but with better, longer-term players. Certainly I believe at least one starting pitcher and one member of the starting 8 is playing for another team today, whether they arrive via trade or free agency.

As for the manager and coaching staff, I don't think they've ruined any great players anymore than the last group ruined Brown, Ruf, Adam Morgan and Asche (I know people will happily make that argument but really they just aren't great players, and that includes Franco and Herrera who just aren't stars, and have had to carry the weight of not being surrounded by any stars).

[andyb]

Finding a writer who understands the international pools and the plusses and minuses of trading for allocations might be a challenge.

Not having room to develop players is not an answer. We sign 20 non-prospect players a year for under $10K. We could always sign fewer of them. Or add another GCL team. Lots of solutions to the overcrowding problem and really the top prospects playing at the right level is all that matters.

[BostonRoss]

My point with the blackjack analogy was not whether I won or lost the bet. The point was that there was no good strategy. I didn't know that I would lose. Another strategy would have been to stick with the cards I had. That would have lost, too.

Klentak had a choice of different strategies. He chose one and didn't win. Unlike me, he doesn't know whether another strategy would have won. You seem to be saying that I must have chosen wrong because I didn't win. That simply isn't true in this case. We don't know whether another strategy would have worked better for Klentak, but you assume it would have because of the outcome.

If outcome is all that's important, then the Cubs made a bad trade of Ivan DeJesus for Ryne Sandberg, because the Phillies went to the World Series that year and the Cubs never did over Sandberg's career.

[allentown]

No, the Cubs were trading present value for future value. The trade was not predicated upon taking them to the WS. Their goal was to add more talent, and they did. The Phillies actual goal -- no secret at the time, was to get Larry Bowa out of town, because he had requested/demanded a salary increase. This was the age of players as serfs and the Phillies' ownership was incensed enough to insist he be disappeared. There was no pretense that we were getting a superior SS back. BTW, that's how we got Steve Carlton from the Cubs.

I did not say you made the wrong choice in your bet. In fact I said you made a reasonable choice. I agree there wasn't a better choice. But if your goal was to win, then you still didn't, regardless of the logic of your approach.

Pence was acquired, at great prospect expense, for a specific reason. It was a deliberate mortgaging of the future to win a WC in the now. The guys we traded mainly turned out to not be as good as they seemed at the time, but the Phillies' purpose for the trade wasn't achieved. They were unhappy enough with Pence that they basically salary-dumped him.

[julio]

allentown's response appears to have missed/ignored BostonRoss' point. His post was not about Ryne Sandberg, or Larry Bowa, or Ivan DeJesus, or Hunter Pence. It was about Matt Klentak. The relevant part of BostonRoss' post:

Klentak had a choice of different strategies. He chose one and didn't win. Unlike me, he doesn't know whether another strategy would have won. You seem to be saying that I must have chosen wrong because I didn't win. That simply isn't true in this case. We don't know whether another strategy would have worked better for Klentak, but you assume it would have because of the outcome.

[allentown]

No, I specifically said in my original response that we couldn't know whether the Cuban approach would work better, but I preferred the Cuban/international option as better for the rebuild. I did say that Klentak lost part 1 of his gamble, because his $65 million did not make the Phillies respectable or even watchable. In terms of appeasing fans about the present while a slow rebuild continues, it failed its objective. We won't know how much value he got for his second objective of flipping the vets until after the trade deadline passes, but those flips have to carry the $65 million. I don't feel the necessity to repeat everything from my original post in a response to that post.

[andyb]

I tend not to focus on whether spending $65 million on veterans was a good decision. I would have done that AND signed international players to the limit. Any over-23 internationals would have to be as good as the veteran free agents.

It matters less whether the team was respectable and as I have said it is the young players not developing that are a big part of that. We probably got overconfident that guys like Herrera, Franco, and Eickhoff were better than they actually are. After good initial seasons the league has caught up and they are performing in line with their scouting reports.

A separate issue is whether he signs the right veterans. Luck of course is involved here along with scouting. I liked the Saunders signing. It did not work out. I hated the Buchholz trade. That also did not work out. I was ambivalent on Kendrick and that may work out. Whatever happens Klentak should be evaluated on how these deals worked out and as I have said before the 2016 record with Morton and Hellickson was mixed. If only they had actually flipped Hellickson it would have looked better.

[BostonRoss]

We all agree that Klentak "lost." But he still may have made the best choice, right?

What I am saying is that we can't judge a single choice based on its outcome. And we can't judge a choice not made because we don't even have an outcome to look at. I disagree that a "Cuban strategy" is an alternative to signing vets, but I wouldn't claim that a Cuban strategy is a bad choice just because of Miguel A. Gonzalez.

[zambonir]

I think the premise that Klentak expected all six veterans to perform well, and for all of them to be traded for good returns, is flawed.They were all coin flips and lottery tickets. None of them were that expensive to acquire. If they get 3 or 4 players out of it, great. They're not going to get top prospects because they are what they are, a #4 starter, a middle reliever having a great season and an aging hitter who is probably going to be on someone's bench. Saunders and Bucholtz were the biggest risk/rewards of the group and they both failed. Sure, I'd love to know what the scouts or analytics people thought they saw in Saunders, or in Buchholtz's medical reports. And I wish the Phillies had another Cole Hamels or Hunter Pence (the one they traded for that is) to deal right now, but they don't.

[BostonRoss]

I didn't expect to win that blackjack hand either.

[allentown]

Nobody has suggested that Klentak expected all 6 vets to work out. That would have been an EXTREMELY lucky result. It is the group as a whole which counts and is the basis for evaluation.

Everybody is reacting as if we are saying throw Klentak overboard. I'm definitely not saying that. I think he has not chosen a path which leads to the quickest rebuild and he has not purchased team respectability. It's clear the media/fans view this season at the MLB level as abysmal, so he didn't buy any extra time for the process of rebuilding. Hopefully better going forward.

The thing that kills organizations fastest is management churn, so we should stick with McPhail/Klentak. I still think clear opportunities to acquire young amateur talent were passed by.

I also still believe that Middleton's approach changed after his sister sued him. Also, hopefully that will be resolved quickly and not terribly expensively and Middleton can go back to the original plan to spend to build a winner.