I think the short answer is just that the Phillies were a very poorly run team for many years, even during the "dynasty," obviously, and the people running the team were famously not long-term thinkers or even big believers in farm systems and international. Amaro, Montgomery and Gillick did not take advantage of international and I just don't think the new President and GM were in a position to swoop in, especially given the apparent reality that players are secretly locked up a year or two in advance. Maybe they also didn't trust the scouting, maybe it just wasn't a high enough priority. That would be unfortunate.
But I'm still okay with the fact that they haven't handed out multi-year deals yet. I don't look at the last two free agent classes and wish anyone was on the Phillies. For what, to win 80 games instead of 75 and then be useless in Year Three (like nearly every free agent Amaro ever signed was)?
But this report only confirms the suspicion that they'll be writing some fat checks soon. I definitely believe the whiteboards in MacPhail and Klentak's offices already have budgets and targeted players for the next three years, and most importantly there are younger players hitting the market. Plus they can make trades, which they really couldn't have the last two years (either not enough depth or not enough valuable assets).
And it seems to me you can save money in the future, maybe not on active salaries w/in the cap, but some of this banked revenue should make it easier to tolerate the reality of dead years on a free agent contract, which they struggled to do from 2012-2016.
The Astros were in the same position, if memory serves, and we know Klentak studied them. Problem is the "tanking" part of that should have happened in 2014 and 2015.