Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Youngsters undercut Klentak’s spending plan
PHILADELPHIA >> The Phillies gave Clay Buchholz $13,500,000 and he gave them 138 pitches. Then he went on the disabled list, his 33-year-old forearm as swollen as his checking account.
Howie Kendrick, 33, grabbed $10,000,000, took 39 at-bats, and started oooch-ouch-eeching while icing his injured oblique muscle.
The Phillies dumped $11,000,000 on 30-year-old Michael Saunders, expecting some power. He put in 17 games, didn’t hit a home run, said he wasn’t necessarily trying to hit home runs, and was demoted from an everyday right fielder to a platooning temp employee.
That was $7.5 million the Phils sprayed at 39-year-old Joaquin Benoit, who had a quick chance to be a closer, allowed a mile-long game-winning home run to Bryce Harper, then looped into a lateinning bullpen mix with Hector Neris and Edubray Ramos.
The Phils traded for Pat Neshek, 36, agreeing to gnaw on the final $6.5 million of his contract, hoping for middle relief. They needed some last week, but he was on paternity leave. They offered Jeremy Hellickson, 30, a $17.2 million qualifying offer as a hedge against him becoming a free agent, and were half-surprised that he accepted.
There may be worse ways to run $52-plus-million through a sports operation, but there haven’t been many since Leonard Tose was around. He was the first owner on the block to try to win a championship or die trying. And John Middleton, who made that very promise last week on the radio, would be best not to investigate how that one turned out.
For long-term tactical reasons, the Phillies accepted that parade of the aged, the injury-prone and the minimally motivated this season, much as they did in 2016 when they gave Charlie Morton, 32, $8 million to pitch 17.1 innings, then another $1 million just to go away. The idea was to try to remain presentable through a few more years of rebuilding, while keeping their best prospects buried in the minors. And if any of their one-season longshot plays hit, they could flip him at the trade deadline for even more prospects. They probably should have made a call to Brett Brown first, and he could have warned them of the dangers of employing too many professional, as he once said, gypsies.
The Phillies defeated the Braves, 5-2, Sunday, running a winning streak to four, improving to 9-9. Zach Eflin, who replaced Buchholz in the pitching rotation, went seven innings, walking none, striking out three. Aaron Altherr, who was in right in place of Saunders and whose playing time has increased since the injury to Kendrick, hit a home run and has scored a run in his last seven games.
The young players, not the old, are making the difference.
“I’m just taking it day by day,” said Altherr, his batting average at .364. “Hopefully Howie gets back as soon as possible, because he has a good bat and we can always use him in the lineup, for sure. So I am just trying to take advantage of the opportunity right now.”
Hellickson has been splendid as a No. 1 starter, an early All-Star candidate, a two-season value as a veteran soothing agent on a younger starting rotation. He could be a valuable piece at the deadline, but the Phils thought that last year, too, and were disappointed. All of which is a reason to reconsider their annual efforts to strengthen their farm system by throwing one-year contracts on players unlikely to stick around long enough to find the shortcuts out of the ballpark. One Charlie Morton was plenty. But Clay Buchholz, too? “We’re constantly evaluating all of our decisions to make sure we make better ones as we move forward,” Matt Klentak said the other night. “In the case of Clay, we talked about this when we acquired him. We talked about it again in spring training. But we liked what we saw in the second half, some of the adjustments that he made, the stuff that was coming out of his hand. We were optimistic for a big year and a rebound year from him this year.”
Through the second half of last season, Pete Mackanin was often caught thinking out loud about Dylan Cozens, the then-22-yearold left-handed hitter who was clubbing 40 home runs in Reading. Yet rather than give him that shot in right field this season, the Phils went with Saunders. That assured that he would not fail in the big leagues, thus maintaining his status and allure as a hot prospect. It’s early, but Cozens has three home runs for Lehigh Valley, though he did go just eight for his first 54. Rhys Hoskins, however, has four home runs and was hitting .320, while being blocked as a right-handed, power-hitting first baseman by Tommy Joseph. Hoskins hit 38 homers in the minors last year.
Early last season, when the Phillies were scuffling to find power, they fished Joseph out of Allentown and he provided 21 big-league home runs. Something wrong with an Altherr, Hoskins, Odubel Herrera outfield?
“We always look,” Mackanin said. “During the course of the year, we get a pamphlet every day with the minor league report. We look at who’s hitting and who’s not, who’s pitching well and who’s not. It certainly looks good. We’re always looking at that. If there is a need, we are going to try to fill that need, especially with a young guy.”
They filled one Sunday with Eflin, who is 23, and another with Altherr, who is 26. They could have done that $23.5 million ago.