Klentak calling on Pigs for route out of cellar
PHILADELPHIA » Faced with the real option — if not an opportunity — to answer some fans’ clamor for the prospects that his predecessor worked so hard to provide, Matt Klentak Tuesday again illustrated the greatest asset a general manager can possess in this Era of the Analytics-ist. The power of patience. Of course, the occasional Twitter beating comes along with that.
So with the whole Phillies fan base, better known as the South Philly Silent Minority, begging for a little prospect love, Klentak promoted steady if unspectacular Triple-A outfielder Cameron Perkins to fill the spot of ousted free agent Michael Saunders. And with Jeanmar Gomez deemed gone for good on the same day, Klentak opted for Hoby Milner, like Perkins another 26-yearold minor league veteran stopgap player.
While it’s always good to see someone doing fine work for a team called the IronPigs get a taste of (semi-)major league home cooking, there will be the natural outcry that once again, Klentak is bypassing what the fans feel should be obvious to anyone with an Ivy League baseball education — that either/and Dylan Cozens or especially Nick Williams MUST BE ALLOWED TO PLAY NOW!
Is that about what he expects to hear?
“We look at every player individually,” Klentak said Tuesday. “I think a couple of the areas where Cam is ready is his ability to control the strike zone, his ability to play the outfield; I think he’s a good fit for where we are right now. By no means is the fact that he’s being promoted today a reflection of our opinion of any of the other guys that are still in Triple-A, specifically the guys on the roster we still have very high hopes for their futures.
“As I said last week, when we were talking about Nick specifically, there are still some things that we want him to work on. And that really hasn’t changed in the last week, even though Nick has been hot again for the week.”
Williams, identified early on as a key cog in the mega-prospect deal that saw Cole Hamels leave late for Texas in 2015, is hitting .280 with 14 home runs and 41 RBIs, with an .830 OPS for the Piggies. Along with somewhat slowerdeveloping shortstop J.P. Crawford, they’re the prospects most likely to be revered when finally greenlighted to the majors.
As far as the pitching corps is concerned, the Phillies really can’t go wrong with this Hoby guy, last since they’re fairly bereft of real reliever prospects.
Though any of them could have fared better than minor vet Casey Fien did Tuesday night, allowing a pair of two-run doubles and two home runs in a humiliating 11th inning en route to an 8-1 Cardinals victory.
Now, the not-so Fien Phillies do have an impressive young guy in Ricardo Pinto (who also didn’t fare well in a previous brief callup), and they have 31-year-old oddity Pat Venditte, the ambidextrous reliever, at 6-0 with a 2.35 ERA in 25 appearances for the Pigs.
But another chance to satiate prospect-hungry Phillies fans will come this weekend, when the Phils have to bring somebody up to take Jerad Eickhoff’s turn in the rotation, since he went on the DL Tuesday with an upper back strain.
The safe bet might be that it’s either of starting prospects Tom Eshelman or the recently rolling Mark Appel. Already, the Phillies have had Zach Eflin (now sidelined), Ben Lively and Nick Pivetta come up as various Phillies starters have quite literally gone down. But considering Klentak’s obvious desire to continue to season his younger prospective pitchers and position players in the minors while the semi-big league team continues to wallow at No. 30 overall, there are hardly any guarantees that Klentak’s next promotion is going to be an exciting one.
“When you have the worst record in baseball, it’s safe to say things haven’t gone exactly as planned,” Klentak said. “Whether we’re winning or we’re losing, we’re always going to be looking at potential roster moves to make us better. In this case, we’re trying to get out of the basement.
“I do think bringing up young players can have a positive effect on teams sometimes. Not to put all the pressure on the two guys we just called up, but injecting some new life into a team could be helpful. But we’ll see. That should not be viewed as disparaging toward the two guys (Saunders and Gomez) we just sent out, because both of those guys are really good guys and really good teammates. So, hopefully, this will give us a spark. But this has as much to do with winning tonight and winning tomorrow, getting a look at some younger players.
“We still have some season left to go. It’s about trying to properly balance the present and the future.”
Good luck with that.