With one deadline move, more flexible Phils improve
PHILADELPHIA >> Adding depth without sacrificing value, improving defense while upgrading the power, squeezing one more valuable player onto his roster before it was too late, Matt Klentak made the Phillies better Wednesday, just before the trade deadline.
He didn’t drive them to the top of the World Series futures board. His final-hour maneuvering didn’t cause secondarymarket ticket prices to spike. By trading a player to be named later and some international-market options to the Pirates for Corey Dickerson, it didn’t inspire anyone in the Phillies clubhouse to blurt out “Dream Team.”
All Klentak did was finally give his manager a flexible roster.
It had taken a while. “I feel like we’re in a stronger position today than we were yesterday and we’re in a stronger position yesterday than we were several weeks ago,” Gabe Kapler said. “We continue to make incremental upgrades along the way. The bench that we’re going to deploy in the middle of August should be a strong one.”
That wouldn’t make the Phillies’ bench much different than it was in March and April, back when they were flush with stars and expectations. But it would make the bench different from mid-June and mid-July, after the loss of Andrew McCutchen to season-ending knee surgery and Odubel Herrera to suspension sent them spinning. At that point, Kapler was trying to manage with a bench of Brad Miller, Roman Quinn, Sean Rodriguez and Andrew Knapp while resisting the urge to cringe whenever any of his eight regulars wandered too close to a fence.
With Jay Bruce due back from an oblique injury in about a week, with the versatility of Dickerson, the emergence of Adam Haseley as a valuable outfielder and Miller close to a return from a flexor-strain injury, Kapler soon can return to one of his favorite hobbies, creative battingorder writing.
“For this team to accomplish what it wants to accomplish, we’re going to need the stars in that room to carry us,” Klentak said. “We have the talent. We had a very splashy offseason. We brought in a lot of talent and those guys are going to have to do what they do to push us into October. But we thought it was important to improve the team around them, provide the team with all the support that we could to put our better players in position to take us where we wanted to go.”
Dickerson, 30, has battled shoulder and groin injuries and had been limited this season to 43 games. He was hitting .317 with four home runs and 25 RBIs. He can be slotted into left field, with Adam Haseley shifting to center. That would push Scott Kingery back into the infield, likely at third, with Maikel Franco becoming a right-handed power threat off the bench.
“That’s definitely one way we can do it,” Klentak said. “I’m not going to make out the lineup for Kap.”
There are other options. But that’s why with one move unlikely to dominate the trade-deadline news feed, Klentak had unlocked the mystery of a flat but improving season.
With a .376 on-base percentage this season and having hit 24 or more homers three times in his career, Dickerson can lead off, providing some of what the Phils missed after the McCutchen injury. It’s also possible that Bruce can be the regular left-fielder, with Dickerson springing from the bench to play any outfield position. On certain nights, both Bruce and Dickerson could start, allowing Kingery to provide nineposition versatility in reserve, emergency pitching included.
There is a value to having options.
“The way I see it is we’re going to find playing time for all of them,” Kapler said. “I don’t know exactly how that’s going to break down yet, but I’m going to have conversations with our players and discuss their usage going forward.”
Maybe that was a standard manager’s mouthful. But not only will the Phils go into August with a more complete bench, they also have the option to add Logan Morrison, quietly added as a freeagent two weeks ago, just two years after he’d hit 38 home runs for Tampa Bay. Versatile, six-year majorleague veteran Jose Pirela recently was added to the pipeline, too.
So while Klentak’s relatively tame trade-deadline behavior proved he and Andy MacPhail trust what already is in place, it was also an effort to make that work without disrupting the farm system.
“We have had a season where whether due to injury or under-performance by certain players we’ve asked a lot of our depth players to come and contribute at the major league level,” Klentak said. “We felt like it was really important to address that in this summer trade deadline season. It’s not about one day. It’s not about today’s transactions or yesterday’s. It’s really about what we’ve done the past few weeks or even months.”
The Phillies passed on Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel earlier, and weren’t interested enough at the deadline to outbid the Astros for Zack Greinke and the $80 million he has remaining on his contract.
But they added Dickerson, who won a Gold Glove last season and was an All-Star in 2017, can play multiple outfield positions, hit in various lineup spots and supply a little power.
“It’s an opportunity to play somewhere where they are contending,” Dickerson said, “and just be a piece to try to help.”
Considering where his new team had been recently, one piece will be welcome.