With full boat of concerns, Klentak seems to know Realmuto is one of them

Essentially sight unseen since spring training was called to a premature halt in mid-March, Phillies general manager Matt Klentak virtually emerged from his burrow Monday to address the scary shadows around MLB’s planned return to action next month.

Aside from the usual questions about all the oddities surrounding a 60-game sort-of season, Klentak mixed in some real news, and not all of it was happy.

Take, for prioritized example, the Phillies’ ongoing non-negotiations with the best catcher in baseball, J.T. Realmuto. Not that they were going all that great, anyway, but COVID-19 essentially shut them down. And now, with Realmuto getting only a pro-rated sum of the $10 million, one-season arbitration award he had received, the question looms darker about whether the Phillies can expect to reach a longer-term agreement with their multi-talented backstop.

It certainly didn’t sound promising Monday, anyway.

“It’s probably too soon to tell,” Klentak said of Realmuto’s situation. “As you probably know we were prohibited from talking to J.T. or his representative for the last three-plus months, so we didn’t. That restriction was lifted just last Friday, and candidly, we’ve had our nose to the ground on intake screenings and getting people here. So I haven’t touched base with them this weekend, either.

“Obviously the landscape we left in March is going to be different than the one we return to now. We just have to see how that manifests itself in our discussions. We still love the player, we still would love to have him in red pinstripes for the long haul. But there’s a lot of uncertainty in the game right now in a variety of levels. We just have to factor that in.

Aside from Bryce Harper, however, Realmuto, 29, is probably the most important answer you’d want to have when assessing the Phillies. And yet he will likely be forced to open a rather intimidating, 60-game slate with the shadow of COVID-19 in the air without a semblance of longterm security. The window on a possible long-term contract for Realmuto could close in just a few short weeks as he’s likely to be unwilling to negotiate during the season.

“I think we have to play that out,” Klentak said, “and I really don’t have an answer for that.”

As for an answer for safety concerns with the restart of the season, Klentak can look at the way seven players and five staff members tested positive for coronavirus in Clearwater this month week.

“It’s eye-opening to us how quickly it spread, even in an environment where we were on the extreme end of caution,” Klentak said. He said the Spectrum Field facility was “pretty airtight,” adding some players had complained of how restrictive the environment had been “with working out and cleaning facilities in between.

“In some ways it was frustrating to some of the players how strict it was,” Klentak said, “and yet this type of outbreak still happened.”

Klentake added players and staff will continue to be tested thoroughly as they arrive in Philadelphia for the lead-up to the start of a spring training redo.

“It’s going to be a challenge,” he said. “Like we saw an outbreak take place in Clearwater where we had ... six or eight players down there and it can happen fast. No we’re going to have 53 and 30 teams are going to have that and you’re going to layer in travel.

“It’s going to take a lot of discipline from a lot of people and it’s going to put a lot of strain on the testing process. The importance of testing every couple of days is going to be critical on the operation as is the discipline of people to stay safe, not only when they’re at the field but when they’re not at the field.

“We want baseball to come back,” Klentak added. “We’re thrilled that we are coming back. But now just because we announced we’re coming back doesn’t mean we can take our foot off the gas. We really need to make sure we double down on our efforts to make sure when we’re back, we stay back.”

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NOTES » Klentak said Andrew McCutchen seems fully back from his knee injury of nearly a year ago and should be ready to tackle this second season training session in full . ... While players are to report Wednesday for their “intake screening” battery of health tests, Klentak said real team workouts won’t begin until Friday, both at Citizens Bank Park and at FDR Park across Pattison Ave.