Klentak not dismissing this season in long-view strategy
PHILADELPHIA >> Matt Klentak was sitting in the dugout at Citizens Bank Park Friday, ready to begin his second home season as the general manager of a franchise allowed to spin into N.L. East irrelevance. That gave him a good look across the field, to where the Washington Nationals were about to loosen for batting practice.
One team was built to contend for a championship. The other? “I look at this series as Games 4, 5 and 6 of a 162game schedule,” Klentak said, before a 7-6 loss. “Obviously, we know that to be the best you have to beat the best. We can’t look at this weekend series as anything more than it is. And that’s three games in a long season.”
Such was Klentak’s stance before the Phillies’ sixth home opener since last they’d won anything. Basically, it was that he was not prepared to declare that there wouldn’t be a seventh. Or an eighth. Eventually, it will change, because that’s how baseball spins. Champions become builders. Builders become seasoned. Money is saved. Money is spent. Everything flips. The Nationals, in the playoffs twice since last the Phillies were in the postseason yet still without a series victory, will not be held together forever. The pitching is deep, but Bryce Harper is nearing the end of his contract. Eventually, it will be the Phillies overpaying for, not losing, players with Jayson Werth-like achievements. Eventually … but when? That’s what Klentak was asked Friday, then asked again. That’s the question he tried to deflect, and that made sense, too. He can’t set a target then fire wide. So he’ll look back at the last one and declare a bulls-eye.
“I talked about it throughout the offseason,” Klentak said. “Our 2016 season, in a lot of ways, was very positive, with our international signings, the successes in our minor-league system and the growth of several of our major-league players. There were a variety of real, positive things that happened last year. And the fact that we enter this season with a healthy group and a lot players who impressed in spring training, and throughout the minor leagues — especially at the upper levels of the minor leagues — we’ve got rostered pitching at Double A and Triple A.
“I think we’re on a good track right now.”
They’re on it, and they’ve been on it, and by now they know all the speed traps and hairpin turns. As for the finish line, that has yet to come into view. There has been some gradual progress, with Maikel Franco, Freddy Galvis, Cesar Hernandez, Aaron Nola and some others having risen through the system. But as 2016 became 2017, Klentak remained patient, keeping Nick Williams, Jorge Alfaro, Dylan Cozens, Rhys Hoskins, Roman Quinn and other appealing prospects in the minors, while stocking his major-league club with temp employees on oneyear contracts.
That’s what has given the earliest portion of the Phillies’ season a waiting-in-line feel, as if it is just an activity designed to pass some time, probably until what is expected to be a sport changing free-agent class in the 2018-2019 offseason, one including Harper and Manny Machado.
“My expectation is that a number of those players from the minor-league system will, in fact come up this year,” Klentak said. “And they will impact the major-league club.”
Only when that happens, if it happens, can the process be accelerated. It will have meant that enough one-year contracts will have been flipped — Clay Buchholz, Howie Kendrick, Michael Saunders, to suggest three — payroll will have been saved and the Phils will have moved into a position to spend. That’s when the core can be supplemented with proven pros, the way the Nationals added Max Scherzer and Daniel Murphy, one who manhandled the Phillies from the mound Friday, the other who blasted a home run to deep right-center.
“It’s definitely strategic,” Klentak said. “We need to time those investments with the core club being ready. Typically in free agency, the early years of a contract are going to be better than the later years of that same contract. So you want to get the most impact from those freeagent signings that you can. And I don’t believe that is unique to the Phillies. I think that’s the case for every team looking into free agency.
“So I have no question whatsoever that our ownership group will make the necessary investments. It’s up to us, as management, to identify what the right time for that is. And that time is coming. It’s a matter of whether it is this coming offseason or the following year, and it’s not limited to free agency. We could just as easily make the investment in the form of a trade and acquiring a big contract.”
Mike Trout will begin earning more than $33 million annually, beginning next year. Klentak didn’t mention the name, but he did volunteer that “acquiring a big contract” suggestion. And Trout, from South Jersey, used to tailgate at Citizens Bank Park as a kid. Who knows? All Klentak has to know is that, eventually, the Phillies have to flip the N.L. East again, and that they will have the players, the cash and the motivation to do so.
“That time’s coming,” he said. “Right now, it’s the fourth game of the season. So we have time to think about that this year.”
Next year, too, more than likely.