Phillies GM takes blame for another losing season
Phillies GM takes blame for another losing season
Matt Klentak was ousted from his position as Phillies general manager Saturday, ending an unsuccessful five-year run that included zero winning seasons or postseason appearances.
Team owner John Middleton announced in a statement that Klentak had agreed to step down from his position, six days after the Phillies completed another disappointing season, the ninth in a row without a playoff berth.
Klentak will be reassigned in the organization while assistant general manager Ned Rice serves as interim GM until the Phillies complete their hiring search. Middleton and team president Andy MacPhail will lead the search for the next general manager. Middleton said Rice will have input in the process.
Middleton hired Klentak following the 2015 season. The Phillies were 326-382 in five seasons under Klentak, including a disappointing 28-32 mark in a 2020. The Phillies lost seven of their final eight games and failed to qualify for a postseason tournament that took the top eight teams in each league.
“I think the problem the Phillies have had for 100 years is they don’t evaluate talent well. I think that was a problem 100 years ago, it was a problem 50 years ago,” Middleton told reporters on a
Zoom conference Saturday. Then pointing out the drafting and developing of players that led to the successes of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the buildup that led to two World Series teams in the late 2000s, Middleton added, “other than that, we’ve been hit or miss.
“You look at our draft picks since Cole Hamels (in 2002), it’s a pretty limited success rate there,” he added. “You only have two guys in Aaron (Nola) and Alec (Bohm) that you can look at from our first-round draft picks who you can say have really produced. That’s a problem that’s haunted us. It was the No. 1 mandate I gave Andy and Matt when they came in. We’ve improved, but we’re not nearly good enough and that’s what it is.”
Middleton said he may have kept Klentak in his position, had the Phillies made it beyond the first round of the playoffs. The Phillies were officially eliminated from contention on the final day of the regular season.
Klentak’s biggest prize in free agency was signing Bryce Harper, who was inked to a 13-year, $330-million deal in February 2019. Klentak also made a splash on the trade market when he sent highlytouted pitching prospect Sixto Sanchez to Miami for All-Star catcher J.T. Realmuto. While he also signed Zach Wheeler last offseason to help anchor a shaky rotation, and signed Didi Gregorious as a one-year stopgap at shortstop, perhaps Klentak’s biggest failure as GM was his inability to re-sign Realmuto to an extension this season.
Middleton said Realmuto remains a “top priority” for the organization, but was vexed when discussing the very likely possibility that Realmuto doesn’t re-sign with the Phillies. Middleton ended the press conference by talking about his thought process at the time the trade happened and suggested he had some regrets.
“My position was, I’d be willing to trade Sixto as long as you extend J.T. And if you don’t extend J.T., I wouldn’t trade Sixto because we weren’t at the point in the development of the team where the benefits that we were getting matched what we were giving up,” Middleton said.
He likened the 2019 Realmuto deal to the trade acquisition of Cliff Lee from the Cleveland Indians prior to the 2009 season, when the Phillies were coming off a parade down Broad Street following the organization’s second World Series victory.
“If we can get one of the great pitchers in baseball, it not only gives us a much, much better chance of winning the pennant and getting back to the World Series, it gives us a much better chance at winning the World Series,” Middleton said of the Lee trade 11 years ago. “So, we’re going to give up these players because we are in win-now mode and (Lee) is a huge difference maker. But when we traded for J.T., we weren’t the defending World Series champions, we were trying to get back to the playoffs. ... The point I made is that we need J.T. now but we really need J.T. in three or four or five, six years from now and if all we get from him is two years, that’s not the same thing as two years of Cliff Lee in 2009. And so, that was my position.
“(Realmuto) is a great player, but we gave up a great player. To me, we just needed to be firm on not giving up Sixto for two years of J.T. in that moment in our time. We were a little early in the development to make that kind of play.”
Middleton made clear to lay the blame with that point: “The baseball people thought they could get the extension. You know, you live and you learn. That experience, on that trade, has shaped my — you have to learn about what you’ve done in the past and that’s shaped me going forward.”
When Middleton fired Gabe Kapler, who had no managerial experience prior to joining the Phillies, a year ago, he made clear his intentions to seek a candidate with experience and a winning resume. Joe Girardi was hired a month later. Middleton appears to be searching for similar qualities in his next GM.
“It’s the acquisition and the development of talent that is critical,” he said. “I will be looking for people who can do that, who have proven they can do that. That’s where my target is.”
Middleton said MacPhail will remain team president. His contract expires after the 2021 season.
Middleton defended MacPhail’s track record and patronized a reporter when asked whether MacPhail should share the blame of the team’s failures with Klentak. As a general manager, MacPhail won World Series titles in 1987 and ‘91 with the Minnesota Twins, but he has not proven he can compete with successful franchises of the present day.
“So, you do know he’s won two World Series titles. And you do know that Pat Gillick, who is in the Hall of Fame, has only won three? ... It’s why I have confidence in him, because he’s been there, he’s won,” Middleton said. “Look, he’s done this before, he’s done it well. These guys, whether it be Pat or Terry (Ryan) or Andy, bring a wealth of experience, a wealth of contacts. Pat and Andy can talk to people that I can’t talk to. He can talk to other people and get answers I won’t get if I do talk to them. You need these people, they’re important to you. And if you don’t have them working for you, you’re going to have a sub-optimal result.”
The Phillies had their fifth straight “sub-optimal result” in this season of the pandemic with MacPhail in charge, but only Klentak has lost his job.