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Corner infield holds key to where Phillies will spend their cash

It's way too early in the season to start making any ground-level judgments about the individual players vying to establish themselves as legitimate pieces of the Phillies' future collective. On April 25 of last year, Cesar Hernandez had no home runs, four extra base hits, and a .652 OPS in 67 plate appearances. Not only shouldn't you write off Maikel Franco, but Tommy Joseph, Andrew Knapp and Brock Stassi as well.

That said, from a macro-level view, a look at the Phillies roster heading into tonight's series opener against the Marlins does provide us with enough information to set forth the following hypothesis: The variable that will have the greatest impact on the direction in which Matt Klentak and Co. proceed is their evaluation of first and third bases.

This has very little to do with the fact that Franco is hitting .171 with a .572 OPS in 18 games or that Joseph is hitting .200 with a .541 OPS. It has everything to do with the players who will become available this offseason. The Phillies' evaluation of those players is what's key.

That's a bit different from the easy and oft-repeated narrative that everybody in baseball is just biding time until a post-2018 offseason when the Yankees and Phillies will do their best to compress the whole of the Roaring '20s into a span of three months and the local cartoonists will start sketching Brian Cashman as a sinister, cigar-chomping robber baron and Matt Klentak as an octopus. You get Bryce Harper, I get Manny Machado, now let's go divvy up the Middle East.

But with the Phillies sitting at .500 thanks in large part to an offense that is within squinting distance of respectability, you might not want to wait until the end of next season. And you might not have to.

In Cesar Hernandez, Odubel Herrera, and Franco, the Phillies have three players who appear to be, at the very least, solid bats for where they would slot on a playoff team: Hernandez and Herrera at leadoff and the two-hole, Franco at No. 6 or 7. That might not sound like a lot, but look at what a lot of teams are paying those kinds of players. The Nationals are paying Jayson Werth and Matt Wieters roughly $30 million combined to hit in the bottom third of the lineup. That's nearly one-sixth of the max payroll under the luxury tax.

The Phillies might not have any legitimate middle-of-the-order hitters, but if they get solid production out of their low-cost homegrown guys at the complementary spots in the order, then they can invest the savings in paying an open-market premium for the two power bats the lineup is lacking.

The biggest name scheduled to hit the market this offseason is probably Eric Hosmer, the power-hitting Royals first baseman. But it's his counterpart at third base who offers the most intriguing possibilities for the Phillies. Eighteen games into his 28-year-old season, Mike Moustakas has six home runs, two doubles, and a .919 OPS in 70 plate appearances. In 797 plate appearances since the start of the 2015 season — he missed the last five months of last year — Moustakas has hit .278 with a .339 OBP, .485 slugging percentage and 35 home runs.

Moustakas isn't close to the player Machado is, and who knows how much wider that gulf will get as Machado ages. But there's only one Manny Machado, and who knows what kind of circus that situation is going to turn into. In addition to $40 million per year, it could end up costing a team a couple of prospects to essentially trade for the right to sign him to a contract extension at the 2018 deadline.

So 10 years, $400 million plus Sixto Sanchez and Daniel Brito for Machado in a Phillies uniform through 2028?

Or six years, and some fraction of that for Moustakas through 2023, even if it is at $25-30 million per year)?

Keep in mind, the post-2021 free-agent class could end up putting this one to shame, with what will be a 28-year-old Francisco Lindor, 27-year-old Carlos Correa, 27-year-old Corey Seager, 29-year-old Miguel Sano, 30-year-old Kris Bryant and 32-year-old Anthony Rizzo all on track to be free agents. That's also Franco's free-agent year.

Speaking of which ...

Franco's defense at third base has been fine thus far, but there's no reason not to slide him over to first if that's where the best production/value combo lies on the free-agent market.

Hosmer is another option. Given his enigmatic mix of youth, power and maddening inconsistency, the 27-year-old lefty is going to be an interesting case study this offseason. His production has alternated wildly from season to season during his first seven years in the big leagues: .799 OPS as a rookie followed by .663, .801, .716, .822, and .761. Progress is a spiral, but that looks more like chaos.

There's a fairly significant oh-by-the-way to the Moustakas/Hosmer situation: Both are represented by the same agent, and that agent is Scott Boras.

Still, given the money the Yankees will have to spend come 2018, and the ridiculous expectations being set for any Machado (or Bryce Harper) contract, someone such as Moustakas would certainly be cheaper, and you'd have the added benefit of not bidding against whatever team is saving up its third-base pennies for a run at Machado. You'd have vastly more flexibility come 2022 to sign a young generational star. Or, perhaps, to sign a 29-year-old Mike Trout the offseason before, when he becomes a free agent after the 2020 season (sorry, the Angels have very little incentive to trade him before at least 2019).

Plus, Moustakas can be here next season. Let's say, just for the sake of livening up a Tuesday, you added someone such as J.D. Martinez on a similar contract.

Let's say your 2018 opening-day lineup looked something like this:

1. J.P. Crawford SS (L)
2. Cesar Hernandez 2B (S)
3. Mike Moustakas 3B (L)
4. J.D. Martinez RF (R)
5. Maikel Franco 1B (R)
6. Odubel Herrera CF (L)
7. Jorge Alfaro C (R)
8. Nick Williams LF (L)

That's still costing you less than $70 million out of a $190 luxury tax threshold.

Something to think about.