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How to fix Phillies? Maybe it's time for patient Royals approach

Vince Gennaro is a smart man. He's a consultant to several franchises around Major League Baseball, advising them on how to remain relevant and competitive and financially responsible. He wrote a book years ago called Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball, and in the late 1970s, before the acronyms WAR and FIP had become part of mainstream baseball lexicon, he created his own player-valuation system. Again, Gennaro's sharp.

Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas. (Christopher Hanewinckel/USA Today Sports)
Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas. (Christopher Hanewinckel/USA Today Sports)Read more

Vince Gennaro is a smart man. He's a consultant to several franchises around Major League Baseball, advising them on how to remain relevant and competitive and financially responsible. He wrote a book years ago called Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball, and in the late 1970s, before the acronyms WAR and FIP had become part of mainstream baseball lexicon, he created his own player-valuation system. Again, Gennaro's sharp.

He answered his phone Monday, on the eve of the World Series, to field a couple of seemingly simple questions: What can the Phillies learn from the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals? Is there anything the Phillies can take from the Giants' smart player-development and spending habits, from the Royals' small-market patience, and implement themselves?

Everyone knows the Phillies' problems: too much money and hope invested in old, declining talent; too few young, promising players on the roster or in the farm system; an organizational reluctance, because of the size and demands of the Philadelphia market and the hamstringing nature of several expensive contracts, to start fresh.

The trick is fixing those problems, and maybe the Phillies could glean something from the Giants, who have a chance to win their third championship over the last five years, and/or the Royals, who built their team from the bottom up - and did so with a meager payroll of $92 million. This is an annual rite, after all, using championship contenders as models for how to repair or rebuild a franchise, and the Phillies need more help than most.

So, Vince?

"Well, I think there's a middle ground, and I don't think that the Philadelphia fan base is going to tolerate the Royals' approach," Gennaro said. "The Royals were anonymous for a decade. Actually, more than a decade. It was a Chiefs city. When you're in a market like that, I think you can afford to do it. They don't have as much at stake financially because the upside's not as great."

OK, but what does that "middle ground" for the Phillies look like? Here, you could practically hear Gennaro throw his hands in the air, even over the phone.

"It's a little easier to describe the middle ground two or three years ago, when I was thinking, 'This is when they've got to hit the reload button,' " he said. "It's a little tougher now."

There's a lot to extract from what Gennaro said, and maybe the best way to summarize it is like this: The Giants represent the path that the Phillies - once their core of Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard had begun to show signs of wear and tear - should have followed all along. The Royals represent the path that - no matter how distasteful it may be to the franchise and its fans - the Phillies must follow now.

The Giants aren't cheap. Their payroll was more than $149 million this season - not quite the Phillies' $178 million, but ample nonetheless. Yet general manager Brian Sabean has always allowed himself enough flexibility to change the roster when necessary - a flexibility that Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. has denied himself. There are just two players in the Giants' starting lineup today who were there in 2010, when San Francisco beat the Phillies in the National League Championship Series: catcher Buster Posey and third baseman Pablo Sandoval. The Phillies still have four starters from that '10 team: Rollins, Utley, Howard, and Carlos Ruiz.

Consider Tim Lincecum. He was the Giants' ace in 2010. But after a less-than-stellar 2014 regular season (a 4.74 earned-run average, a 1.394 walks-and-hits-to-innings-pitched ratio), he hasn't pitched in a single playoff game this fall, even though the team will pay him $17 million this year and $18 million next year. How can the Giants get away with not using such a pricey player? Because those two years make up the entirety of Lincecum's contract.

"I would rather have $35 million hanging over me than have a four-year, $60 million deal," Gennaro said. "You're paying a premium, but you're also out from under that deal in two years."

Someone should have given Amaro similar advice in early 2010, before he signed Howard to that anvil of a contract extension - five years and $125 million beginning in 2012, its end still deep in the distance. Nobody in the Giants' front office has had to lobby manager Bruce Bochy to pitch Lincecum, to carry out some desperate ploy to drive up Lincecum's trade value, as the Phillies did with Howard this season.

So where does that leave the Phillies, then? They will have to emulate the Royals if they can - that is one humongous if, given their recent track record - and everyone will have to learn to live with it.

"They're going to have to have a little more patience," Gennaro said. "It would be a great turnaround if, in the next couple of years, Ruben could bring them back into contention."

That's the hard truth, the only kind the Phillies know now.

@MikeSielski