Hard to see how Phillies can go from bad to good in a couple of years | Bob Brookover
GM Matt Klentak cites the Astros, Nationals, and Cubs. Those teams had some good fortune and made great trades.
During the worst of times - a category that definitely includes the Phillies' miserable May - Matt Klentak said he likes to remember where some of the teams experiencing the best of times once resided.
"Right now, would we trade places with the current Houston Astros, the current Washington Nationals, and the current Chicago Cubs? The answer is yes," the general manager said during a recent Phillies pregame show on Comcast SportsNet. "But those teams, they lived through this."
It is a fair point. The Astros have the best record in baseball right now, but four seasons ago they lost 111 games to complete a run of three straight years with at least 106 losses. The Nationals have the best record in the National League, but they lost 102 games in 2008 and 103 more in 2009. The Cubs, of course, are finally World Series champions again, but they did go through a five-year stretch of finishing fifth every year in the National League Central, including 2012, when they lost 101 games.
"That doesn't make this any easier to stomach," Klentak said. "That's not what I'm saying at all. But this is kind of where we are right now and we're doing everything we can to try to pull out of it."
Team president Andy MacPhail and Klentak have always been reluctant to place a timetable on a turnaround, but 2019 seems more than reasonable given the players the Phillies acquired in the 2015 Cole Hamels trade and the deep pockets of a team with one of baseball's most lucrative regional cable contracts. MacPhail and Klentak will be in their fourth season together as the Phillies' chief decision makers in 2019.
Jeff Luhnow was in his fourth full season when the Astros returned to the playoffs for the first time in 10 years in 2015. Mike Rizzo was in his fourth season as the GM in Washington when the Nationals ended a 30-year playoff drought in 2012. The Cubs ended a six-year playoff absence in 2015, which was also the fourth season together for the team of GM Jed Hoyer and president Theo Epstein.
It's easy now to see why the Astros, Nationals, and Cubs rose from the ashes.
For Houston, it started with the arrival of second baseman Jose Altuve, the best little man in baseball. He made his big-league debut at the age of 21 in July 2011 and has been an all-star in four of his first five full seasons. He will be one again this year.
In 2012, the Astros took Carlos Correa with the first overall pick and he was in the big leagues by the age of 20 in 2015. At 22, he is already a superstar. With a supplemental first-round pick in 2012, the Astros took high school pitcher Lance McCullers, who at 23 has developed into a top-of-the-rotation stud.
The Astros made mistakes along the way. Mark Appel, who is now failing in the Phillies' minor-league system, was taken first overall in 2013 and Brady Aiken did not sign after being taken first overall in 2014. But there have also been pleasant surprises, the most notable being the rise of Dallas Keuchel, a 2009 seventh-round pick whose big-league career got off to a shaky start.
Do the Phillies have anyone in their system who could be the next Altuve or Correa? You could argue J.P. Crawford and Mickey Moniak, but it's not a case that would hold up by comparing minor-league numbers. Altuve played so well in double A at the age of 21 that he skipped triple A and went straight to the big leagues. Crawford, at 22, was a .229 career triple-A hitter with a .627 OPS through 511 career at-bats before Friday.
Moniak, the first overall pick in last year's draft, is having a decent first full season in professional baseball, but he had three home runs and a .754 OPS through his first 360 professional at-bats. Correa dominated in his first full season at the same level Moniak is playing now.
The Nationals, of course, had some tremendous luck in being bad at just the right time. There was no need to debate whom they would take with the first overall picks in 2009 and 2010 because Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper were that good. Those two have been at the forefront of the Nats' resurgence and they also did quite well by getting Anthony Rendon sixth overall in 2011. Not every draft has a Strasburg or Harper, however.
Rizzo deserves a lot of credit for trades he has made, too. Gio Gonzalez is 68-46 with a 3.57 ERA since going to the Nationals in a lopsided trade with Oakland, and Tanner Roark, acquired in a 2010 trade with Texas, is 47-30 with a 3.10 ERA since 2013.
The Cubs, in going from bad to the best in baseball last season, used a similar formula. Kris Bryant, the second overall pick behind Appel in 2013, was an immediate stud, and the team of Hoyer and Epstein should be in jail for the trades they made in order to acquire Jake Arrieta from Baltimore and Kyle Hendricks from Texas.
At some point, Klentak will need a lopsided trade victory. To date, his most significant deal was sending Ken Giles and Jonathan Arauz to Houston for five players. The headliners were the aforementioned Appel and Vince Velasquez. It's too soon to give a final grade, but the advantage right now belongs to the Astros, with the wild card being the development of Tom Eshelman.
It is unlikely the Phillies are as bad as they appeared to be in May. But as they near the midway point of their second full season together, it is difficult to envision MacPhail and Klentak turning the Phillies' fortunes around as rapidly as their peers in Houston, Washington, and Chicago.
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