I am wondering at what point Harper goes public and says he was lied to & demands a trade. I can't believe he is happy hearing that the Phils are going to throw away two of his most productive years. Or perhaps Boras makes a private call to Middleton and reminds him of the assurances of competitiveness that Middleton made to get Harper signed.
He wasn't lied to, injuries happened, mistakes were made and the pandemic happened. But you can't say they didn't try. It's just that they failed. It also does Harper no good if they keep trying to win a championship over the next two years and then stink for nearly all the rest of his contract. Doesn't do him any good if they take on even more sunk costs and can't even go .500 by 2023.
If he wants out, so be it. He and Cutch and Segura could also take a pay cut if they think it's that important to sign JT (and so could JT). I don't really think they should, certainly I'd much rather see ownership bleed their personal wealth, but they don't owe Harper anything other than his salary and the best (and expensive) effort they already made to win. The only promise they made was to have one of the highest payrolls in the game and that's still going to be true next year even if they make cuts, because everyone will make cuts.
Article below implies Epstein wants to be an owner at his next job. While it says otherwise, the truth is the Phillies could actually do that for him, especially if Gillick agreed to sell (but that shouldn't even be necessary, the Bucks and Middletons could each offer a sliver, and only current owners can buy Gillick's portion so that would happen eventually too).
Harper doesn't strike me as the kind of guy that would accuse Middleton of being a liar. And, I don't think Middleton or Klentak or anyone else lied to him. Two years ago, most observers in and outside of Philadelphia would have argued that the Phillies were a team on the rise. Their pharm was still somewhat highly rated, though more built on quantity/depth rather than quality/genuine future stars. Two years later, much of that minor league depth has been exposed and while the Phillies genuinely sold him on their plan, it turned out what they were selling was doomed to be a flop. I'm sure Boras, as capable and detail-oriented as he is also saw the Phillies as a good situation for his client. If Harper says, "I didn't sign up for this", that will be enough to make his point.
Perhaps liar is too strong a word. But Middleton throwing the in the towel on next year is hardly consistent with the sales job they gave Harper that the pPls were committed to being a contender and maintaining a highly competitive team. And Harper, as I recall, lowered his "per season" salary demand in order to give the Phils more flexibility in bringing in top talent. Without JT and Didi, this is a last place team. They would have at least 4 dark holes in the lineup, C, SS, LF, and CF. And that assumes Hoskins returns from his surgery as the"good" Hoskins, not the "bad " one. They have at most 3 credible starting pitchers (that assumes the good Eflin not the bad one). They still have an horrific bullpen. That team finishes in last place in the NL East. And rather than addressing the pitiful nature of that team, Middleton is going to spend another year or more searching for the right GM with the person leading the search being the same person who came up with Klentak. Harper would be absolutely justified in loudly proclaiming he "did not sign up" to play for a last place team.
It would make sense for the Phillies to have a basically stasis year with Rice as interim, if essentially blowing off 2021 netted us Epstein as President/GM/minority-owner-as-swing-vote-between-Middleton-and-Bucks. Epstein has had a lot of success, we haven't since 2011. I'd willing sign up for a lost year next year, where we may have another non-fans-in-attendance season with interruptions in order to snare Epstein. Fastest way to turn the organization around. I think Harper probably would accept that trade-off.
What we all are probably nervous about is another year without a plan. I don't think they need to go into full rebuild mode, but that does not mean they should not be executing a long term plan.
I just don't know how anyone can think of $100 million long term contracts without a long term plan. Just signing JT but then staying under the threshold everywhere else is a plan to finish .500 or worse again unless other major trades happen. I just don't believe major trades are likely without a new GM.
I really don't think Didi is essential, and even a three-year deal would be regrettable (much as Cutch is only going to provide around one full year of value on his). Sign JT and you still haven't actually raised payroll (he makes $10 million now and if you give him $24 million Didi's own salary covers the rest)
Then the only question is do you QO Didi? Not doing that would also be regrettable, as you want the pick, and you'd also want him on a one-year deal.
If he leaves, sign a platoon shortstop, sign a platoon second baseman, and you can get plenty of production out of what you already have while better addressing the pitching. New GM will have a lot more options next off-season (including big-name free agents like Lindor, though he'll probably get traded). And if they win, there's the deadline.
There's zero chance they are going to exceed the threshold, the bigger concern now is how much lower will actual payroll be. But continuing to just add payroll and contracts isn't going to be make the team better long-term. Not for us, not for Harper.
I think you still have to sign JT. If a new President comes in and decides there has to be a teardown, it's not like he can't be traded. I think they can also make major trades, they just aren't going to be easy to do, and we certainly can't be trading from the minor league system. But they might not be interested in winning a bidding war for JT, if Steve Cohen wants him badly enough (his net worth is 14 billion; Middleton's 3 billion. Silly to say he can more easily afford to spend his personal money when it's all pocket change to these guys, but so it is).
Essentially we are back to the 2015 from office structure. The fact that Gillick was president and Amaro was a lame duck didn't stop them from making moves. Nobody thought Amaro was actually the one making them. MacPhail has been a GM three times, he and Rice should be perfectly capable of doing things, and already familiar with the long-term depth chart projections and salary obligations.
I'd say they were both pretty good trades. If anything the Giles trade might have been better in terms of it being a bigger haul relative to the value of a closer vs. an ace, even with the age/money (plus we included Dieckman in the Hamels trade). You always have to get a little lucky to have one guy truly pan out (like Carrasco for the Indians), and you almost never get unflawed prospects. But we have the same pro scouting director then as we do now, so maybe we should be fixing that department too.
And for all his warts I believe Velasquez has actually out-WARed Giles since the trade.
I believe he has. But, Houston got a ring and Giles, though he unraveled in the 2017 postseason, played at least a small role in it.
Jonathan Arauz could still come back to haunt us. Remember he should have been in AAA this past year, not the majors.
Even if he'd saved every game of the World Series, the overall context had less to do with him than the fact that Houston needed a closer to complete what was already a contending roster, and we.... certainly did not. The details of the trade, including the Arauz stuff and the Appel stuff, don't really matter at this point
Perhaps more importantly/distressingly, Klentak never made another trade that was nearly as good, or with as much foresight. He never made another rebuild-minded trade, he never unloaded any diminishing assets while they still had value, and never acquired any reasonably priced/younger/controllable assets, though many pitchers of that ilk were suggested in the rumor mill.
In his rookie season, he should have traded Hellickson but he didn't because he insisted on ridiculous value in return thinking that someone would sign him to a free agent contract despite being tied to a QO. Hence, he demanded first round pick talent in return when he would have marketed him as a guy with another year of control. He could have traded Jeanmar Gomez for a low-level lottery ticket (he had a 2.77 ERA and 27 saves at the deadline). In hindsight, his first trade deadline was something of a red flag in terms of his ability to wheel and deal and read the market.
I suspect all 29 teams could already see that Gomez's numbers (and "closer" status) weren't sustainable. And it was not unreasonable to think Hellickson was going to turn down the QO. I doubt he was insisting on "ridiculous" value because I doubt teams were offering that much to begin with. To a good team he was still basically a fifth starter, not worth much more than the Phillies gave up for him in the first place. The part that ended up really backfiring was they cut Morton loose instead.
We probably should have traded Neris 3 years ago too. At that point one could see he was a good, but not great reliever who would suffer in overexposure because of his limited repetoire. This would have been at the deadline in 2017 when we were not competing and Neris had 2 good years in a row (and was really inexpensive).
At that point he returns a couple of top 100 prospects or something like 80%-90% of the Giles return. If you have an overvalued asset who is not a franchise type player at the trade deadline you should trade that player. In very few trades in his tenure did Klentak bring back young talent. He did not trade for over the hill players too much. He just traded younger assets for older assets after a couple of years of not bothering to do the opposite. A good GM would have flipped Hoskins (a young player with lots of value at the time) when they signed Santana. That would have been a way to keep the 1B offense while acquiring young talent around that offense that might actually play the OF.
Klentak might like a concept (high OBP bat in the middle of the lineup) but have no clue how to plug that concept into an actual team and lineup.
Agree about Neris, though where would we have been without him the last two years?
It's easy to say it now, but Klentak's legacy- three years of .500 teams - meant being not good enough to win anything, but not bad enough to sell at the deadline either. They didn't give up that much trying to improve each of the last three years, and injuries rendered a lot of guys untradeable, but they'd certainly have more talent. With the additional question of whether the 2019 moves, or not trading JT and Didi at this deadline (admittedly would have been hard to do) were worth it.
If they hire Hendry to replace Klentak I think I’ll sign my disgust for this franchise to an extension.
We would have failed to achieve a winning record, just as we did with him. We would have received young players for him, possibly one who would have helped in 2020. We would have spent his salary on another FA reliever or two. If you aren't prepared to contend, then you can improve your future by trading veterans at the deadline, bolstering your future. If you can evaluate vet and AAAA talent, you can replace the lost guy for the next season by signing a FA. Lots of teams follow this approach.
A reliever going south after a year or two of success and extra use (including warm-ups as well as high value IPs) is more to be expected than not. Neris was reaching that point and we weren't good enough to gamble on another good year or two from him.
My comment was mostly tongue in check. But Neris didn't go south. He struggled in 2018 and then had a career-best, near-All-Star season in 2019. The time to trade him would have been after 2016 (but he was still a young unproven guy who wouldn't have gotten you much) or 2017 (his first year as closer but still not a hugely valuable piece). You can certainly say now that he could have or should have been traded at any time after that but the same is true of almost every move the Phillies made to win games in 2018 and 2019, they are all mistakes now. They kept Hector because he was still young, controllable and effective, and for his role, he worked out better than Santana, Arrieta, Hunter and Neshek (and Robertson too).
For what this team has actually accomplished and for what they are likely to accomplish in the next three seasons you could just as easily say that they should have traded Hoskins and Nola.
