Philadelphia Phillies: to Trade or not to Trade
By Chuck Booth
The season of the Philadelphia Phillies is currently at a crossroads. Should they trade to compete or stand pat and wait until next year when the prospects will arrive?
This is a decision that the performance of the Philadelphia Phillies over the next few weeks will dictate but it’s a decision nonetheless. The Phillies weren’t supposed to compete this year but after playing 44 games they are now 25-19 and 2.0 games out of first place and one game ahead in the wild-card race. Because of the success of the Philadelphia Phillies, this is a conversation worth having.
General manager Matt Klentak is on record saying that he wouldn’t be opposed to acquiring a bat to help the Philadelphia Phillies’ playoff chances. When asked about possible moves by Jim Salisbury of Comcast Sports Net Klentak responded saying,
"“There will be nobody happier than me if we are still in playoff contention in July, and if that happens we’re going to do everything we can to help this team improve and get better and make a run at it,”"
Klentak is more than aware of the numbers behind the Philadelphia Phillies offense, and they’re dismal. The Phillies have scored 146 runs which would be last in all of baseball if not for the Atlanta braves. Their total lack of power (34 homers hit) can’t be written off either. If you aren’t hitting for average than you need to knock the ball out of the park and the Philadelphia Phillies are doing neither as shown by their .236/.393/.347 slash line.
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If an improvement was made to the Philadelphia Phillies offense the two positions that come to mind are first base and second base. Currently, the Phillies have the worst hitters in baseball at those positions with Cesar Hernandez (.252/.301/.305) and Ryan Howard (.156/.226/.369 with eight homers). In fact, there are only four hitters on the entire 25-man roster (excluding Vincent Velasquez‘s .278 batting average) that are hitting over .270. They are Cameron Rupp (.283), Tyler Goeddel (.278). Odubel Hererra (.335) and Tommy Joseph (.300).
The real question is do the Phillies actually need to make a trade to improve their offense. If the Phillies acquired bats at second base and first base they would effectively block prospects like J.P. Crawford and Tommy Joseph.
Check out the chat below on if the Philadelphia Phillies can improve their offense:
For a rebuilding team that’s not the path that you should follow and it seems like Matt Klentak understands that. When asked about trading at the cost of the rebuild Klentak said,
"“We talk about ways to improve all the time, Pete, myself, our scouts, the front office. We talk about ways we can inject some offense into this lineup. We added Tommy Joseph, who had been on a tear in Triple A and had earned his promotion as a way to hopefully inject some life into this offense. There are other players in our system that continue to develop, and at whatever juncture those players are ready to come up and help us that’ll be another option for us.”"
Klentak continued by discussing the culture that has been built around the team so far.
"“We continue to be open-minded towards any types of additions and ways to improve, but right now the success of our team has been built on pitching and defense and we’re going to continue to respect that.”"
It’s looking like the Phillies are open to listening about making moves but are also hesitant on messing with team chemistry. That’s understandable if you look at the way that the Kansas City Royals built their world series winning team on the back of good defense and pitching. That looks to be the model on building the Phillies except that the Phillies have a larger payroll to throw around (that probably won’t be used until the offseason, though).
Next: When Trusting the Process Goes Right
If the Phillies decide to trade it should be fringe prospects or major leaguers with expiring contracts (Jeremy Hellickson) that get dealt. It’s fun watching the Philadelphia Phillies compete this year but it won’t be fun in the future if they blow up all of their hard work for one pennate run. The good thing is , the likelihood of that happening is pretty low.