BOCA RATON, Fla. — Matt Klentak’s orientation to the Phillies has now cleared two mileposts.
He presided over the franchise’s annual organization meetings two weeks ago in Clearwater and completed his first trip to the general managers meetings, at least as the Phillies' lead baseball official, on Thursday.
“Fortunately ownership completed its general manager search before the org meetings and the GM meetings so we’re able to set down the groundwork for a productive offseason,” Klentak said.
Before exiting the GM meetings and heading off to the rest of the offseason Thursday, Klentak continued to make strides on his quest to add pitching depth with the signing of veteran reliever James Russell to a minor-league deal (see story).
There are many miles to go in this offseason and Klentak wants to add more pitching. He will look mostly at second-tier free agents (Bartolo Colon, J.A. Happ and Doug Fister fit the profile) and try to spin reclamation projects into gold (or at least something serviceable) as the Phillies move along methodically into Year 2 of their rebuild.
In recent winters, the Phillies played in the deep end of the free-agent pool. (See Cliff Lee.) Klentak’s view of major free-agent acquisitions is simple: You do it to augment a well-constructed core that is ready to win. The Phillies are still building that core.
The Phils have made strides in constructing their core. Maikel Franco, Aaron Nola, Odubel Herrera and Ken Giles are all solid foundation pieces and more are developing in J.P. Crawford, Nick Williams, Jake Thompson (see story).
These players entered the Phillies' system in all sorts of different ways, and Klentak will stay committed to those different avenues of talent procurement.
Franco was a bargain $100,000 international signing. Nola and Crawford were top draft picks. Giles was an under-the-radar seventh-round draft pick with a big arm and a bad delivery. Credit the Phillies’ player-development folks for polishing it up. Herrera was a Rule 5 pick. Williams and Thompson came in a trade.
“The way that baseball has evolved over time and the way that the Collective Bargaining Agreement has been set up, it really minimizes the areas where we can add talent,” Klentak said. “One of the areas we can do that is via the international market. And we are fortunate, having gone through what the Phillies went through last year, losing 99 games, we are fortunate to have the top pool available (about $6 million for signing bonuses) to us in the upcoming international market.
“We need to make sure we've got steady waves of players coming, and that's true of the draft, as well. It's really true of the few areas that are still available to us to bring in players."
More immediately, the improvements that the Phillies make to their current roster will probably come through "tweaks."
Some of those tweaks could come early next month when the pool of free agents deepens after the Dec. 2 deadline to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players. A week later comes the Rule 5 draft.
“I think one of the real keys to success is how the 25-man roster fits together,” Klentak said. “Players can complement each other. I think the better we are at putting together the pieces of the puzzle the better we’ll be. There’s no better example of that than the Oakland A’s. They’ve been doing it for years. They’re able to put players together that seasoned prognosticators say, ‘Ah, these guys don’t add up to a winner,’ then they win 92, 95 games and go to the playoffs, and they’ve done it for a decade.
"Part of the art of that is making sure the pieces of your puzzle fit together, and that’s something we’ll be focused on.”