The calendar has flipped to 2016 and the NFL playoffs are cooking.
You know what that means. Yep, spring training is just six weeks away.
There will be a new feel around the Phillies when they arrive in Clearwater. At the ownership level, John Middleton and the Buck family have emerged from years in the background and become more visible and vocal in their leadership of the franchise. Andy MacPhail, who officially took over as club president in October, will occupy the big corner office high above left field at Bright House Field, and his handpicked general manager, Matt Klentak, will be just down the hall. There will be a new philosophical approach as the team has already incorporated analytics in its decision-making process. And down in the clubhouse and on the field, there will be a bevy of new players — especially pitchers, the result of an offseason in which MacPhail and Klentak focused on adding arms, arms and more arms, a manifestation of MacPhail’s dictum, “Grow the arms, buy the bats.”
One thing has not changed, however.
The Phillies are still a rebuilding team.
MacPhail, a patient and methodical builder, has made that clear many times since joining the organization last summer. Teams that stick with their plan will ultimately be rewarded, he has frequently said.
The ultimate reward, of course, is a World Series championship.
On the way, a team must graduate from rebuilding club to contending club.
The Phillies still have miles to go before they reach the next level in their rebuild and even more before they reach the ultimate reward — and even that is subject to the whims of health, getting hot at the right time and old-fashioned luck.
Though the Phillies missed the playoffs in 2012 and lost 89 games in 2013, this rebuild did not begin until after the 2014 season. Pat Gillick, then serving as the team’s interim president, launched the rebuild in October 2014, after another 89-loss season, nine months after the club tried to prop open the old window one more time by signing A.J. Burnett for $16 million on the eve of spring training.
So how long will this rebuild last? How long before the Phillies graduate to contender’s status?
Though some, like Gillick, have put loose timeframes of two or three years on the process, it is really impossible to predict. Klentak has wisely stayed away from putting a timeframe on the rebuild, saying, “The players will dictate,” such matters with their development and performance. As outside observers, about all we can safely postulate about this rebuild is that it should be a quicker journey than the team’s last rebuild.
• Nineteen seasons ago, the Phillies embarked on their last rebuild. After bottoming out in 1996, they stopped trying to patch the roster in an effort to recreate the magic of 1993. They hired a young manager who had the patience to handle a rebuild, one whose long-term resume wouldn’t be permanently sullied with a bunch of 90-loss seasons. That was Terry Francona. The front office went through changes with David Montgomery and Ed Wade rising to power. Building blocks such as Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell, Brett Myers, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Cole Hamels came in the draft (to be precise, Rollins was drafted in 1996 before the team stated its plan to rebuild) and another, Bobby Abreu, came in a good trade at the infancy of the rebuild.
For the sake of parameters, let’s say the last rebuild started after the 1996 season and ran through the 2002 season, ending when the club signed Jim Thome in December of that year, a transaction that signaled the team was ready to start hanging with baseball’s big boys.
There is room for equivocation in these parameters. The Phillies actually hoped to contend behind Andy Ashby and Curt Schilling in 2000 and had a winning season en route to finishing two games behind division champion Atlanta (and 13 back in the wild-card race) in 2001. But that performance had a lot to do with the infusion of energy that demanding new manager Larry Bowa provided, and the Phillies finished a game under .500 (15 out of the wild card) in 2002.
So we’re saying the Phils graduated to full contender’s status in 2003 when they had the first of nine straight winning seasons and were in the hunt for the wild card. Feel free to differ.
No matter which parameters you use, the current rebuild should be quicker because these Phillies are much better equipped for a rebuild than those Phillies. To use a medical analogy, those Phillies were an X-ray. These Phillies are an MRI.
It all starts with this:
$
Or as Jonathan Papelbon likes to say: straight cash.
• When the last rebuild got off the ground, the franchise focus was getting a new stadium that would help provide the revenues needed to be one of baseball’s big boys. That happened. The last rebuild helped spawn a run of success that included five division titles and a World Series championship. A streak of 257 sellouts helped the team build huge payrolls, the kind it never dreamed of having back in late 1990s. From 2012 through 2014, the Phils spent over a half-billion on salaries (only the Yankees and Dodgers spent more). The Phils missed the playoffs each one of those years, hence the current rebuild.
Since Citizens Bank Park opened in 2004, the value of the franchise has soared and so have national and local television rights.
Financially, this is a very different franchise than it was 19 seasons ago and that will hasten the rebuild.
Heck, it already has.
Look at the moves this club has made to kick start the rebuild over the last year. The Phils ate millions in moving Rollins, Hamels, Papelbon and Marlon Byrd off the roster. In some cases, it was the cost of pruning dead wood. In the case of Hamels, it was all about improving the return. The Phillies ate about $9 million and took on about $33 million more in the form of Matt Harrison’s contract to get the package they wanted from Texas. They added real prospects — Nick Williams, Jake Thompson, Jorge Alfaro and Jerad Eickhoff — in that trade, but they had to pay for it. Back in November 2005, the Phils ate $22 million to move Thome to the White Sox after Howard had ascended to the majors, but that payout came after the last rebuild had been completed.
We’ll know more after the 2016 season, but Williams — a must-have for MacPhail — Thompson and Alfaro all have the potential to be major booster shots to the Phillies’ rebuild. Ditto for Vincent Velasquez and Mark Appel, two of the five pitchers the Phils added from Houston in the Ken Giles trade last month.
This is another area where this rebuild differs from that rebuild. The Phils added much higher-ceiling talents, players with difference-making ability, in the Hamels and Giles trades than they did in the trades that sent Curt Schilling and Scott Rolen out of town years ago. Schilling brought Travis Lee, Vincente Padilla, Omar Daal and Nelson Figueroa. Rolen brought Placido Polanco, Bud Smith and Mike Timlin. The Phillies’ return in that deal was mitigated by the fact that Rolen’s relationship with the Phillies had deteriorated and dealing him had become a necessity. In addition, he was nearing free agency and whatever team took him on was looking at a big-money contract extension.
• There are other reasons why the Phillies are better equipped for a rebuild this time:
Back then, they were barely players in the international game. Now they are. They spent $4 million on 16-year-old slugger Jhailyn Ortiz last summer. They out-bid the Yankees for Maikel Franco back in 2010. Arms like Adonis Medina and Franklyn Kilome are catching the eye of rival teams. Yes, the Phils made a $12 million mistake on Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez. But years ago, they would not even have been in the ballgame.
So much of this comes back to money and the Phils will have more of it after the 2016 season when Howard, Carlos Ruiz and Cliff Lee come off the books. They are eating up $56.5 million this year. If the Phils can make strides with Franco and Aaron Nola this season and Williams, Thompson and J.P. Crawford continue to project as difference makers, the front office will be well positioned to add the pieces this club needs on the free agent market over the next couple of winters.
In the meantime, it would help if Charlie Morton and Jeremy Hellickson pitch well and can be spun for young talent in July. And, of course, another strong draft pick — the Phils have the No. 1 overall selection in June — to join Crawford, Nola and Cornelius Randolph would help.
Season 2 of the Phillies’ latest rebuild is marching toward us — at a much brisker pace than the club’s last rebuild.