Klentak: Phillies Have Done the ‘Heavy Lifting,’ Can Now Target ‘Big-Ticket’ Free Agents

By Matt Rappa, Sports Talk Philly editor

Philadelphia Phillies fans, and the club itself, had their calendars circled for this offseason, when Manny Machado and Bryce Harper would hit the open market. While the Phillies have been considered among the favorites to land not one or the other, but both, the club entered this offseason with many other things it wanted to accomplish as well.

"Setting out into the offseason, there were a few different things we wanted to accomplish," Phillies Vice President and General Manager Matt Klentak said Tuesday on MLB Network. "No. 1 was to try to improve our team defense. We know that’s an area that we have to get better."

Last season, the Phillies committed the second-most errors (123) and posted the second-worst fielding percentage (.979), despite logging the 12th-fewest combined innings (13,011).

"We were not very good last year at all," Klentak said.

In addition to wanting to improve fielding, the Phillies "wanted to become a little more left-handed," and wanted to improve its offense.

According to Klentak, the club, "in the middle of December," has "really hit on most of those things." In addition to acquiring two quality fielders and offensive producers in shortstop Jean Segura and more recently outfielder Andrew McCutchen, the club has also added two southpaw relievers, through trade: Jose Alvarez and James Pazos. Acquiring Segura also meant parting ways with Carlos Santana, which allowed Rhys Hoskins to shift back to his most natural position at first base.

"Obviously, the trade with Seattle not only added offense to shortstop — which we didn’t get a lot out of last year — but it also is going to improve our defense by moving Rhys from left to first," Klentak said. "Now we add McCutchen to that group, and that only further helps both the offense and the defense."

According to Klentak, the fact that the club has "done the things" it "set out to do," it now sits in a position — for the remainder of the offseason — where it "really can explore a variety of opportunities."

"We’ve kind of established the floor for our offseason, so now we can target big-ticket free agents," Klentak said. "We can continue to explore trade possibilities that might make sense for us [as well].

"We’ve sort of done a lot of the heavy lifting early in the offseason that allows us to play out the rest of the winter."

It appears that the Phillies, finally, have all sights set toward acquiring a big-name free agent. Club officials will meet with Machado this Thursday at Citizens Bank Park.