By Matt Rappa, Sports Talk Philly editor 
The annual Winter Meetings, set to officially get underway in Las Vegas on Monday, will surely feature many rumors regarding the Philadelphia Phillies. The narrative surrounding the club, helped by its Managing Partner John Middleton's "spending stupid amounts of money" comment," is that the Phillies are preparing to "go big."
When asked Sunday evening on MLB Network regarding the truth of this perception, Phillies Vice President and General Manager Matt Klentak said "it is a sign of the direction the organization has gone the last few years."
"It's a positive development that we find ourselves in a position here, where people are talking about us. I think that's a good thing," Klentak said. "Our goal this week at the Winter Meetings, but really this entire offseason, is to identify ways to make our team better."
Klentak, to no surprise, said one of the ways to improve the club is to "spend money," and that it will equally explore both the free agent and trade markets.
"Last week we finalized a deal with Seattle to make our team better, [and] also devoted some money to it," Klentak said.
"There's a variety of different ways we can go, but that's certainly our objective this offseason."
Klentak on the Acquisition of Jean Segura, Juan Nicasio, James Pazos
"It took awhile. We've been having dialogue with the Mariners on a few different fronts for the first few weeks of the offseason. It started, not so much as a Segura-Nicasio-Pazos trade, it had different combinations of players all fall. Ultimately, as they traded a few of their other players, we sort of zeroed in on [Jean] Segura.
For us, there were a few key components to that. No. 1 was trying to improve our production at shortstop, and that was a position, where at least at the plate, we didn't get a ton of production last year. That was a key spot for us to [improve]. Three-hundred hitter, two-time All-Star [Segura] certainly fits the bill.
At the same time, improving our team's defense is a big goal for us for next year. As much as I love Carlos Santana — I do, I might be his No. 1 fan in the whole industry — the fact that we are able to move Rhys Hoskins from left back to first base and replace him with someone who is more comfortable in the outfield, really should be something that helps our team defense. And, all the while, adding to our bullpen depth with [Juan] Nicasio and [James] Pazos.
It really 'threaded the needle' and accomplished a variety of things for us. It was a good move for us to start off our offseason."
Klentak on Expectations of 2018 Season
"We went into last season not with a great deal of expectation. We were in a position to try different things, because if we just ran the players out there in traditional manner, we probably weren't going to win the division.
We were in the position to take some risks. That's why we signed Carlos and shifted Rhys to left. Throughout the year, we had some injuries, and all of a sudden Scott Kingery was taking regular reps for us at shortstop. It turned out that he did a great job, but it took him a little while to get into the flow.
It's not that uncommon for young players to struggle when they first come into the big leagues. Usually we think about it at the plate, but that can be the case defensively, too. I think what those guys went through last year is only going to help them.
Think about Scott Kingery. He didn't play shortstop since high school, and now he took regular reps at short for much of the year. .. We know he's versatile. That guy is going to fill in so many gaps for us, not only this year, but in the future."
Klentak on Identifying Ways to 'Move the Needle' Significantly
"A year ago, we were coming off the 2017 season, where many of our young players got the chance to debut at the big-league level and to start to establish themselves. We went into 2018 with one of our key goals to let those players play. We went about our business in the offseason looking for key ways to complement those players, but really it was about the young players.
That really hasn't changed that much. We still have a bunch of young guys who established themselves and are very, very good. We're still looking for ways to complement them. We moved the needle by 14 wins last year to get to 80 wins, and now we're looking for ways to push ourselves in the 90-plus range. That may mean making some more significant investments, but we'll see.
Sometimes deals come early in the offseason, sometimes they come later. Sometimes they may come in the form of a trade. We just have to be open-minded.
We have to consider a lot of factors. The floor of our team is fairly high right now. We were the youngest team in baseball on Opening Day last year, and we won 80 games. … I think, for us, trying to identify the areas where we can take a step forward — a two or three-win move based on a trade or free agent signing — to get us closer to that 90-win threshold, that's what we need to evaluate.
There are some players and some trade offers that we get that we won't really consider all that seriously, because they're not moving the needle enough for us. We're really looking for things that helps us to move the needle significantly."
Klentak on Young Starting Rotation
"We were a top-10 rotation last year in all of baseball that peaked in the first half and faded late. Obviously, I'm well aware of the narrative, 'as our starters faded later, so too did the rest of the team.' I get that, but the aggregate, what those guys provided for us, was a top-10 rotation.
I think the one thing I've said about this offseason is, we are open to making changes in our rotation to become a little bit more balanced. So, if there's a quality lefty that we can add, I think it's something that we will explore, but I don't want to add a lefty just to create balance that makes our rotation worse. Our rotation is young, and was already pretty good. We need to make sure that any moves we make are in fact moving us forward."
Klentak on Aaron Nola
"He's an incredible worker. His work ethic just rubs off on his teammates. … He thinks the game, he's smart, [and] obviously he's got multiple weapons and ways to get guys out. He developed such a rapport with Jorge Alfaro last year, where he could start that two-seamer right on a lefty's hands, and Jorge would just wait for it and receive it on the inner-half.
It was a breakout year … he's awesome."
