The Phillies yesterday formally introduced Matt Klentak as the franchise's new GM, and on the "first day when the new front-office regime was complete ... nearly everyone made it clear it was not the right time to spend frivolously on the free-agent market," according to Ryan Lawrence of the PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS. The Phillies "are still in the early stages of their current rebuild," and while no one "was eager to put a timeline or parameters on when they expect to contend, it's likely to be at least a 2 to 3 year process." Phillies investor John Middleton has "repeatedly expressed a concern for the Phillies to incorporate more analytics into their front office," and by hiring Klentak, a 35-year-old Dartmouth College graduate with an economics degree, Middleton "was able to check off an item that's been on his to-do list." Middleton admitted that the Phillies "were late to baseball's analytics revolution in the last two decades," and he is "in the process of making up for it." Middleton: "The teams that are ahead of us, they're not sitting still. The aggressive ones are trying to improve and get better. We have to run faster and faster." Klentak said that he "would not be bringing 'sweeping changes' to the front-office staff, but that he has been assured he can add to complement certain areas, 'one of which may in the analytics area'" (PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS, 10/27). In Philadelphia, Bob Brookover notes Middleton and Phillies President Andy MacPhail "described the six-week search for a new general manager as thorough and diverse and that was probably true." The three finalists -- Klentak, Rays VP/Baseball Operations Chaim Bloom and A's Assistant GM Dan Kantrovitz -- "were all 30-something males with Ivy League educations and strong analytic backgrounds." The thing that "likely set Klentak apart was his previous working relationship with MacPhail" on the Orioles. MacPhail said, "The strategic visions had to be aligned. It would make no sense to bring someone in here who had a radically different approach to what we felt was the right way to go" (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 10/27).
THE VOICE: In Newark, Randy Miller writes Klentak "talked a good game" yesterday, as he "sounded convincing insisting the Phillies will be winners again, perhaps sooner than some expect" (Newark STAR-LEDGER, 10/27). Meanwhile, the DAILY NEWS' Lawrence writes Middleton "has emerged as maybe the signature voice of the franchise in the last four months." His voice "is an impassioned one, one of a billionaire who happens to be a Phillies fan at heart -- and a fan of all of the local sports teams, in the interests of full disclosure." Middleton told Klentak, "Let me tell you a bit about what it was like in 2008" when the Phillies last won a World Series. He continued, "There was electricity in the air every night and somehow when the playoffs came around, they managed to ratchet that up to another level. You could literally feel the stadium swaying. And you've got a lot of work ahead of you. We're here to support you, but let's never forget our objective is to win. All of us, Matt, want to feel that stadium sway again." Middleton, Klentak and MacPhail "used words such as 'disciplined' and 'road map' in talking about the big-picture view of their organization" (PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS, 10/27).
