The entire Phillies baseball operations department packed into a second-floor Citizens Bank Park conference room Wednesday evening. As the dozens of men pored over reports on the longest of long shots — the late rounds of a 40-round Major League Baseball draft — Matt Klentak exited the room and went downstairs. His team, the one with the worst record in baseball, took batting practice.
Klentak sat in the dugout and, for 15 minutes, the Phillies general manager explained his restraint. The Phillies will not yet summon a prospect from the minors. They will not enact radical change to a team that was not expected to flounder but has failed to reach even that low bar.