Front office, coaches talk ’17 upgrades in meeting

PHILADELPHIA — Pete Mackanin emerged from a long meeting Friday evening at Citizens Bank Park believing the Phillies have a plan in place to make some much needed improvements before next season.

“Everybody was pretty much on the same page,” Mackanin said.

Mackanin and the Phillies’ coaching staff met with president Andy MacPhail, general manager Matt Klentak and others to discuss the state of the organization and upgrades they need to make before Spring Training.

Mackanin has openly campaigned for weeks for the Phillies to find seasoned hitters to help Major League Baseball’s worst offense. But MacPhail and Klentak said in the past week that while the team plans to improve, it might not be the smartest thing in the world to throw big money at free agents that are not true difference-makers, certainly not at the expense of finding out about some of the team’s top young players and prospects already in the organization.

“Very frank conversations,” Mackanin said about the meeting. “We know what we need, and hopefully we’ll get that done over the winter or in the spring.”

So that …

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