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Without appropriate offers, Phils hold onto assets
- Updated: August 1, 2016
PHILADELPHIA — Matt Klentak had talent to trade, but the Phillies stood pat as Monday’s non-waiver Trade Deadline passed.
Sources indicated that the Phillies had a high asking price for Jeremy Hellickson. It is unclear if the club came close to a deal, but some teams balked at the Phillies’ demands because Hellickson can become a free agent following the season. Phillies relievers Jeanmar Gomez and David Hernandez received little interest. The Phillies and Rangers seriously discussed a Vince Velasquez trade, but such a deal was never close to completion.
“We were pretty focused on making sure we appropriately balanced both the present and the future,” Klentak said on Monday evening. “If there was a trade to be made that made sense on both fronts, then we would have done it. We had a lot of dialogue with quite a few teams about a number of players on our club. Never once did I feel that the appropriate balance would be struck with the return in a trade.”
The Phillies, one of just three teams not to make a trade before the Deadline, had plenty of interest in Hellickson. The Marlins had engaged in serious talks. The Tigers, Blue Jays, Giants, Rangers and Orioles had scouted the right-hander’s starts. But while 13 big league starting pitchers got moved before the Deadline, Hellickson remains with the Phillies.
“Whether we have overvalued him in the trade market, I don’t know,” Klentak said. “But certainly, we do value what he brings to our team. The last two months of the year are as important as the prior four. We have some younger pitchers that are going to be approaching innings totals for the season that they have never approached. To me, having a veteran starter that is able and capable of giving us six or seven innings a night to continue to allow our young starters to develop the way that we want them to — there’s a huge value in that to us.”
Klentak also felt comfortable sticking to his demands because the Phillies are expected to make a qualifying offer to Hellickson following the …
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