Phillies' mission: 'Balance present and future'

PHILADELPHIA -- June opened like May finished for the Phillies.
They lost Friday night to the Giants at Citizens Bank Park, 10-0. Phillies right-hander Jerad Eickhoff walked a career-high five batters in just 2 2/3 innings as the Phillies walked Giants pitcher Ty Blach three times, making him the first pitcher to walk three times in a game since Colorado's Aaron Cook in 2009 and the first pitcher the Phillies walked three times in a game since 1936.
"Tonight it was like, 'What's going on?'" Phillies catcher Cameron Rupp said about Eickhoff's struggles, although he could have been talking about the team as a whole.
• GM Klentak on Franco, Herrera
The Phillies are 6-26 since April 27, but drastic changes are not coming. At least not right now.
"As a baseball operations group, as a management team, as an organization, we have an obligation to do the right thing," Phillies general manager Matt Klentak said before the game. "And right now the right thing is to balance the present and the future. That's our responsibility and it starts at the very top and it runs all the way down through baseball operations, and we're committed to doing that."

In other words, Klentak is not pinning this stretch on anybody.
He reiterated he is not going to promote a handful of position-player prospects just to promote them, either.
"On the pitching side we've done that from Day 1," Klentak said, referring to promotions for Zach Eflin, Nick Pivetta, Ricardo Pinto and Ben Lively. "On the position player side if we feel that a player is ready for that opportunity, and we feel that the opportunity presents itself here for the appropriate playing time, then we'll definitely do it. But those two things have to line up. I apologize to those who have heard me say this 20 times, but we categorically will not call up a young player to sit on the bench and stunt his development. That doesn't make any sense. If the player is ready and we have the opportunity for him here, we'll do it."
• Klentak on pitching depth
That does not mean it will not happen this season because it almost certainly will. But it might not happen until late July or early August, if the Phillies move veteran outfielders like Michael Saunders and Howie Kendrick.
Maybe it happens earlier, but it certainly is not imminent.
"We will call the kids up, that's not really the issue," Klentak said. "The issue is more, we have a responsibility to the players themselves to call them up when they're ready. To expose players to the big league level before they're ready isn't doing them any favors, nor is it doing the organization any favors. We have to constantly balance that. The issue of when to bring players up from the Minor Leagues -- each player is on his own timeline. Each player has his own reasons for being where he is and as soon as those players are ready, we'll get them here. We've demonstrated that."