Phillies: The Michael Saunders experiment should be over

The Phillies signed Michael Saunders during the offseason with the hope that he could become a trade piece. That hasn’t happened and it’s time to move on.

Many players on the Phillies have been frustrating this season as the team continues to lose. However, most of those players are still with the team for some time and can potentially get better in the future. One player who likely won’t be here next season is Michael Saunders.

Saunders signed with Philadelphia this offseason on a one-year deal with a team option for 2018. The hope was Saunders would be good enough to garner some attention on the trade market. If he was good and the team’s outfield prospects struggled this year, they had that option to bring him back while the prospects develop.

However, that hasn’t been the case this year. In 59 games, Saunders has a .200/.254/.354 slash line with six home runs and 20 RBI. His 56 wRC+ is the sixth-worst among qualified hitters this year and his -0.7 fWAR is seventh-worst. It’s safe to say he has not been good this year.

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Saunders has played himself out of the starting lineup even with Howie Kendrick moving to second base to fill in for Cesar Hernandez. Instead, Daniel Nava has been getting playing time as the everyday left fielder with Aaron Altherr in right.

Manager Pete Mackanin expressed his desire to get Nava in the starting lineup more often, which would come at the cost of Saunders: [quote via Jim Salisbury of CSN Philly]

“I’d like to find more playing time for him,” Mackanin said of Nava. “He can hit. There’s a good chance I can get him in there more, which I’d like to do. He looks like one of our better hitters.”

With Saunders now riding the bench, his trade value is completely gone. There’s no reason for any team to want Saunders on their major-league roster.

However, general manager Matt Klentak still thinks there’s a hope for Saunders yet to gain some value: [quote via Kevin Cooney of the Intelligencer]

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“If you look at Michael Saunders’ career arc, he has been through both cold and hot streaks in his career,” Klentak said. “The hot streaks tend to be really hot. And the cold streaks, like the one he’s in now, can be pretty tough. So, for where we are, we want to try our best to get him going. Because we know if he gets going, he can carry this team for not a day, not a week, he could carry the team for a month.”

What Saunders has been going through is much more than a cold streak. A cold streak lasts a week, two weeks, or a month. What Odubel Herrera went through in May was a cold streak.

At this point, Saunders is a lost cause. The fans are at their wits end with Saunders, and the team should be too.

Next: Phillies MLB Draft 2017: Recapping Day Two picks

With Saunders struggling and no improvement on the horizon at all, it’s time to pull the plug on Saunders and call this experiment a failure.