![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Strahm-1024x682.jpg\"\/)
Matt Strahm was traded to Kansas City in December. (Madeline Ressler\/Phillies Nation)<\/p>\nMatt Strahm was traded to Kansas City in December. (Madeline Ressler\/Phillies Nation)<\/p>\n
Former Phillies reliever Matt Strahm addressed some of the reports that came out about his time in Philadelphia after being traded to the Kansas City Royals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After three years with the Phillies, Strahm is heading back to the team that originally drafted him in 2012. On a recent appearance on the show Foul Territory<\/a>, he joked about \u201cbutting heads,\u201d with every team he has been with after leaving the Royals in 2017.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI kind of gave (Royals general manager) J.J. (Picollo) a hard time,\u201d Strahm said. \u201cI said, \u2018You guys ran such a great organization that I seemed to butt heads everywhere I went.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Strahm is an opinionated guy who isn\u2019t afraid to share his thoughts on anything from rule changes<\/a> to pitcher fielding practice<\/a>. When asked why he butted heads with his three other organizations (Padres, Red Sox and Phillies), Strahm mentioned his love of structure and discipline.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Kansas City Royals do an unbelievable job of not only producing major league athletes, but they produce men,\u201d Strahm said. \u201cLike that is something that I was brought up with Kansas City and (former Royals GM) Dayton Moore, his whole thing was, \u2018We\u2019re going to have good ball players, but we\u2019re going to first make sure that you guys are good men.\u2019 Kansas City, in my opinion, they do it the right way. 10:30 ground balls mean Rusty Kuntz was hitting that fungo at 10:30. It wasn\u2019t 10:35 because we were waiting on (Eric) Hosmer. Hosmer was there five minutes early. I\u2019m a very routine (oriented) human being. I love structure and structure doesn\u2019t work unless there is discipline or someone enforcing the structure.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Phillies, citing a need to balance out the mix in the back of the bullpen, traded Strahm on Dec. 19 for right-handed pitcher Jonathan Bowlan. But there was definitely more to it. Prior to the trade, the Phillies signed right-handed reliever Brad Keller to a two-year, $22 million contract. Trading Strahm cleared his 2026 salary of $7.5 million off the books.\u00a0<\/p>\n Strahm, according to The Athletic\u2019s Matt Gelb<\/a>, was also \u201cdeemed expendable because of a growing friction between the pitcher and team.\u201d Per PHLY\u2019s Jim Salisbury<\/a>, \u201chis relationship with some club personnel became difficult.\u201d Strahm, however, was always a popular teammate in the Phillies clubhouse.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m unaware of any player I\u2019ve ever butted a head with there,\u201d Strahm said. \u201cI\u2019m a middle reliever. I\u2019m not going to be a Hall of Famer, but the one thing I can control is being a good teammate. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s one guy in there that would say a bad thing about me. Everything\u2019s business. I\u2019ll call a spade a spade. In this business, those guys usually aren\u2019t liked. But at least I know I have my job because I am the guy for the job.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said in a Zoom press conference shortly after the trade that the Phillies would have been \u201cvery comfortable\u201d having Strahm back for the final year of his contract. <\/p>\n \u201cIf Matt would have come back with us, we would have felt very comfortable,\u201d Dombrowski said. \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t have made a move unless we felt good about the return that we received. I always had a good relationship with him myself, love talking to his wife and his daughter. I\u2019d have to say other people, they could speak on that, but that\u2019s my perspective.\u201d <\/p>\n An All-Star in 2024, Strahm has been a big part of the Phillies bullpen over the last three years. Strahm called his time in Philadelphia \u201cthe best three years of his career.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAgain, I love this game. Yeah, money is awesome, don\u2019t get me wrong, but winning is better,\u201d Strahm said. \u201cI love winning and that\u2019s the most winning I\u2019ve done in my career is in Philly and it was fun to do it in front of a packed house every night, whether it be a Tuesday in June or the playoffs in October. It was an exciting place to show up and work every day. Obviously, we fell short of the goal. Again, it\u2019s business. You can\u2019t control it. Now I\u2019m going to go try and win one in Kansas City.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/phillies-nation-logo-transparent.png\"\/){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt Strahm was traded to Kansas City in December. (Madeline Ressler\/Phillies Nation) Former Phillies reliever Matt Strahm addressed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-399579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}