By Tim Kelly, Sports Talk Philly editor 
Late last season, Philadelphia Phillies manager Pete Mackanin suggested that he wanted the team to acquire two "professional" hitters in the offseason. While the team wasn't able to find two, they found one in offseason pickup Howie Kendrick. Prior to the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, he appears to be the only Phillies hitter that's a safe bet to be traded to a contender.
According to Nick Cafardo of The Boston Globe, prior to Kendrick's recent trip to the disabled list, trade interest in the veteran was starting to heat up:
Interest was starting to build on Kendrick before he went on the 10-day DL with a hamstring injury. Some teams are looking at him as a third baseman, but Kendrick is far more comfortable at second and left field.
Last month, I ranked the five Phillies who were most likely to be traded this summer, placing Kendrick as the third most likely. That said, the two above him, Pat Neshek and Jeremy Hellickson, appear like locks to be traded, so that shouldn't give you the impression that Kendrick won't be moved. I suggested there was an 8/10 chance that he is traded, and his health appears to be the only thing that could prevent him from being moved.
In that piece, I did say that Philadelphia hasn't gotten much of a chance to know Kendrick, who is on the disabled list for the second time this season. This morning, he said that he's going to have an MRI on his injured hamstring, telling Jim Salisbury of Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia that he can't guarantee that his time on the shelf won't last longer than 10 days. This comes after an oblique injury caused him to miss the second half of April and nearly all of May.
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The unfortunate part is that when Kendrick has been healthy in 2017, he's been very effective. After perhaps the worst season of his career with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2016, Kendrick is slashing .349/.403/.476 with eight stolen bases. It is worth noting that Kendrick has only batted 126 times this year, because injuries have limited him to 33 games. Certainly if he played more, his offensive output would come back to earth a bit. But when you consider that some of the brightest minds in the sport didn't think he had much left to give after 2016, the 2017 season that he's had on a bad Phillies team has been impressive.
Cafardo's report suggested that teams may be interested in Kendrick playing third base, which isn't his natural position. He's split time between left and second base this year, and while he certainly would prefer to play one of those two positions, it seems pretty likely that the 33-year-old would put on a happy face if he got the chance to play third base for a contending team, such as the New York Yankees.
When you consider that Kendrick can be a free-agent after the season and hasn't been healthy for much of the year, the return for him likely won't be noteworthy. That puts him in a group with players like Hellickson and Joaquin Benoit, who are going to get traded, but not for the return that the Phillies had envisioned coming into the season.
