Photo: St. Pete Beach Photo

Ruben Amaro called in to the MLB Network’s “The Rundown” just now, and — are you ready? — half-admitted to making mistakes. PROGRESS.

Ruben was asked right off the bat how close the Phillies were to making a significant deal, which (no shit) he didn’t really answer. He said that he doesn’t like to talk about deals being close or almost done unless they are actually done, but said they did have “a lot of dialogue” and “we’re hopeful we’re going to continue to work through some things” and decided they were better off waiting for the off-season. Next, Ruben was asked if he, as he has been accused of doing, valued his players a little too high, especially since they’re really only worth what others are willing to offer for them. In a shocking instance of almost admitting he made a mistake and finally displaying an understanding of what market value means, said “that is probably true, beauty is kind of in the eye of the beholder.” He continued, saying that the Phils were looking for deals that would have improved the team in more of the long-term sense instead of the short-term, and the last year-and-a-half to two years have been “unacceptable.” It still amazes me that he literally just realized that weeks ago, but who am I to stand in the way of Ruben learning things? He also acknowledged that though he previously said he was surprised other teams weren’t aggressive in going after his players, this trade deadline was full of “bold, impressive moves.”

After talking about Lee for a brief period, Ruben was posed his final question:

Matt Yallof: I know that it’s been written and talked about, that there is a concern you keep your fans, but what is a timeline to think that this team will come back to becoming an elite team?

Ruben Amaro: You know we’re not sure, and we think that we’ve gotta make some pretty significant changes to do that. We haven’t put a timeline on it. I’d say we’d probably have to take a step or two back to move forward, but we’ll see what happens as this season wears on and moves forward. A lot of it will be determined by the productivity of the players that we have right now and then we’ll have to make the appropriate decisions either after the season or sometime during the course of these next two months.

Reading into Ruben’s tone of voice, it’s hard to tell what exactly he means by “a lot of it will be determined by the productivity of the players that we have right now.” It could mean how well they do for the rest of the year will determine if they stay… or that their play for the remainder of the season will determine how much the Phils can get for them. I can’t really tell what he means, but knowing Ruben, you’re probably better off just figuring out which one you think is worse and assuming that is what he meant.