Highlights from the Ruben Amaro Radio Tour
Photo: Getty
Ruben Amaro continued with his I hate our offense campaign. Big Poker was on 97.5 with Mike Missanelli yesterday afternoon and the 94 WIP morning show this morning. During both interviews, he was more candid than he was during his press conference… specifically about the offense.
Some quotes (from both stations).
The offense: he’s not happy with the lackluster at-bats and failure to get on base consistently
“We just didn’t hit.”
“It’s a matter of them buying into it, and making some mental adjustments on what the approach is. We need to stop striking out, we got to make tougher outs, we got to make good outs. I think that they’re capable of doing it. It’s just a matter of getting it done.”
“We’ve had guys that have hit .300 before, there’s no reason why they can’t do it again. Ryan Howard has hit .300, Chase has hit .300, Victorino has hit .300, and Jimmy Rollins has come very close to hitting .300. It’s a matter of them putting their minds to it.”
On Game 2: hurled some mud at Cliff and disappointed the offense didn’t tack on more runs
“Cliff Lee start, that was a tough one for us to lose. Cliff wasn’t all that sharp, that hurt us.”
“When you got a team down, you got to put your foot on their throat, we never really did that, especially in Game 2.”
Ryan Madson: wants to re-sign Madson, but is aware that there are many closers, including Heath Bell, available
“There’s a much better pool of free agent closers [compared to shortstops] who’ve had success.”
Roy Oswalt: he clearly doesn’t want to spend $16 million on him, but wants to explore other options. The Phillies can decline, pay Oswalt $2 million, then send him on his way. Might make sense for Oswalt to accept less money from the Phillies.
“A lot of it depends on whether we value him at $16 million next year. He can decline, as well.”
“I don’t know that $16 million is the right value for him right now, but there might be other ways to get him done.”
The fans: handy
“I can’t tell you how proud I was of our fans, especially that last game. That was a special way to serve our players. They deserve to see a championship, and we’re going to do our damnedest to get back there.”
On chances of winning and current squad: echoes what we said yesterday about 2008 team getting all the breaks
“I’d put our 2011 team against out 2008 team anytime. We didn’t create the kind of luck we had in 2008.”
Game 5: zen
“Clearly, we didn’t swing the bats the way we wanted to and we didn’t get the big base hits. We came pretty close with a couple of long fly balls, but they didn’t reach the fence or go over them, so unfortunately we weren’t fortunate enough to move on.”
“I believe in karma and the way that Doc came back and pitched, I really believed that the baseball gods were going to shine down positively upon him because of the effort and what he did and how he performed. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. We missed by a couple of inches on a couple of swings from getting there. But that’s baseball, it’s part of life.”
Ryan Howard swinging at 3-0 pitch: not happy
“I was angry about it… I was angry that he didn’t hit it out. If you’re going to swing at it, then hit it out. We pay him to drive the ball out of the ballpark and produce runs, in that situation I would have liked to have had him been on base.”
You can listen to the 97.5 interview here. We’ll have the WIP interview just as soon as it’s posted.
