Ruben Amaro called in to the WIP Morning Show today to try and explain why he refuses to do things that will make the Phillies better. He did a great job of it.
Some of these quotes are from CBS Philly:
“I don’t care how young they are. You can have the youngest guys on the planet, but if they don’t win baseball games, what good does that do you? My whole job is to try to win baseball games. Our fans want us to win.”
“We have some young players on our roster. A guy like Brownie [Dom Brown], and a guy like [Ben] Revere, and we’ll have probably [Cody] Asche or Maikel Franco at third base,” Amaro said during a surprise call to Angelo Cataldi and the 94WIP Morning Show on Friday. “They are some young players, but we can’t have a stockpile young players and expect our team, the way it’s set up, to win baseball games on a consistent basis. That’s my job, to put a team on the field that is going to win baseball games.”
Getting younger for the sake of getting younger isn’t what the Phillies need, Rubert. They need to get younger because virtually every player in their aging core is an injury risk, and signing 36- and 35-year-olds as the first two moves of the offseason does nothing to lessen that risk. I don’t think anyone is implying that the Phillies need to totally blow it up. They have too much money and there’s too much parity in baseball for that to be the case. Look no further than the Red Sox, who turned it around in one winter. But you need to have the right guys to do that. There needs to be a plan. Amaro doesn’t act like he has a plan. He just grabs the best short-term name based on archaic metrics (speaking not just about Byrd and Ruiz) and crosses his fingers. He’s putting together a bunch of questionable pieces instead of building towards a whole. It’s like a kid going into a Toys”R”Us and grabbing handfuls of Legos, K’Nex, Play-Doh and a 36-year-old beefed up PED user. Some those things may be useful, and some may smell good, but they’re not going to fit together real well. What’s worse, is that they were all returns or defective items. Rube bought the fucking Lego Star Wars Red Five X-wing Star Fighter, but its Hyperdrive is broken and R2-C2 is a shell of its former self. At this point, the Phillies are chasing their tail and trying to plug holes that are popping up more quickly than they can be plugged (!!!). You’re sinking, Rube! It’s a losing battle. There needs to be a paradigm shift. They keep trying the same things which, obviously, aren’t working. Haven’t we heard this quote before?
“We need Ryan Howard to produce for us and if he produces for us we will have success. He is a very key element to our club,” Amaro said. “My mind is open on everything and so I can’t close myself off or allow our organization to close ourselves off from different ways in trying to improve our club. I believe that Ryan Howard still has a lot left. We’ll find out, because he is going to be playing for us. We didn’t even think about moving him now, probably at the lowest point of his value. Ryan Howard needs to play for the Philadelphia Phillies and do well so that we can have success, and if he doesn’t then it’s going to be difficult for us to have success.”
Amaro said that today. But he could’ve said that in 2011 or 2012 and you wouldn’t have known the difference.
Audio here.
43 Responses
Let me get this straight….the team that was built on young home grown players that found success while they were young won a World Series but trying to replicate that same success isn’t the answer? Instead he wants to keep adding bandaids to a gapping wound?
It reminds me of my first car. A 1997 Chevy Blazer, I loved that thing. When I got it brand new it was great, I was driving my friends around, always taking it to tailgates, but then in 2005 it started to fall apart. I kept getting it fixed, sinking more money into the aging beast, only to be upset when another part broke. After years of repairs and thousands of dollars later I ditched the thing and bought new “younger” car and it has performed much better and cost me less money. I still love the 97 blazer, but the pain of constantly paying for repairs wasn’t worth the cost. Ruben is trying to repair a dying machine when what he really needs to do is buy a new one.
Kev, that was a boring as shit rant.
Smh
you snooze you lose
Kevin, that was a great storzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
+1
Could there be a bigger goon than Ike Reese? He went off for a half hour after Ruben’s non-sense to shout from the mountain tops “Ruben signed great players and its all the players fault for coming up short!” 25 years from now 2008 will be our Broad St. Bullies.
They need to check Ike for CTE, because he was off his damn rocker.
I heard Ike go until I turned it off. What a fucking idiot. He must go to Cheerleaders with Rube on Tuesdays or something.
Yeah, Rube signed all kinds of had-been-great players but what GM couldn’t have done that? You could have pulled any fan from the stands, made him GM, and he would have popped open a check book and started writing “0”s until the player told them to stop, which is what Ruben did. So why shouldn’t Ruben be sitting with those people?
After hearing Rube twice today, I want to bash my head into a wall. He is completely incompetent. Marlon Byrd as an everyday outfielder and you expect him to hit 20 plus HRs? Counting on Howard? Citing Pitching and Defense as ways to win a championship, when you have a horrendous defensive team, for the most part. This is 84 – 2005 all over again.
I don’t like Rube a whole lot, but what other options does the fanbase want? Blow it up? Yea, good luck with that when there are 10,000 fans a night down there by mid-summer and half the expected 2015 revenue is gone. Rube did not go overpay for one of the overrated FA’s out there, so there were little options other than 1. blow it up or 2. add in a few pieces here and there that will have minimal financial risk.
Not sure what the solution is, but I’ve yet to read anything given by anyone. It’s easy to complain, but it’s even harder to come up with a better idea.
Here is a better idea: Realize your team is old and not very good. Take a chance on younger players, who at least may have an upside. Begin to have some slight understanding that almost all players over 35 fall of a statistical cliff. Also, realize you dug this hole with terrible trades, terrible signings and terrible scouting; so maybe change your philosophy and bring in fresh blood to the front office.
They will always get fans down to this stadium no matter who is on the team. Attendance will never get close to being as low as 10,000. Rube sucks and basically was handed this young great franchise that Pat Gillick put the championship touches on. Maybe that’s the problem…..we show up and pay no matter what happens.
The fuck they would.
The Phils fanbase is one of the biggest frontrunning jokes in town. They will barely have anyone down there this year (just like the last two years) because nobody gives a shit about them if they aren’t winning.
guess what? If you don’t blow it up, you still have 10,000 fans a night down there by mid-summer and half the expected 2015 revenue is gone because the team still SUCKS. Only this team there’s no hope for the near future as the farm system is trash.
If by “trying” (aka signing more bad deals) you end up just as bad, then yeah, you should probably blow it up.
Everyone knew the Phillies were dead and buried this year by July 1st. Would it really be the end of the world to push that up two weeks in exchange for having a future?
Heard Angelo Catladi smelled the seat kacie was sitting in yesterday after she left
This is true. Angelo said it smelled like fried chicken and syrup.
He confirmed on Mike and Ike that Byrd is going to be a starter. Fuck Ruben. I hope he fuckin gets run over by a truck.
did you think they signed a guy to a $16MM to be a backup?
Yes. Because ruben overpays for every the fuck thing. And who the fuck thinks he is going to replicate last years flash in the pan success? At age 36. Go fuck yourself you fucking waste of sperm.
Translation: “We need Ryan Howard to produce for us because we have no other choice in the matter as I made one of the biggest front office blunders in baseball history by giving him that contract”
Exactly^^^^^^^^^
Rube’s done an awful job the last couple of years, but as far as Howard he really is stuck with that awful contract. At least Prince Fielder has put up some numbers which made a trade possible for the Tigers.
And someone tweeted to Kacie McDonnell wishing her good luck today on her trip to see her boyfriend in Athens, Ga. and she retweeted it.
But yesterday she went on WIP so a guy could serenade her and ask
her out when she had no intention of dating him. Class act that girl is.
Ruben will re-sign Roy Halladay for 2 yrs for $19.5 mil + incentives to be 4th Starter.
Ruben reminds me of DMX. Dumb as fucking dirt.
Amaro is an incompetent idiot and he sounded like a total moron on that show today. I had to change the channel because I just can’t stand listen to his dumb ass comments and rationales anymore. The team will be no better next year – I don’t doubt he will end up re-signing Halladay and giving the usual ‘he can really help us’ bullshit, while Halladay remains clueless and delusional and giving interviews about how he feels 5 years younger. Really sad.
What i think is that he knows that the organization is fucked with Ryan Howard’s contract, the rollins contract and they have Utley for two more years. They know they can’t move Howard and Rollins anywhere so they’re giving out deals that end in two/three years so when these contracts finally expire we can make something of our team. He knows he’s poured water onto his sack and stuck them to a frozen pole with these contracts, and simply is waiting for the sun to melt the ice. Nothing more he can do really.
What a bunch of stupid fucks you all are. The Howard contract HAD to be made at the time, the dude was severly underpaid the first 5 years of his career and it was a make-up deal. Ever stop to notice how bad the team has played since he’s been hurt the past two seasons…….it’s not a fucking coincidence!! What other options were there, let a 35+ HR NLCS MVP and WS champ just walk when the dude was making $800k while hitting 50 hrs??? Get real.
Ruben can’t fucking win. Blow it up and play young guys and fans will kill him because THEY HAVE NO YOUNG TALENT(in case you missed 2012 in a coma). Keep it status quo and try to build with mid tear vets and keep the core intact through 2015 and people freak the fuck out. He can’t win.
Sure Byrd is an old PED user coming off a career season…..but what other option is there that makes any sense other than a trade(which could be looming) or way overpaying for a scrub like Cruz??
There is no simple fix here for a team who just got old and does not have a farm system to sustain the wave.
Get back in the kitchen, Jeremy
So the Howard contract justifies all the other horrendous moves Amaro has made and will undoubtedly continue to make? Sorry if I don’t shed a tear (proper spelling of the word tear by the way, unlike yours) because “Ruben can’t fucking win.” He has tanked this team in many, many more ways than the Howard deal. The team has no young talent? WHOSE FAULT IS THAT? Amaro. The laughably mediocre minor league talent (with the exception of Franco, Biddle and company) is why the Phillies need to extend aging players like Rollins and Ruiz and sign band-aid players like Byrd.
Yeah, just like the Cards HAD to sign Pujols!
What………. is it your period or something?
whose fault is that genius?
” The Howard contract HAD to be made at the time, the dude was severly underpaid the first 5 years of his career”
Who gives a fuck?
He was on 975 the fanatic today too.
amaro and holmgren have made so many bad moves to try and make up for previous bad moves its amazing. just a short summary:
should’ve never signed rollins. you dont even need sabremetircs to see he was declining and was way to expensive. galvis would play short.
traded for pence to fill werth’s shoes because dom brown was incorrectly evaluated in the minors. then traded pence when he realized the team was going nowhere and pence was also poorly evaluated.
should’ve let utley walk. put asche at 2nd. franco goes to 3rd. howard plays 1st and if he cant hit lefties, ruf platoons with him.
Over/under on 97.5 replaying the mike miss/raj interview this weekend is set at 14.5
Who listens to 97.5 on the weekend?
I do. Correct
Why did it tell me yesterday if I answered the 7 questions it wouldnt make me do it again for 7 days? and now I had to answer 2 today???
Amaro–Do Phila a favor–RESIGN__QUIT__TAKE OFF__WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
Plz do Ruf a favor Amaro–QUIT
I’d incessantly want to be update on new articles on this website, bookmarked!…
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