Phillies

Ruben Amaro Has Finally Acknowledged How God Awful His Team Is

By Kyle Scott

Published: Jul 8th, 2014 · 9:07 AM EDT

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All it took was three straight losses, one win in a week and a 3-13 stretch for Ruben Amaro to acknowledge how piss poor his team is. Instead of the usual verbal softies about how he needs to evaluate where they’re at, why these guys need to play better, and avoiding the obvious fact that Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins and Cliff Lee can in fact waive no-trade options, the little pecker (once the Big Poker) has finally said something that makes sense. Speaking to reporters last night, via CBS Philly, where the page will refresh if you leave it open for too long so CBS can count bogus page views and scam advertisers and the industry as a whole:

“It’s disappointing, particularly the offense,” Amaro said. “What more can you say other than we’re not swinging the bats very well. I didn’t anticipate our guys being this poor. Because they are. They are this poor.”

They are this poor. We can blame Dom Brown for sucking, or blame Ryan Howard for never getting any better, or Jimmy Rollins for being stubborn, but those are all natural things. The real blame, for the players being this poor, lies with Ruben, who assembled a team that EVERYONE ELSE knew would suck. But at least Rube finally acknowledged that fact, that they suck… before placing the blame on those very same sucky players:

“We think that they’re better. But they haven’t shown it. So at some point we’re going to have to make some changes. Some guys, once they are ready to play, may be factors for us.”

The simple fact is that, no, Ruben, they’re not better. Years of advanced statistical data could’ve told you this if you didn’t give that SABR intern-turned-employee the basement office next to Storage B. That guy, presumably, knew what he was talking about.

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Unrelated to any of this– fun article about the Phillies’ fancy lineup cards.