Ruben Amaro Is Insane

This is amazing to me. Ruben Amaro is either insane, really dumb, or trolling us, because I am at a complete loss after reading this scathing piece from Jayson Stark.

You probably missed this yesterday as another one of our local GMs was taking a torch to the future, but Stark pushed Amaro hard on whether Cliff Lee’s recent setback (and potentially career-ending issue) serves as a cautionary tale and should move the Phillies to change their stance and TRADE COLE HAMELS RIGHT NOW BECAUSE HE’S THE ONLY TRULY VALUABLE PLAYER THEY HAVE LEFT! Amaro… doesn’t see it that way:

“Nope,” Amaro told this ESPN.com correspondent, quite succinctly. “Why would it change? No reason to change it.

“I don’t know what our ‘stance’ on Cole is,” the GM went on, showing sincere affection for the portrayal of that “stance” in the mass media. “Others have ‘stances,’ I guess, for us. I guess other people must think we have a ‘stance.’ Our ‘stance’ is that we’re open-minded. And that hasn’t changed one bit.”

But our entertaining banter on this subject was far from over.

“Is there a lesson in what happened with Cliff that would apply to Cole?” I asked.

“No,” Amaro replied. “I don’t know what lesson could be learned.”

“Isn’t the lesson that pitchers have a chance to get hurt, even if they have a history of durability?” I suggested, helpfully.

“There’s no lesson there,” Amaro said. “Everybody knows that. It’s apples and oranges. We have a guy who was actually hurt last year. We don’t have a player who’s hurt in Cole. … There’s no lesson learned from Lee’s situation because it’s a totally different situation. One guy is hurt. The other guy is completely healthy.”

The GM was on a roll now. So he jumped in to add more outside perspective, without being prompted.

“Is there a lesson learned from Yu Darvish?” he asked. “All pitchers can get hurt. All players can get hurt. It can happen any time. That has nothing to do with the way we go about our business, [by] planning for a player to get hurt. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Holy cow. I’ve had arguments with toddlers who were more reasonable. Amaro has absolutely no self-awareness. The Phillies are in a precarious spot. They waited entire too long to begin their rebuild and now they’re left with one and a half trade pieces (Hamels and one of Papelbon’s personalities). Anyone who even walked by an economics class in high school knows that you SELL HIGH. Trading Hamels is the one chance the Phillies have left to recoup some value from this aging mess of an organization. Please don’t mess it up.

There’s more of Ruben’s insanity here.