The Phillies announced today that Ruben Amaro will take over Pat Gillick’s position as GM and ESPN.com is reporting that Mike Arbuckle will be pursuing other options after he was denied the chance to be GM.
Before our playoff run, I was hoping that the Phillies would not promote from within and would go, as they did with Gillick, to an outside option. However, after winning the World Series, I was OK with the promotion of Amaro, who obviously had a hand in building this team through both the Ed Wade and Pat Gillick eras.
However, what is disturbing to me, and probably many Phillies fans, is the imminent departure of Mike Arbuckle. Arbuckle is responsible for nearly every quality draft pick the Phillies have had over the past several years and is probably the best talent evaluator in the organization. If I were him, I would be pursuing a full-time GM job as well and would probably be pretty miffed that Amaro got the position over me.
If this came down to hiring one and losing the other, I think the Phillies made the wrong choice. Arbuckle should have been kept on at all costs, with Amaro being expendable. I hope that this didn’t come down to a loyalty factor with Amaro being more chummy with management than Arbuckle. I am very disappointed to see him leave the organization. He was one of the few people I trusted as a fan through the ups and downs of upper management.
That being said, I will give Amaro the benefit of the doubt and certainly give him the chance to prove himself. As I said, I don’t disagree promoting him to GM, I just don’t like that it cost us our #1 talent evaluator.
We also just won the World Series, so I’m not going to get too upset about anything for at least 6 months.
Update: Gillick to stay on as an advisor to the team! That is fantastic news. Without Arbuckle or Gillick, Amaro would have been on an island. Not sure what this says about their confidence in Amaro’s ability to do the job, but is great news nonetheless.
Pete, as much as it stinks to see Arbuckle leave, it seems like he had an aura of entitlement (which is bad for business); hence Arbuckle immediately resigning upon not being granted the GM position. Sure, he put in his time, got credit for what he accomplished as a talent evaluator, but there must have been more than meets the eye about why Amaro Jr. was given the top position. I don’t think this was necessarily a decision of who deserves the job more, I think it was a decision about who would be the better GM. This is not the first time that Arbuckle has been passed over for the job, there must be some fatal flaw in his GM-ability that the insiders fear keeping him from being given the reigns. Amaro Jr. seems poised to do a great job, and if you look at the Eagles model, they consistently are losing top guys (Spagnuolo, Harbaugh) after grooming them to other teams. Amaro has been groomed in Philly behind two GMs for 10 years, it is not like he is an inexperienced hire. Sure, it stinks that Arbuckle is leaving, but he has been given his credit as a talent evaluator, it could be that will be his ceiling and maybe the GM position isn’t a good fit for him, and the Phils were looking for a younger, eager GM to lead the team.
I will give Amaro, and the Phils, the benefit of the doubt as well. Had Amaro succeeded Wade, I would have been upset. At that time I would have viewed it as a blindly loyal promotion of a “Phillies Guy”.
The fact that Amaro was not promoted to GM at that time is telling. It says to me that the Phils recognized that he was not ready for the job. It also makes me want to believe that, while it may be a deciding factor with all else being relatively equal, loyalty is neither the sole, nor even the primary factor in the process. This makes me think that Amaro is ready to handle the GM duties now.
As far as Arbuckle goes, yeah I hate to lose him. The Phils had to know he would leave if he were passed over again, so they certainly should have had his replacement lined up before they gave Amaro the job. Whoever it is, I hope he is as capable.
The fact that the Phils, when pushed to choose between the two, chose Amaro is interesting as well. At the risk of being labelled a cynic, I’ll say that the Phils chose the financial guy over the player evaluator. I don’t think you need me to draw you a picture, right?
Looking at this situation (Amaro being groomed for the job under Wade and Gillick) brings up a question. Why spend all this time grooming Amaro for the job? It has pretty much been an open secret for years that Amaro would eventually be awarded, or rewarded if you prefer, the GM job. Why is that? Why him? I mean, he has interviewed for GM jobs with other clubs and has not been offered the position with them, so why do we value him so much? By all appearances he wasn’t going anywhere even if we hired an outsider for the job, so why not have him learn a little more under someone else for the next few years?
I guess the Phils figure that the past three years under Gillick has give Amaro everything he needs to handle the job. I hope they’re right because he’s got a lot on his plate. With all the free agents and arbitration eligible players we have, Amaro has many pressing decisions to make that will impact the club in both the short and long term. I wonder how much he has talked with Gillick about this offseason, either getting a sense from Gillick how he would prioritize and approach these decisions, or asking him outright how he would handle them. Whatever the case, we are going to find out very quickly if the Phils made the right decision.
I found some interesting stuff on mlbtraderumors.com pertaining to the Phillies. One thing of note is that they are reporting that Pat Gillick will remain with the Phillies as a paid consultant. That puts a different spin on the Amaro hiring, doesn’t it? It puts my mind at ease a bit to know that Gillick will still be involved with the Phils, even if it is just as a sounding board.
Here’s a quick recap of Amaro’s press conference from Scott Lauber of delawareonline.
I don’t like losing Arbuckle one bit. I am not happy about it at all. It looks to me like Amaro was a better ass kisser than Arbuckle. Arbuckle found Cole Hamels, Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Brett Myers and Carlos Ruiz. Thats the core of our world f’in champion roster.
T.O., I’m not happy either but I’m figuring the Phils have it covered. Since they were choosing between two different in-house guys, they had to decide which way to go. They chose the financial guy over the talent evaluator. I would guess that means they feel pretty confident about other in-house talent guys being able to step into Arbuckle’s role. At least I hope that’s what it means.
Yesterday I mentioned that Amaro had interviewed for a few GM jobs with other clubs and never got one. Well, Arbuckle has interviewed for GM jobs as well and he wasn’t offered the job with anyone else either. That is telling, don’t you think? Amaro has been here for 10 years and Arbuckle for 15 years, yet no other club has stolen either one of them away from us. Maybe neither one of them is the ideal candidate to be a GM. It seems as though each of them brought something to the equation and the combination worked well for the Phils, but I don’t know that either one of them on their own is the right man for the job.
I think Amaro will be a good fit for this position especially with Gillick as his “consultant” for at least the next year. He knows the system well and is a good face for the organization. His years as assistant GM should pay dividends, especially the last 3 under the GM guru in Gillick.
What scares me is that not only Arbuckle is leaving, but possibly most of his scouting staff along with him. Apparently, his staff has very loyal ties to him and may leave right along with him.
J Dubbz —
Read Jayson Starks article http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&id=3680591
It seems like most of the scouts are very loyal to him. This is a hard assignment for any new GM to walk into with all the arbitration players, Burrell, Moyer all after winning the Series. I would sure love to have Gillick back for one more year. I know that he is staying in as a consultant, but that doesn’t mean he will be making calls to his connections around the league. Amaro will make the calls and then ask Gillick what he thinks.