Damn at this. Tell me more.
Ruben Amaro earned about a 2-3 year window “pass” when the Phillies won the WS in 2008. Back then, NOBODY would have dared criticized him because he was on a streak and was proactively making shyt crack – WS champs, then the acquisition of Cliff Lee and BACK to the WS, then getting Doc, then getting Cliff Lee BACK along with getting Oswalt…he was arguably THE MOST beloved GM in the city around that time.
Then, the team got old and he didn’t replace the old players with new talent. It should have been a GRADUAL phasing out of the old to the new. Instead, he stayed pat. Worse yet, he resigned a lot of the older players and gave them “reward contracts”…as in:
“You don’t REALLY deserve this much money, but we’re going to reward you for what you’ve ALREADY done for the team/city, not for anything you MIGHT do in the future…”
Noble in theory….but NOT good for business.
In the process of giving away all the money to dudes who didn’t really need THAT much money (IF they should have been signed/resigned at all…I’M LOOKING AT YOU, PAPELFAG

), the team crippled its own ability to bring in talent to supplant the aging players, thereby setting its rebuilding process back to the stone ages.
But what REALLY compounded all of this is the fact that, SINCE 2008, the Phillies have seemingly either IGNORED the development of players coming up through their farm system, or they just flat-out have CRAPPY ASS scouts who have
no idea how to pick talent. Think about it, how many of our prospects over the last five years have actually panned out?
So here we are, stuck with a team of inconsistents and a bullpen that couldn’t strike out the women from “League of Our Own”.

Just HOW inconsistent, you ask? Well, prior to this Bluejays series the Phillies – SINCE April 19th – were in the top ten in FIVE offensive categories (hell, Marlon Byrd was LEADING THE LEAGUE in RBIs….

). Even the bullpen had been playing better, AND it’s not like they were beating cupcakes (with series wins over the Dodgers and the Nats in there). Delusionally, I actually started to have HOPE….then this series happened.
If they would have just started the rebuilding process THREE YEARS AGO, when the window for their title runs had clearly been shut (after the Giants series in the NLCS) and said
“screw it, we have to lose for a bit to get better” we wouldn’t be where we are now. Just lookit the Red Sox, they did it the RIGHT way - virtually gutting their team two years ago and voila, suddenly they’re WS champs.
Ruben has to go for this team to turn the corner….and unfortunately, we’re STUCK with a lot of those bad contracts (Howard, Papelblown….). So my fear is that we’re going to get much worse before we get better, which may be awhile.