The Phillies are a sub-.500 team, sitting at 35-38 and seven and a half games out of first place in the National League East. The Phillies' offense is one of the worst in the team's recent memory and the Phillies pitchers appear tired of having to walk tightropes night in and night out. But despite the Phillies troubles, Phillies President David Montgomery offered an endorsement of his General Manager Ruben Amaro, Jr.
Phillies fans are becoming more and more frustrated with the construction of the Phillies team and have soured on their homegrown GM. But as Matt Gelb of the Philadelphia Inquirer points out, there is only one opinion that matters and it is that of the team's president. Montgomery says in Gelb's piece:
"The reality is that when things don't go well, people look to find, well, whose fault is it?" Montgomery said. "I believe in situations like this that when times are good there's enough credit to go around. It's all of us. Ruben is not making independent decisions. He's going with a pretty good group of eyes who are looking out there at players and making determinations."
While there may be plenty of advisors to the general manager and assistants to the general manager, the buck stops with Amaro, who ultimately makes the final decision. And there are plenty of decisions fans are not happy with:
- Signing Delmon Young to play right field
- Trading away prospects Jonathan Singleton and Zach Cosart for Hunter Pence
- Keeping too many of the team's World Series core past their prime
- Trading Cliff Lee for three players who should be helping the team by now and are not
- Trading for Michael Young, who has a double-play problem and seems to rarely hit more than singles
- Trading for Ben Revere (who may have improved in recent weeks but still has some holes)
- Michael Martinez existing
- Signing Chad Durbin
- Signing an injured Mike Adams
- Having a bullpen full of "prospects" who cannot seem to throw strikes or command their pitches
I am sure there are more that I am not remembering at the moment.
The endorsement is sometimes a "kiss of death", but David Montgomery is one of the most loyal owners in all of sports. As former Nationals and Reds General Manager Jim Bowden recently said, Montgomery is "loyal to a fault", so we should not expect a change at the Phillies' helm anytime soon.
