In Italian, amaro refers to a bittersweet liqueur, used customarily as an after-dinner cordial, whose origins may have been in monasteries. Well, now. One day after the Phillies were eliminated mathematically from the postseason, Ruben Amaro, Jr. may wish he'd been in a monastery rather than the Phillies' front office from which he's just been canned.
Phillies fans whom he drove to drink over the past year and a half, especially, may be hoisting tall ones toasting the end of their long enough nightmare. Amaro's contract would have expired at season's end. After the Braves knocked the Phillies out of the race mathematically Wednesday, it must have seemed only too right to execute Amaro post haste instead.
The shame of it is that it's just weeks after he'd actually delivered some decent goods to the club. He brought in some good looking prospects in dealing away Cole Hamels (at long enough last, alas) and Chase Utley this summer; it was probably too little, too late, for the man whose tenure began with three straight National League East titles following their 2008 World Series triumph before the Phillies — aging and increasingly enfeebled — skidded to four straight seasons out of the postseason and resembling the worst team in baseball at times.
"There are many reasons for his ouster," says CSNPhilly.com's Corey Seidman. "His demise was not sudden, it was gradual." Seidman proceeds to run down the five moves that led most to Amaro's date with a pink slip, and you would be hard pressed to disagree:
* Trading Cliff Lee to Seattle — There was a time when Lee seemed to be Amaro's personal bouncing ball to follow. He landed Lee in mid-2009, then traded him to the Mariners the winter to come, then re-signed Lee in winter 2010. He got little to nothing in return for trading him in the first place, and there are those other than Seidman who think that keeping Lee for 2010 might have meant another World Series for the Phillies.
The irony: Amaro traded Lee the same day he landed Roy Halladay. And, no, it isn't Amaro's fault that Halladay's shoulder and back finally betrayed him into retirement while Lee — whom he re-signed after Lee took a 2010 trip from the Mariners to the Rangers first — spent half of last year and all of this one on the disabled list.
* Trading Hunter Pence the second time — Bad enough: Amaro sent three then-prized prospects to the Astros to get Pence in the first place. Worse: With Pence still under team control for another year and a half to come, Amaro dealt him to the Giants after 2011 for a veteran outfielder of useful but not star potential, a low-level catching prospect whose been converted to first base in the minors following two concussions and a wrist injury, and a nondescript relief pitcher.
Pence isn't exactly Superman, and he couldn't possibly carry a team missing Ryan Howard and Chase Utley on the disabled list, but he's been more than useful for two Giants World Series champions since leaving Philadelphia. And when the Phillies followed up trading Pence with non-tendering Nate Schierholtz, the useful outfielder, it only exacerbated the Phillies' lack of outfield depth even more when Schierholtz proved useful for the Cubs.
* Ryan Howard's extension — Even as Howard's decline signs became somewhat evident, Amaro extended him five years at $125 million anyway when they still had him under contract for two more years. In fairness, Amaro and the Phillies' front office probably thought they were securing first base, considering Howard was looking forward to hitting the open market at the same time as would have Prince Fielder, Adrian Gonzalez, and Albert Pujols.
Howard's decline had begun just before the Achilles tendon injury that really cratered his career, but Amaro stubbornly continued paying him and refused to sanction not playing him as he declined further and further — or trading him while he still had anything resembling value, granted that window was damn near closed.
* Jonathan Papelbon — You couldn't blame Amaro in winter 2011 for wanting an elite closer to shore up his pitching corps. Maybe you couldn't even blame him for signing Papelbon for $50 million, a record for a closer at the time. But you could blame Amaro for giving Papelbon:
a) a 2016 million vesting option that shoved the deal's value to $63 million.
b) A no-trade clause that included 17 teams.
Amaro made sure the Phillies would be stuck with one of the game's elite closers in an era in which the entire club cratered. He finally sent Papelbon — who'd been only too vocal about what he hadn't signed up for, namely four years of no postseason and half that of losing — to the Nationals at this year's non-waiver trade deadline, for a minor league pitcher classified at best as a number three to five starter.
Not only did Amaro get less than he could have for Papelbon in the end, he shipped Papelbon to a club that already had an established closer, who'd been making a nifty enough return to solid form. Since the deal, Papelbon — who helped the Red Sox win a World Series in 2007 — and Drew Storen have become 1) critical exhibits in Nats manager Matt Williams' bullpen mismanagement, and 2) enough of a mess in the middle of the Nats' surrealistic collapse in the making.
* His own big mouth — Forget hot water, Amaro sent himself into an acid bath with two public comments that may not have been wrong in fact but could have been delivered with a lot more tact.
Saying the Phillies might be better off without Howard might have been the plain truth, but why say it publicly and drive Howard's shrinking trade value through the floor while also making Howard even more miserable about his decline? And saying Phillies fans didn't understand the game — referring to hurrying player development — wasn't the smartest way to say it didn't make sense to put prospects aboard the bullet train. Because guess what Phillies fans were likeliest to remember and mis-translate. They heard the words, and forgot their context, understandably enough.
He didn't listen when Charlie Manuel said in 2011 that the Phillies couldn't win with what they had; he seemed caught off guard when Ryne Sandberg essentially fired the team a third of the way into this season. Sandberg lost the clubhouse but Amaro barely gave him much beyond what Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Bob Ford called, "A team of of jaded veterans and misplaced minor leaguers."
Amaro's assistant GM Steve Proefrock will take his place until season's end at least. The Phillies said they'd start hunting Amaro's permanent replacement at once. Perhaps the first requirement for the permanent job should be to write one hundred times, "I will not fiddle while the Phillies burn." Or, whenever they need a retooling, bittersweet or otherwise.
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