Now that they've locked their manager up, the Phillies have moved on to the front office. The Phillies and GM Ruben Amaro Jr. have finalized a four-year contract extension, according to a team press release.
The Phillies promoted Amaro to GM after Pat Gillick retired following the team's 2008 World Championship. Amaro, a seven-year veteran of the major leagues, spent ten years as an assistant GM before his promotion (1999-2008). You won't find anyone with deeper ties to the Phillies; Amaro was a batboy for the team and he and his father both suited up for the Phils at the Major League level.
Amaro has traded for Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt since taking over the team and later signed Lee as a free agent. The Phillies won the NL East in both 2009 and 2010, making it to the World Series in '09 and to the NLCS in '10. As MLBTR's Transaction Tracker shows, Amaro has been aggressive with extensions, locking eight players up in two-plus seasons on the job.
Paul Hagen of the Philadelphia Daily News reported yesterday that the extension was "virtually done" and that the two sides were putting the "finishing touches" on the agreement. Bob Brookover of the Philadelphia Inquirer (Twitter link) reported that a deal was finalized.
The Phillies are gonna give this clown an extension??? What’s he ever done for the Phillies?
Or what has he Not done? Like re-sign Werth!
“What’s he ever done for the Phillies?”
Um…fill the ballpark to capacity every single night? Seems like motivation enough for an owner to keep the guy around, and they are the ones who handle his contract.
Yeah, first time vie had confidence that the Phillies wont let players in their prime walk, like Hamels and Madson…
Love the extension (and John Middleton)
You’re right he didn’t get the Phillies to the World Series by trading for Cliff Lee… he got three prospects for Cliff Lee… Roy Halladay who had the best season of any starting pitcher since the 80’s… Roy Oswalt who without him, we don’t win the division… and oh yeah he signed Cliff Lee back….
Thanks for pointing that out for me, I didn’t know that.
I was glad he let Werth walk. I’ll take Lee any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
I enjoy Ruben and his ever-changing smug advisory level.
cdn2.sbnation.com/fan_shot_images/87165/smug_alert…
Do you mean that sarcastically? Because I for one honestly enjoy Ruben’s smugness.
he got himself the ryan howard deal
Tough to argue against this signing. Amaro has landed THREE aces in TWO years. Most GMs haven’t done that over their careers.
Where I think Amaro has been most successful is selling his plans to the ownership group. Gillick started this culture within the organization, but Amaro seems to have taken it to another level. It hasn’t won him a ring yet as GM. But the Phillies have gone from a perennial doormats to one of the top organizations in MLB.
Not to say every move he made has worked. The Howard contract is too many years and too much money. But at the same time, that move makes a little more sense if you view that deal as a commitment to keeping the core intact, and winning at any cost.
Letting Werth walk was a no-brainer. The money Washington threw at him was laughable. They will be regretting that contract by June, when they come to the realization that Werth can’t lay off the high cheese, and he’s a d-bag to the media & fans.
Right, I’m sure they’ll be regretting it by June of 2011 despite earning just $10 million for the year. They’ll probably be regretting it from 2013 on, but he’s likely a bargain for the first couple of years.
Pretty shocked to see how quickly Phillies fans turned against a guy who had the highest combined OPS on the team over the past two years. In fact, he’s been arguably the best right fielder in the league over the same span…
I don’t care if he walked on water and flew a unicorn over a rainbow.
He got greedy and wanted a contract that would have killed the team. He turned on Philly by saying he hated the Phillies long before Phillies fans turned on him.
As a Phillies fan… I don’t get it either… Howard’s gotten better in the last three years and would have finished in the top 3 home runs in the NL this year if he didn’t hurt his ankle…
Meanwhile… Utley’s declined every year since 2008 and he’s still a god in this city.
I’m assuming you’re a Nats fan. If so, you’ll soon see what I mean about Werth. He’s a good player (not $126MM good…but good). But when the Philly media asked Werth about possibly giving the Phillies a hometown discount, he responded “I’m from St. Louis”.
Don’t get me wrong, he did his share to help the Phillies to where they are now…but he’s kind of a smart-ass, and not really an ideal “face of the franchise” he will be asked to be (until Strasburg or Harper shows up).
BTW, Werth’s OPS was racked up last year with nobody on. His AVG with RISP was a lusty .186. Is $18MM a “bargain” for that???
Is this the same Ruben Amaro who failed to see that Utley was likely done? Please don’t tell me no one was aware of the extend of this injury. His play over the last 3 seasons has showed that injuries were putting a damper on his performance. Once Davey Lopes told the truth about Utley’s knee last season you knew he was in the doghouse for the conceited Amaro. Amaro only cares for lackeys like Sam Perlozzo to feed his ego.
So he didnt go out and sign a top flight 2nd baseman (were there any?) while he still has an all-star 2nd baseman signed for another 3 years? The nerve of that guy.
Well I was going to post that he didn’t need to look for just 2nd basemen but also 3rd basemen as you have a Gold Glove 2nd baseman already playing 3rd that can moved to the middle infield.
Pat Gillick signed Utley to his current deal after the 2006 season when Utley had just turned 28. And wasn’t Utley the same player who tied Reggie Jackson’s record for Home Runs in a World Series as recently as 2009? Sure 2010 was a down year, but it was a down year for most of the lineup on this team. If you want to blame Rube for not knowing that his 32 year old 2B-man had a degenerative knee injury, and that the middle infield market was non-existant this offseason, that’s fine, but it’s also quite a reach.
He’s the same player that tied the record for Home runs… He’s also the same player who couldn’t field a lick in the NLCS for two years in a row… He’s also declined in the last 3 years since the hip issue.
Chase hasn’t done anything since the first half of 2009 besides those 5 home runs in the WS. He hit under .200 for the second half of 2009 and in 2010 he had the knee issue (which he’s having now again…) and then finally tore his thumb.
Do I blame Ruben for that? No… I would have kept him too. I don’t think you can replace Chase Utley. What I disagree with is that you said 2010 was a down year.2010 was more than a down year… in fact it may be the sign of things to come with Chase…I love Chase as much as anyone but he’s not the same player he was when he was 28.
I wasn’t really trying to defend Utley, I was defending Rube. I can’t disagree with anything you said about Chase, but Rube did not drop a 3/$45M deal in front of him this past offseason coming off of 2010, that contract is a sunk cost from Amaro’s perspective.
The only thing I can fault Rube for is not doing something to address the possibility that Utley would not be ready for this year, assuming he knew about the injury. On top of losing Werth, I would have to think that Amaro did not know the extent of Utley’s injury. Otherwise he would have done something to address the offense.
I love what rubens been able to do, resigning Lee after he pissed me off trading him. Only problem there is, is him signing guys like Raul and Moyer for a year or two longer then they should have been signed, resulting in us being stuck with bad contracts and declining players. And giving Blanton that big extention.
Blanton’s extension wasnt big by any stretch. And I have a feeling Raul is going to have a solid year.
Ruben’s always given a year too many on extensions, but the trades he’s made have been tremendous. He certainly hadn’t done anything to not get an extension, so this is obvious to me. But how he does when he actually has to shape a team, which could be over the life of this extension, will be pretty interesting.
Amaro’s quote from the upcoming press conference “I was always confident we’d get something worked out. I deserve it,that’s for sure.”
Now he can spend time working on that minor league outfield.
I have serious doubts that anyone in that outfield finishes with an OPS above .800.
It won’t be worse than what the Braves have had out there the past two years, but it’s not looking good. The Braves may finally have a better outfield than the Phillies now that Prado and Heyward are on the corners, at least until Chipper goes down.
watch him drop the ball on getting a temp for utley.
Fair play to RAJ. I think he dropped the ball with Halladay in the summer of ’09, as well as with the Lee-to-Mariners trade. But he certainly seems to be a guy who learns from his mistakes, which is a heck of a quality in the hard-nosed world of MLB. Going all-in with the Phillies is the right play, and they deserve success because of it.
How’d he drop the ball with Halladay in ’09? We wouldn’t have gotten Lee if we didn’t miss out on Halladay… And we would have traded JA Happ in one of the original deals AND Domonic Brown… JA Happ got us Oswalt. (Just wondering) Missing out on Halladay and trading Lee ended up becoming the best thing to happen to the organization because we now have both… AND Roy Oswalt.
I agree with you on every thing else though, and I think he’s going to develop into a great GM… if he in’t one on already.
Because Lee cost Carrasco, Donald, Knapp, Marson – all the ‘B’ prospects that were never wanted by the Jays or the fans. All the talk (and there was a lot of it) was focused around Drabek, Brown, Taylor, D’Arnaud and Happ.
There is no question that the Phillies could have taken both Halladay and Lee in that respect. It might have cost the Phillies a little more in the summer of ’09 (perhaps Brown instead of Taylor, maybe Happ as a throw-in), but the Phillies would have unquestionably been better placed for back-to-back World Series. As it turned out, Lee wasn’t enough (and he was flipped to try to re-stock the farm). I don’t see how anyone can think that RAJ’s transactions pattern shows anything less than a willingness to learn through trial and error.
I love people that pass judgment on deals/non-deals like they were in the room when it happened (or didn’t happen). How do you know RAJ “dropped the ball” on the Halladay deal, Teddy??? YOU DON’T. JP Ricciardi held out for an enormous package, and ended up losing his job. Lee wasn’t a bad Plan B (won both of his starts in the WS), and RAJ landed Halladay for a lower price in the Summer.
Pairface: if the requirement for posting anything on this site is an “inside-the-room” certainty of knowledge, then nobody would be able to post. Not even the vast majority of reporters. All we do is speculate and read between the lines, so don’t get so emotional.
As for Halladay…he was gettable. The speculation at the time was that Drabek was not being included in any package, but eventually (too late) RAJ relented. It staggers me that you think Lee wasn’t a plan B considering the junk prospects that the Phillies gave up in order to acquire him. Does it not seem startlingly obvious to you that RAJ was wanting the best of both worlds (ie not gutting the farm and landing an ace)?
In the end he capitulated…and rightly. The Phillies have lost all their farm chips and maxed out payroll instead of attempting that “third way”, but they have a stud lineup. The pattern of development is obvious to anyone who looks and isn’t blinded by passion…