Phillies Front-Office Structure Leaves Room For Questions

One of the hardest parts about covering the Philadelphia Phillies over the past few seasons has been trying to decide what level of blame Ruben Amaro Jr. deserved for the demise of the World Series team that he inherited in November of 2008.

On paper, Amaro inherited a championship team, allowed it to get better for the first few seasons of his tenure, but eventually the team got old and expensive, the farm dried up and a team that felt on the brink of being a mini-dynasty turned into the laughing-stock of the league.

Regardless of whether Amaro was the one who signed Ryan Howard to an extension nearly two years before he was a free-agent, or was the guy behind any of the litany of awful moves made during his nearly seven year tenure, there will always be a level of blame that Amaro deserves. He was the person presented to the public as the one making the decisions, and even if he was just part of the process, he probably wasn’t kicking and screaming when the team made poor decision after poor decision.

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There was a fraction of the fanbase and media that felt that while Amaro probably wasn’t very good at his job, he became the fall guy for long-time president David Montgomery, who the team pushed into the chairman role (and out of the president one) in January 2015, while they left Amaro in his role for almost an entire other season.

Publicly, the Phillies presented Amaro as the one who was in charge of making the baseball decisions, and Montgomery seemed to be more in charge of running the business that was the Phillies.

Under the new system that was introduced yesterday, Matt Klentak will be the general manager who works under president Andy MacPhail.

Well, sort of.

MacPhail will have final say on things, but he has continued to publicly discuss the idea of giving the general manager space to work and run the day-to-day operations. The fact that he hired someone that he trusts probably will only make that more likely to be the way things are done.

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And as MacPhail alluded to, on any big decisions the front-office as a whole will work on the deal or trade together from the start, meaning it won’t come down to Klentak walking into MacPhail’s office at the winter meetings or July 31st and asking for his permission to do something.

But at some point, or probably numerous points, the two will disagree on whether to do a deal and one will get their way. I don’t anticipate a power-struggle, but who gets the blame for that move if it doesn’t work? Who gets the blame if a series of moves between the duo don’t work?

Even more, if MacPhail, 62, holds this position for five years and the organization turns things around but Klentak has inconsistent success in evaluating talent, is he eventually handed the keys to the front-office?

Amaro worked in a successful front-office under Gillick, but clearly either wasn’t competent enough to be handed the keys to the team or wasn’t actually handed the keys to the team behind closed doors. But he worked under Gillick when the team rose to prominence, so he was promoted when Gillick elected to retire.

Perhaps this is too negative of an outlook. Klentak and MacPhail seem like a more than competent duo that are being handed a situation that is one of the more desirable non-contenting ones in the league. But the hope is that not only will the Phillies return to being a perennial playoff participant again, but that the club will learn how to re-tool on the fly and remain competitive so that there isn’t another long rebuild like this that follows the Phillies’ next run of success.

Phillies Notes

Doug Fister continues to be speculated on as the type of player the Phillies should pursue this off-season. He is just one season removed from a year where he posted a 16-6 record with a 2.41 ERA, but saw a velocity drop-off and injuries ruin his once promising free-agent stock. At 31 (32 in February), maybe Fister bounces back and becomes a trade piece for the deadline next year. At worst, he couldn’t be any worse than Jerome Williams or Aaron Harang, right?

Sep 14, 2015; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Washington Nationals starting pitcher Doug Fister (33) throws a pitch during the eleventh inning against the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park. The Nationals defeated the Phillies, 8-7 in 11 innings. Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

It should be interesting to see what type of impact Kletak hopes to have, if any, on Pete Mackanin’s daily lineups. He worked under Jerry Dipoto in Los Angeles, who left because Mike Scioscia had little interest in hearing his analytics input on how lineups should be constructed. Klentak may not want to have analytics be that involved, but if he does, you would have to think Pete Mackanin is open to hearing the input or he wouldn’t have taken or been given this job.
Phillies’ part-owner John S. Middleton, in between ~~lecturing~~ welcoming Klentak to Philadelphia, made a host of Philadelphia sports references that made me wonder why he wasn’t interested in having a more public role sooner. He seems to credit fan noise with making him realize it was best for him to be visible while the team went through a rebuild, but I can’t remember seeing him at any point during the Phillies’ most dominant five year run in franchise history (2007-2011). That’s strange for someone who seems to be so passionate about the sport and was paying a good chunk of the salaries for the team.

Next: Eagles Armchair: Things, They Need A-Changin'

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