Amaro or Klentak: The Shocking Truth of a Super Roster Designed and Constructed in the Shadowy Back-streets of South Philly, Conspiracy - Revealed!

Ok, there's no "Super Roster" and there's also no conspiracy (well, we're pretty sure there's no conspiracy) but we thought it was a funny headline and that maybe a little humor could help the medicine go down.  IF you, like us have taken a two year hiatus from the Fightins, this next sentence may come as a shock to you.

The 2018 Phillies are for the most part Reuben Amaro's guys.  That's not as bad as it sounds, Gillick and to some extent Amaro won with Ed Wade's guys.  It's how it works.  The new guy wins or looses with the old guy's players.

And, well, and it's very possible that the Eagles having beaten the Patriots in the Super Bowl and the Sixers being in the playoffs and looking good has softened us up a little but maybe Reuben Amaro wasn't really as bad as we made him out to be.  Maybe he was just hired/promoted for a position in a moment for which he simply wasn't qualified.  Not many baseball men have the prerequisite experience and instincts necessary to navigate a such a moment so Reuben wasn't necessarily a bad hire.  Ok, maybe he was.  But, he was maybe not necessarily a bad guy, a bad dude.  Just horribly under-qualified and under experienced.  FOR THAT MOMENT.  For the season after the euphoria.

Reuben did some good things, did some very good things and some very not so good things.  You can probably say that about any/every GM/Manager/Scout/Player/Person.  The problem for Reuben was the timing of the hire.  Reuben hadn't climbed the mountain.  Hadn't had the time to learn how to tie an entire 40 man roster to the rigors of the regular season, timing both the big mid-season moves with the little waiver wires ones so that the team peaks at just the right moment.  Hadn't had the time to learn.  To fail and adjust and fail and adjust again.  The price for even just a little slippage on those squads was surely death.  Poor guy was blindfolded and dropped on icy peak and told to hang on here for a while.

Nonetheless, Amaro hung/clung around these parts for the better part of a decade, '09-15, and his fingerprints are still all over this franchise.

A quick glance at the current 25 man roster, there are a few free agent acquisitions, one Gillick hold-over, but for the most part, Rhys, Kingery, Odubel, Nola and Pivetta.  They're all Amaro's guys.

Position	Player	Year Acquired	GM	Transaction details
c	Jorge Alfaro	2015	Amaro	Via Cole Hamels trade
	Andrew Knapp	2013	Amaro	2nd Round June Draft
1B	Carlos Santana	2017	Klentak	Free Agent Dec ‘17
2B	Cesar Hernandez	2006	Pat Gillick	International signing
	Scott Kingery	2015	Amaro	2nd Round June Draft
SS	JP Crawford	2013	Amaro	1st Round June Draft
	Pedro Florimon	2017	Klentak	Free Agent Nov ‘17
3B	Maikel Franco	2010	Amaro	International signing
LF	Rhys Hoskins	2014	Amaro	5th Round June Draft
CF	Odubel Herrera	2014	Amaro	Rule 5 Draft
RF	Nick Williams	2015	Amaro	Via Cole Hamels trade
	Aaron Altherr	2009	Amaro	9th Round June Draft
SP	Aaron Nola	2014	Amaro	1st Round June Draft
	Nick Pivetta	2015	Amaro	Via Papelbon trade
	Vince Velasquez	2015	Klentak	Via Ken Giles trade
	Ben Lively	2014	Amaro	Via Marlon Byrd trade
	Jake Arrieta	2018	Klentak	Free Agent March ‘18
RP	Victor Arano	2014	Amaro	Via Roberto Hernandez trade
	Hoby Milner	2012	Amaro	7th Round June Draft
	Adam Morgan	2011	Amaro	3rd Round June Draft
	Yacksel Rios	2011	Amaro	12 Round June Draft
	Jake Thompson	2015	Amaro	Via Cole Hamels trade
	Edubray Ramos	2012	Amaro	Free Agent Nov ‘12
	Drew Hutchison	2018	Klentak	Free Agent Feb ‘18
	Luis Garcia	2013	Amaro	Free Agent Mar ‘13
CP	Hector Neris	2010	Amaro	International signing

You kinda feel for for Rube after looking down this thing.  He did after all win a lot of regular season games.  He gave us Doc Holiday and Cliff Lee.  He was bold and wanted to win, the mid-season trades were legendary.

I've always wondered if Amaro had been there in the beginning.  IF he was the GM to trade Leiber and Thome, and fire Bowa.  If  Amaro had been the guy who hired Charlie Manual.  I wonder if we might have had a few more Championships.  I always wondered why he went so pitching heavy rather than supplementing the lineup.  Maybe experience would have given him a better understanding of role players and position players versus pitchers.  Maybe not.  Regardless of the outcome, being a part of that magical '08 season, Amaro would have forged a relationship with the city and that would have given him space to stumble and fail.

And there was so much failing.  Watching Reuben's early teams, all that brute power and pedigree flailing around in October, just a tic or two off, made you want to rip your heart out.

The horrifyingly bad drafts, putting all that money into pitchers - pitchers who's heads can literally explode while on the mound, their arms sometimes falling off their bodies, in mid-motion mind you - like a fish flopping out of water, the arm just lying on the grass, baseball stuck in the fingers just flopping around, anyhow, all that failure and maybe Amaro adjusted.