Several days ago, Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. had a rather candid conversation with the New York Times’ Tyler Kepner. Amaro’s tone lacked the usual dosage of smugness and evidenced some inward analysis had gone on.

“You identify, and fans identify, with players like Rollins, Utley and Howard, who are arguably the best players at their positions in the history of our franchise,” Amaro said. “It’s hard to cut them loose. And yet, sometimes, you have to have that mentality like, you know what, maybe we were a little too loyal, maybe we were thinking that we could squeeze some more blood out of the stone.

“But that’s also a good learning experience for me. Maybe we’ve got to do things a little differently, and think about doing that shift a little earlier.”

While it is nice to see Amaro take the time to do a post mortem on the 2012-2014 Phillies, it’s troubling that he’s still missing the mark — and so is anyone else who exhales a sigh of relief and exclaims “he finally gets it!”

Let us pretend that at some point in 2011 or 2012 the organization had decided to begin to turn over the roster gradually. Perhaps they move on from Jimmy Rollins or Chase Utley or Shane Victorino sooner. Or perhaps in 2009-2011 they don’t make the trades to stack the deck with aces in the pitching staff. What state would the Phillies be in now if they had decided to go down one or both of those paths?

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