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?

The fact is, there was no one in the minor league system that was ready to take over for Utley or Rollins or Jayson Werth or Shane Victorino had the Phillies moved on from them sooner. On top of that, none of the prospects that the Phillies gave up for Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt and Hunter Pence is lighting the world on fire. A few are useful major leaguers, but nearly all are still in the minors and some are out of baseball entirely*.

Somebody had to play second base and short stop and even with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight it is difficult to reach the conclusion that you could have traded Rollins or Utley for their replacements. The chances of successfully doing that are slim and none. Somebody had to pitch those games and so why not trade some prospects with questionable potential for Halladay and Lee and Oswalt?

If the Phillies minor league system was turning out useful major leaguers at a rate just even with the league average, the Phillies would have then been in a position to gradually let go of their core as they aged. On top of that, if Roy Halladay and Ryan Howard had the fortune the aging more gracefully, the Phillies would have been in an even better position to slowly turn the roster over**.

Ted Williams once said that baseball is the only field of endeavor where someone can be successful 3 out of 10 times and still be considered a good performer. Of course, he was referring to hitting when he said that, but there’s actually another area of baseball where if you were to be successful 3 out of 10 times you would be deemed a deity: player development. Hundreds of young men washout of professional baseball every year and many of them were once considered to have a high degree of potential. So it’s not to say that creating a steady stream of talent to supplement your big league club is easy. It’s not. But the Phillies, with the exception of a nice run in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s have been pretty poor in this regard.

So yes Ruben, you should have done things differently. But the fate of the Phillies wasn’t sealed by re-upping the core of the 2008 World Champions over and over, rather, the fate was sealed in actuality while the World Series was being won because you and your predecessors weren’t procuring good, young talent from the draft, overseas, or savvy waiver wire signings.

—————–

* To be fair, the jury is still out on some of the prospects sent to Houston for Hunter Pence.

** In Amaro’s defense, imagine how differently the course of 2012-2014 would have been if Roy Halladay and Ryan Howard had simply begun a slow and steady decline phase rather than the precipitous drop off that both experienced. The Phillies might have actually had the chance to subtly and organically rebuild rather than being where we are now. As much as we can fault Ruben Amaro Jr and his superiors in the organization, their steep, steep decline wasn’t foreseen by anyone. Yes pitchers break down and yes, burly “big-boned” first basemen aren’t known for their longevity either, but still, those declines were fast.