Take It Easy, Junior

Raul Ibanez is far from an obvious upgrade over the departing Pat Burrell.

by E. James Beale

Last week, in this very space, we called for the firing of 76ers head coach Maurice Cheeks. We argued that his talents didn't match the talents of his team and that the Sixers would be better off moving in a different direction. Two days later, the Sixers fired Cheeks. Are we taking full credit? Well ... on one hand, we merely reported several incidents that revealed a struggling coach in the midst of a difficult season. The Sixers were obviously underperforming expectations, and a change was near; after the fact, several prominent analysts opined that everyone knew a firing was coming. On the other hand? Nobody else was writing about it. So yes, absolutely we're taking credit. And today we're going to use our newfound clout to right another of our city's wrongs: We're going to get the Phillies' new general manager to chill out.

Just days after the Phillies won the second championship in team history, they promoted Ruben Amaro Jr., a former Phillie/Stanford grad/baseball businessman from assistant GM to regular GM. The championship run meant there was less time to prepare a winter strategy, and as such, Amaro had to dive into his new job headfirst. This meant tackling key decisions — all revolving around the central question of whether to keep the team intact or shuffle the deck — almost immediately. Amaro chose to shuffle, declining to offer arbitration to left fielder Pat Burrell and starting pitcher Jamie Moyer. The Phillies of 2009 would not be the Phillies of 2008.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. No baseball team has won back-to-back championships this millennium; teams have to adjust if they want to stay at the top. The day Amaro was introduced as general manager, he appeared to have a plan for this: "Pitching wins, and we want to strengthen that," he declared. Early rumors suggested this was true — the Phillies were linked to several starters, including former all-star Derek Lowe. Amaro also said he wanted to get "younger and more athletic," and when he was asked about free agent outfielder Garret Anderson, called him "too old." This didn't appear to be idle chatter, either: Both Burrell and Moyer are on the downside of their careers, and declining to bring back the hometown favorites was a bold move that signaled a change of philosophy. The old Phillies were built on guile and power hitting. The new Phils? They'd win tight games with elite pitching and athletic defense.

Then, amid this rhetoric, Amaro re-signed Moyer (the oldest player in baseball) and threw a three-year, $30 million contract — the rest of his major assets — at Raul Ibanez, a left-handed hitting free agent whom the lead baseball analyst for Scouts Inc. described as "a far worse defensive player" than Burrell, and who, at 36, is 28 days older than Garret Anderson. Even more puzzling, since Ibanez is a "type A" free agent, the Phillies have to surrender their first-round draft pick for the rights to sign him.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

Amaro wasn't acting quickly in a scarce market. Anderson, Burrell, Manny Ramirez, Bobby Abreu, Adam Dunn, Milton Bradley and Rocco Baldelli are all unsigned corner outfielders. If Ibanez wasn't the guy, why even target him? It's still early in the free agent period, and the Phils had plenty of capital. For them, this was a buyer's market.

Beyond that, Ibanez is far from an obvious upgrade over the departing Burrell. Both Yahoo! Sports and ESPN had Burrell ranked as the 11th best free agent available this fall, well ahead of Ibanez. Those rankings may have been skewed by the recent memory of the World Series, but they weren't made by Phillies fanboys, either. While you would probably lose the argument that Burrell is more valuable than Ibanez, you wouldn't look like a fool making it.

Jettisoning Burrell and signing Ibanez may not have been a mistake — the outgoing Phillie is declining, and the incoming left fielder should hit well in Citizens Bank Park. Keeping an aging Moyer may not have been a bad move either. Still, Amaro's high-speed abandonment of his long-term strategy showed a lack of patience and a cavalier attitude toward the future on the part of the new GM.

Junior is ending his first month on the job looking like a child who ran into a toy store, couldn't find the train set he wanted and so bought the Legos in the next aisle instead. Maybe he'll like his Legos, but the fact is that he didn't want them until he started shopping. He never considered whether they were the best toy he could get, or even whether he needed a new toy in the first place.

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