The Philadelphia Phillies (19-28) are among one of the worst clubs in the MLB as they're undergoing a rebuilding period. They haven't had a winning season or made the playoffs since 2011 and fans have been upset as the team entered another lost year in 2015.
General manager Ruben Amaro doesn't care. He's been working to turn the club around as they've endured a lot of bad luck over the past few seasons. Philly fans have grown restless and are wondering why Amaro has yet to deal the club's aging veterans and call up their top prospects.
Amaro noted the club is going to be conservative with the promotions of their talented starting rotation at Double-A Reading. It's been said his demands for starting pitcher Cole Hamels are excessive. He perhaps missed the window to trade second baseman Chase Utley, who is having a career-worst season.
None of this sits well with the fans.
"They don't understand the game," Amaro told Jim Salisbury of CSN Philly. "They don't understand the process. There's a process. And then they bitch and complain because we don't have a plan. There's a plan in place and we're sticking with the plan. We can't do what's best for the fan. We have to do what's best for the organization so the fan can reap the benefit of it later on. That's the truth."
Amaro has also made some questionable moves over the past few seasons, such as trading four prospects for Hunter Pence, signing Jonathan Papelbon to a four-year, $50 million deal, and giving Cliff Lee a five-year, $120 million contract when he was 32 years old.
However, those few moves aren't solely attributed to the decline of the Phillies. The club probably could have worked on getting younger as their roster was clearly aging, but nobody could predict the injuries to Lee, Roy Halladay and Ryan Howard or the awful play from A.J. Burnett last season, Domonic Brown over the past two seasons, and Utley in 2015.
"I'm pleased with the progress we've made in our organization on a number of levels," Amaro added.
The Phillies have gotten much younger and already begun the makeover in Philadelphia with Freddy Galvis, Odubel Herrera, Severino Gonzalez, Cody Asche and Maikel Franco. Many more prospects are on the way, but the process takes time and Amaro is confident everything will be back on track once everything comes to fruition.
