David Montgomery: Ruben Amaro Jr. Batting Above .300 As Phillies GM

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With Andy Reid out of the way, there may not be an authority figure in Philadelphia sports right now under more scrutiny than Ruben Amaro Jr. Paul Holmgren could probably give him a run for his money, especially if some of the rumored offseason plans are true, but I think we’ve got to go ahead and give the nod to RAJ.

You know what that means. It’s time for the Obligatory Vote of Confidence™! (Needs its own graphic and maybe a jingle.)

Today’s Obligatory Vote of Confidence comes from David Montgomery. The Phillies president tells Bob Brookover for the Inquirer that the general manager is not solely responsible for the club’s issues, giving “credit” to his staff. Then Montgomery made a very curious analogy about decision making and baseball.

"The reality is that when things don't go well, people look to find, well, whose fault is it?" Montgomery said. "I believe in situations like this that when times are good there's enough credit to go around. It's all of us. Ruben is not making independent decisions. He's going with a pretty good group of eyes who are looking out there at players and making determinations. God knows we're all trying to bat 1.000 on decision making. The reality is, I think we do better than the .300 standard in baseball."

Hm.  .300 might make for a fine batting average, but I’m pretty sure decision making is held to a higher standard. I don’t know about you, but I expect scouts and executives to be right at least 50% of the time. Otherwise why have a front office at all? All personnel moves can be determined by one or a series of coin flips. At least it's cost effective, and the Phillies could push the savings right into some extra coin flips during free agency.

And as long as we’re deflecting blame across the entire front office, it’s worth noting that somebody had to hire the people steering Amaro wrong. Who would that be? Because apparently that's the person you want to yell at.

Personally, I don’t think Amaro has necessarily been quite as poor at his job as many people seem to believe, but a handful of the missteps he’s made have been rather gargantuan in size. Arguing he’s better at decision making than anybody on his roster is at hitting is an awfully counterproductive way to combat those truths, no?

>> Amaro gets backing from his boss [Inq]

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