Former GM Ruben Amaro enjoying next chapter of baseball life – Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Ruben Amaro Jr. had the date circled on his calendar.

“I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t interesting and kind of weird, I guess, after being with the organization for so long,” he said Sunday morning.

Weird, indeed.

The former Phillies bat boy, player and general manager was wearing a Boston Red Sox uniform as he spoke with reporters before a spring training game between the two teams.

Amaro had to pull away from the interview several times to man-hug some of his old Phillies friends and colleagues as they made their way onto the field.

“Damn, what happened to you?” Larry Bowa asked Amaro, who dropped 15 pounds over the winter. “You look good.”

There were hugs for Freddy Galvis, Andres Blanco and Cesar Hernandez.

“I told Cesar I was really proud of him, that I was happy for him,” Amaro said. “He’s got ability. I really wish the best for some of those young guys.”

After spending so much of his boyhood — his father played and coached for the club — and adult life with the Phillies, Amaro moved on in September. Andy MacPhail came aboard to be the new club president in June and Amaro, who took over as GM shortly after the Phillies won the World Series in 2008, figured his days were numbered. He was right. MacPhail and ownership wanted a fresh start and that eventually led to Matt Klentak being hired as GM.

Amaro got a fresh start, too.

A dramatic one.

He went the John Quincy Adams route and descended from the executive suite to the clubhouse. After being out of uniform for nearly 20 years, he was hired by the Red Sox to become their first base coach. For several years, he had quietly harbored desires to get back in uniform and the Red Sox made it happen.

“I really love it,” he said Sunday.

It shows. He is trim. He looks happy, liberated from the pressures of running a baseball department and the criticisms and insults he endured in his hometown when everything fell apart.

“When you’re losing in Philadelphia there’s nothing positive about it,” he said.

Things started to fall apart when the Phillies were eliminated from the first round of the playoffs by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2011. The Phils had a world-class pitching staff and won a club record 102 games that year. Dreams of winning the World Series ended with a couple of bad nights against the Cardinals. It was all punctuated by Ryan Howard’s falling to the ground with a ruptured Achilles tendon, an injury that ended an era that included five NL East titles, two NL pennants and a World Series title.

“All we wanted to do at that stage of the game was play meaningful games in September and October, and we were doing it,” Amaro said. “In ’08, we ended up being the best team in baseball because we won the World Series, but I don’t know if we were the best team in baseball. When you get to the playoffs, it’s about whether you can execute at that moment, whether you can make the pitch, whether you can get the big base hit, whether you get the ball in the hole the right way. We did it in ’08. We didn’t do it in ’09, ’10 or ’11. I’m every bit as proud of those teams. They were good freakin’ teams. Good teams. I was disappointed in 2011 because I think we had a better team than any of them. We just ran into a tough situation.”

Amaro took heat for a lot of things in his final seasons in Philly. One of them was not keeping up with baseball’s analytics boom. John Middleton, one of the team’s owners, was vocal about needing to step things up in that area when he pressed for change last summer.

In actuality, the Phillies had increased their use of analytics under Amaro. Were they slow to the party? Yes. But they had made strides and members of the new regime have admitted that.

“We didn’t think it was all that important for us to have to advertise what we were doing,” Amaro said. “Why do we have to advertise what we do? Am I doing it to save my job or what? We were a little behind, I think, with some of the analytics. But the reality of it is we won without the analytics. We had the best team in baseball without the analytics, or a full analytics core. Could we have been better? Maybe. There’s always ways to improve, but that’s probably why I’m in a uniform now.”

Amaro was asked whether he believed there is too much reliance on analytics in today’s game.

“Time will tell,” he said. “I don’t know. Let other people worry about that. Baseball is baseball. Analytics play an important role, there’s no question about that. But it’s not the role. It’s about people still.”

A year ago, the Phillies’ farm system was ranked by those who do such things as being in the bottom third in baseball. Now, it’s ranked in the top third by those who do such things. Some of that improvement — indeed, some of the hope for the future — was done on the strength of the Amaro-led trade that sent Cole Hamels to Texas last summer for five prospects. Both MacPhail and Klentak have praised Amaro’s work in the deal.

Did analytics play a role in that deal?

“We did that because we had good scouts,” Amaro said. “Mike Ondo is a very, very good pro scouting director. We had people who know baseball and know players. I think we did that because of that.”

Amaro left his role with the Phillies with a low public approval score.

If Jerad Eickhoff, Jake Thompson, Jorge Alfaro and Nick Williams, the prizes of the Hamels deal, become part of the Phillies’ next contending team, some opinions might change on Amaro.

And some might not.

“Sure, I’m going to watch and see how those guys progress,” Amaro said. “But I’m a lot more focused on what’s happening here in Boston than I am in Philly.

“We had a lot of great years, a lot of fun, fun years in Philly. Obviously, when there’s change made there’s a reason there’s change. I’m proud of the things we did there and I was fortunate to be part of it. But I’ve moved on. I’m on a new chapter now and I’m loving what I’m doing.”