{"id":205,"date":"2008-11-03T16:40:38","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T21:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=205"},"modified":"2008-11-03T16:42:50","modified_gmt":"2008-11-03T21:42:50","slug":"thank-you-mike-arbuckle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=205","title":{"rendered":"Thank You, Mike Arbuckle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"amaro\"The Phillies announced today, to the surprise of no one, that Ruben Amaro Jr. is the new general manager<\/a>and that Pat Gillick will stay on as an adviser.\u00a0 It’s a good move.\u00a0 Amaro, 43, is considered a rising star in baseball front-office circles and it doesn’t hurt that he has strong ties to the organization, after working as a bat boy for the 1980 championship team, playing for the ’93 pennant winners, and working as Assistant GM for this year’s World Champs.\u00a0 It’s great to have a guy in charge that is talented, experienced, and will have strong loyalty to the organization.<\/p>\n

In another unsurprising announcement, Phils President David Montgomery said that Assistant GM Mike Arbuckle will not return to the team, after being passed over in favor of Amaro.\u00a0 This is sad news, but Arbuckle can’t be blamed for wanting to go in search of other opportunities.\u00a0 Arbuckle took over as Head of Scouting for the Phillies in the early-90’s and has been the main decision-maker on draft picks ever since.<\/p>\n

As the Phillies rolled to a title over the past couple of weeks, it became fashionable for people in the organization, in the media, and for fans to give a lot of credit to former GM Ed Wade.\u00a0 After all, the logic goes, most of the key players on this year’s team were drafted during Wade’s tenure.\u00a0 That may be true, but Arbuckle had much more to do with those picks than Wade did.\u00a0 At the end-of-the-parade celebration on Friday, Arbuckle was driven out on the back of one of those convertibles, just like Gillick, Amaro, and the players, but it still feels like he has been under-appreciated.<\/p>\n

\"arbuckle\"Arbuckle brought a specific philosophy to scouting and drafting: take the\u00a0players with the potential to be great, the\u00a0ones with the highest ceiling.\u00a0 At a time when a lot of organizations were following the Billy Beane path of taking college pitchers and sub-par athletes that get on-base a ton, Arbuckle and his staff were looking for\u00a0top-flight athletes (Rollins), pure power hitters (Howard, Burrell), and high-school pitchers with live arms (Hamels, Myers, Madson, Gavin Floyd).\u00a0 While this strategy may end up with some misses (Reggie Taylor, Adam Eaton), when it works, you don’t end up with solid major-leaguers, you end up with All-Stars and potential Hall-of-Famers.\u00a0 You end up with a championship.<\/p>\n

Arbuckle’s draft highlights include: Picking a 5 foot nothing high school shortstop in the second-round\u00a0that everyone said was too small and ended up being Jimmy Rollins, whose resume reads MVP and Leader of the ’08 Champs.\u00a0 Another second-rounder was Scott Rolen, a 5-time All-Star.\u00a0 In 2001, Arbuckle’s staff took a chance on a\u00a05th-rounder coming off a horrible season at his\u00a0no-name college in Missouri.\u00a0 That guy ended up being Ryan Howard, who’s only hit 177 home runs in 3 1\/2 seasons, won Rookie of the Year, and may be about to take his second MVP award.\u00a0 Somehow Chase Utley fell to the mid-first round in 2000, and the Phillies were there to scoop him up with the 15th pick, and he looks headed to Cooperstown as hands-down the best second baseman of this generation.\u00a0 In 2002, Arbuckle made what may go down as his best pick of all, taking a high school pitcher\u00a0coming off a major arm injury with the 17th pick in the draft.\u00a0 That pitcher,\u00a0of course, now owns\u00a0NLCS and World Series MVP trophies, at the age of 24.<\/p>\n

As a\u00a0Major League Director of Scouting, you can put those\u00a0accomplishments up against anybody’s.\u00a0 Baseball America had Arbuckle listed as the #3 GM <\/a>prospect five years<\/em>ago.\u00a0 This guy deserves a shot.\u00a0 So,\u00a0congratulations\u00a0go out to Ruben Amaro.\u00a0 But, also,\u00a0thank you, Mike Arbuckle, and good luck.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Phillies announced today, to the surprise of no one, that Ruben Amaro Jr. is the new general managerand that Pat Gillick will stay on as an adviser.\u00a0 It’s a good move.\u00a0 Amaro, 43, is considered a rising star in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[396,25,16,395],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-mike-arbuckle","tag-pat-gillick","tag-phillies","tag-ruben-amaro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}