By Peter Gleason
If you are a Phillies fan and wondering what management is doing to improve the awful team it has presented for 2015, you will be happy to know that the general manager, at least, is depending on a higher power.
General manager Ruben Amaro Jr., who was handed the job in 2009 and has overseen the total collapse of the team so that it is on pace to lose 100 games, was yucking it up yesterday on the radio.
The fact is that Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Cole Hamels have overstayed their sell-by date and now no one in MLB will trade for them.
But Amaro has the faith.
“Whatever your higher power is, go ahead and pray for him [Utley] because the man needs a couple of knocks,” Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr., said Tuesday morning during a radio interview on 94 WIP.
Mired in an 0-for-15 slump that has his 25-game average down to .103, Utley sat out the Phillies’ 9-0 road loss to the Atlanta Braves on Tuesday night and likely will get a chance to clear his head again in Wednesday’s series finale.
“He’s just literally the unluckiest person on the planet,” Amaro said. “Listen, any time a guy is so deeply below where he typically is after a month of the season, it’s astonishing. But what is even more astonishing is he’s hit the ball two to three times a night or day and cannot get a hit. So we gotta start praying for him a little bit. The baseball gods have not been good for him.”
