HEY, LOOK OVER THERE as I ruin your beloved franchise's future!

As loyal readers, you may recall that I wrote a series of posts aimed at objectively evaluating Ruben Amaro’s performance as general manager. My conclusion was that despite his occasional moments of brilliance, Amaro is decidedly average at his job.

I was wrong. Ruben Amaro, Jr. is one of the worst GMs in the game, and the sooner he’s fired, the better.

When news of the Ryan Howard extension broke, that was my first impulse. I was tempted to go on a rant in this space, but thought it might be prudent for me to allow myself a cooling off period. I let others react. I listened to their opinions, both for and against the deal. I thought, long and hard, about each and every factor that could have been involved in the decision. Here I am, two days later, with my initial reaction intact.

This was a colossally stupid move, one that may well jeopardize the Phillies’ future as a perennial contender. And while it won’t happen, in my mind, it’s a fireable offense.

Am I overreacting? Possible, but unlikely. As anyone who’s read my posts here or discussed the Phillies with me, I have always been dubious about Amaro’s work. His penchant for overpayment, his investment in fungible assets, and his complete unwillingness to let the market develop were significant issues for me going forward. But we’re in the midst of the best era in franchise history, and none of his missteps had proven particularly costly, so I simply expressed these concerns and hoped that he would improve with time, or at least not make a catastrophic error.

Shit.

Enter the Howard deal, the proverbial straw breaking the camel’s back. Let’s run down the list of the many, many, many reasons this was a horrible idea:

Howard was already signed through 2011. Why the urgency? Why do this deal now? There was plenty of time to work out a deal if Amaro was really so adamant about not allowing Ryno to hit free agency.

It’s way too long. The extension might have made some modicum of sense if Howard were giving the team anything resembling a discount in salary or contract term. He did neither, and now the Phillies are stuck paying him $25 million a year until his age 37 season. As Craig Calcaterra points out, despite his recent devotion to exercise, Howard’s body type and skill set do not age well, and his comparables are, to put it mildly, terrifying.

Howard isn’t worth $25 million. The reason most people think Howard is an elite player, the reason the Phillies have had to pay him much more than he’s worth since he became arbitration-eligible, is the almighty RBI. Howard’s traditional numbers make him look like a god. Only three other players in baseball history have hit 40 homers and driven in 130 runs in four straight seasons. I can’t help but laugh, albeit in a bitterly sad way. Most detractors of advanced metrics like to (incorrectly) cite that saberists are too narrow-minded, that they zero in on a few select statistics and refuse to acknowledge any others. No self-respecting stathead does this, but most of the casual fans making this accusation are guilty of it themselves. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard try to justify the contract because “Howard drives in runs, and that’s the point of the game.” Wrong. The objective of hitting is to not make outs, because if you’re not making outs, it’s impossible to not score runs.

Philosophical differences aside, you have to look past Howard’s gaudy power numbers to get a picture of his true talent. He’s still terrible against lefties. He doesn’t get on base at the rate a hitter like him should. He’s worked hard to improve his defense (which got a worse rap than it deserved in the first place), but he’s average at best in the field, and he’s likely to get worse as he ages. Not to mention he plays the least important position on the diamond. Don’t get me wrong. Howard is quite good. But he’s not even worth $25 million a season right now. The odds that he’ll earn his keep through the life of this deal are astronomical.

There was no market for him at this price. I’ve heard a lot of folks say something like, “If we didn’t lock him up now, he would have been looking for Teixeira money and years when he hit free agency.” I’m sure he would be; Howard has always had an inflated sense of how much he’s worth. But who would have given him such a deal at age 32? Absolutely no one. Very few teams can afford to make that kind of commitment. The short list: Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Angels, Dodgers, Mariners, Cubs, Tigers, and us. Maybe the Cardinals. But that’s it. A few of those teams already have a superstar playing first base. Add to that the fact that Adrian Gonzalez, Prince Fielder, Lance Berkman, Carlos Pena, Derrek Lee, Paul Konerko, Adam Dunn and Albert Pujols will all be on the market over the next two winters, and it’s even harder to imagine any of those teams making such a big commitment to Howard. He’d have gotten plenty of money somewhere, but the market simply wasn’t there for some kind of bidding war, or his sure to be ludicrous contract demands. In recent years, we’ve seen many players have to settle for significantly less than they expected. Teams are getting smarter, for the most part.

Above: Exception.

We can kiss Jayson Werth goodbye. The team already has $134 million committed to 17 players next season, not including arbitration cases. Raul Ibanez is untradeable, and with Shane Victorino newly signed to an extension and Dominic Brown waiting in the wings, the writing’s pretty clearly on the wall. It had been apparent for a while that, long-term, it was going to come down to a choice between Howard and Werth. Amaro made his decision, and he made it wrong. Werth’s numbers may not be as shiny, but he’s more valuable to this team than Howard is. His skills are much less likely to deteriorate as he ages, and since he’s a plus player in every area, he can still be an asset to a club if and when one of those skills begins to fade. Without his prodigious power, Howard is worthless. Not to mention the fact that Werth is the sole right-handed presence in the middle of the order. Utley’s platoon splits are negligible at this point, but Howard and Ibanez are susceptible to southpaws, and Brown is likely to be as well, at least early in his career. Unless ownership approves yet another payroll hike (and I’m skeptical), there’s simply no room for Werth on this team next year, and that’s a goddamned shame.

We’re set up to fail, long term. Let’s say that Amaro gets the OK from ownership to jack up payroll again, and signs Werth. Short-term? Awesome. Long-term? We just might be screwed. Say all you want about the value of “keeping this core” together…this core is fucking old. In a couple of years, all our best players are going to simultaneously go through the decline phase that awaits the end of their prime. Utley, Howard, Werth, and Rollins are all on the wrong side of 30. Victorino will be 30 in November. Placido Polanco is 34 and signed for the next three or four seasons. Ibanez turns 38 in June. Even Chooch is 31. We are an old team. Old teams are expensive, and old teams fall apart in the blink of an eye. See what happened to the Cubs? That’s us in a couple of years if the front office keeps going down this road. With the right moves, we could have enjoyed a Braves-like run of dominance over the next five to seven years. Now? We’d better fucking win another championship this year or next, because our window is going to slam shut in a hurry unless changes are made.

Supposing Howard defies the odds and plays well enough to even come close to justifying this deal…well, it still sucks. It was dumb, short-sighted management.

What should we have expected from a guy who learned at the feet of Ed Wade?

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