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It finally happened—Ruben Amaro Jr. is out as general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. And, at long last, there’s a chance for a new direction in the City of Brotherly Love.

We’ll get to that new direction shortly. But first, it’s necessary to perform a brief autopsy of the Amaro regime.

The team announced his firing Thursday, per Todd Zolecki of MLB.com, one day after the Phillies were eliminated from postseason contention.

Of course, in reality, the Phils have been out of contention for months and even years. Yes, they advanced to the World Series in 2009 in Amaro’s first season as GM, made it to the National League Championship Series in 2010 and won the NL East in 2011.

Since then, however, Philadelphia has missed the playoffs for four consecutive seasons. This year, it’s sunk to a new low with the worst record in baseball.

Much of the blame for that stretch of futility rests squarely on Amaro’s shoulders.

First, there’s his noted aversion to analytics in an era when advanced stats and player evaluation have become the norm.

For his part, Amaro didn’t even have an analytics department until after the 2013 season, when the Phillies added Scott Freedman as a consultant from MLB‘s Labor Relations Department. Even then, Amaro sounded skeptical. “I don’t know if it’s going to change the way we do business,” he said at the time, per Zolecki. 

That attitude helps explain Amaro’s head-scratching tendency to keep aging players past their sell-by dates.

Take the infield core of shortstop Jimmy Rollins, second baseman Chase Utley and first baseman Ryan Howard.

Yes, they helped the Phillies win a championship in 2008 and contributed to the success of Amaro’s early years as GM.

But Amaro re-signed Rollins to a three-year deal with a vesting option for a fourth year after the 2011 season, agreeing to pay the veteran through his age-36 campaign. And, much more infamously, he handed a five-year, $125 million extension to Howard in 2010, a full two seasons before the first baseman’s existing contract was set to expire.

Hindsight is 20/20. But considering how far Howard’s stock has fallen in the intervening years, that will go down as one of the more boneheaded baseball decisions in recent memory.

Then there was the string of big-money deals and extensions Amaro handed to starters Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee and closer Jonathan Papelbon.

Yes, all three contributed, spectacularly so in the cases of Lee and Halladay. But all three ultimately became albatrosses, as Halladay and Lee succumbed to injury and decline and Papelbon curdled into a distracting malcontent.

Even when Amaro engineered deals as the rebuild finally lurched forward, it often seemed like too little, too late.

To pick one example: We’ll never know what the Phillies could have gotten for Utley at the deadline last year, when he made the All-Star team, rather than this season, when he was a recently injured shell of his former self and yielded a couple of interesting but unspectacular prospects from the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But it would’ve behooved the Phillies to find out (granted, Utley did have a no-trade clause).

The same holds for Papelbon and, to a much lesser extent, Cole Hamels, both of whom Amaro shipped out this summer but whose names popped up in frequent rumors last year as well.

Writing for FoxSports.com, Mitch Goldich summed it up neatly.

“One of the common criticisms levied against Amaro is that he doesn’t seem to have a plan,” Goldich noted. “I’d argue it might be more hopeless than that. That even if he did have a plan, there’s no guarantee he’d have the discipline to stick to it. Even when he knew the right thing to do, he couldn’t help himself.”

We could go on re-counting blunders (the lopsided swap that sent Hunter Pence to the San Francisco Giants in 2012, for example, or the time Amaro said grumbling fans “don’t understand the game,” per Jim Salisbury of CSN Philly). But you get the picture. Amaro is gone, none too soon, and the door is open for something new.

What will that be? And whom should the Phils slide into the general manager’s chair?

Whoever takes over won’t have to worry much about cutting the fat. With the trades (late or not) of Rollins, Papelbon, Utley and Hamels, as well as outfielder Ben Revere, Philadelphia doesn’t have many more pieces to move. (Howard, with his .228 average and $25 million owed next season, isn’t going anywhere.)

You could argue the Phillies would’ve been better served bringing in a new GM to oversee their trade-deadline machinations instead of keeping Amaro on board through July and August. 

In a way, though, this will allow Amaro’s successor to hit the ground running. Even if they didn’t always net the biggest possible return, the Phillies restocked a farm system that ESPN’s Keith Law ranked No. 25 in baseball before the season.

In particular, the trio of prospects acquired in the Hamels deal—right-hander Jake Thompson, outfielder Nick Williams and catcher Jorge Alfaro—should help a once-barren system bear fruit.

Add third baseman Maikel Franco, right-hander Aaron Nola and closer Ken Giles, plus shortstop J.P. Crawford—the Phils’ No. 1 prospect, according to MLB.com—and you have an emerging core any executive should be able to build around.

The new GM will also have money to play with, as CBS Sports’ Mike Axisa noted:

In fact, the Phillies only have about $65 million in salary on the books next year according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts. This is a club that has run payrolls north of $165 million every season since 2011. The Phillies aren’t hurting for money, they’ve always been a super high payroll team, so they’ll have the resources to go out and sign some big free agents this winter.

That could include a front-line starter such as David Price or Johnny Cueto, or a bat like outfielder Justin Upton.

Handing big contracts to veterans, though, was how Amaro dug his grave. That’s not to say the Phillies shouldn’t go after expensive free agents, but first they need to bring in a GM with the acumen to make the right moves.

And, yes, they need someone who embraces analytics as an essential facet of baseball in the year 2015 and doesn’t look at them as some newfangled fad.

Scott Proefrock, who served as assistant general manager for Amaro’s entire tenure, was named acting GM. But he’s merely a placeholder.

In fact, as Matt Breen, Jake Kaplan and Justin Klugh reported for Philly.com, “The new GM will be handpicked by [Andy] MacPhail, who will succeed Pat Gillick as team president after this season.”

And MacPhail insists he’ll give his hire some breathing room, per John Clark of CSN Philly:

MacPhail will have plenty of names to choose from, but here’s an interesting one: J.J. Picollo.

Picollo has been with the Kansas City Royals since 2006, working his way up from director of player development to his current role as assistant GM. At age 44, he has the relative youth mixed with a player-development background, which can help shepherd a franchise out of the rebuilding darkness.

In addition to Picollo, Kaplan floated a handful of names, including 34-year-old Los Angeles Angels assistant GM Matt Klentak, 38-year-old St. Louis Cardinals assistant GM Michael Girsch and Miami Marlins director of pro scouting Jeff McAvoy, also 38, who’s spent time with the analytically inclined Tampa Bay Rays and Houston Astros.

No matter what, Philadelphia should target a candidate who combines freshness with meaningful experience and brings a track record of making sound, evidenced-based decisions, relying more on advanced scouting and numbers and less on gut.

Someone, in other words, who has a plan.

And so we’re back to taking shots at Amaro. Really, though, this is a moment to celebrate for Phillies fans. After years of frustration and futility, a new era is about to arrive.

Whether it’ll be successful, and how quickly, remains to be seen. But already, there’s something brewing in southeastern Pennsylvania—a feeling folks there haven’t had in a while: hope.

All statistics current as of Sept. 10 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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OK, now the Philadelphia Phillies can get serious about rebuilding.

When they finally set their minds on doing so last winter, they were making a decision that was long overdue. Old, expensive players bogged down their roster, and their farm system was widely considered to be one of baseball’s worst. Clearly, it was going to take time to get the club’s rebuild on the right track.

Or not, as it turns out.

Over the winter, the Phillies bolstered their farm system by trading Antonio Bastardo, Jimmy Rollins and Marlon Byrd. During this year’s trade-deadline swap meet, they further bolstered their farm by dealing Cole Hamels, Jonathan Papelbon and Ben Revere.

So, that old, expensive roster? It’s not so old and expensive anymore. And that fledgling farm system? MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki notes that it’s looking pretty good:

Including the prospects the Phillies received in December…they have added 12 Minor League players to the organization in the past seven months, including 10 that rank among the Top 24 in their system and three in the Top 69 in baseball, according to MLBPipeline.com.

As general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said: “You’ve got to give quality to get quality. We think we did that.”

He’s not wrong, you know. And now that Amaro has what he needs to proceed, he could end the Phillies’ rebuild in short order.

But rather than wait to see how that pans out, let’s use our imagination and chart what would be the perfect rebuilding course going forward.

To do so, we’ll imagine when the Phillies’ best young talent will arrive in the majors. We’ll also imagine which players the Phillies could bring in from outside the organization. And we’ll assume there’s a sense of urgency at play, with a goal in mind to put a legit contender on the field by 2018.

Mind you, for brevity’s sake, we’ll have to paint with broad strokes. And in the interest of full disclosure, your humble narrator admits that he is not Nostradamus. Odds are, what the Phillies end up trotting out in 2018 will look decidedly different from what’s about to be dreamed up in this space.

But if you’re in the mood for a fantasy with at least a hint of plausibility, read on.

2015 Winter and 2016 Season

One thing the Phillies can look forward to this winter is a whole bunch of money coming off the books. In Cliff Lee and Chase Utley alone, $40 million is about to vanish from Philly’s payroll.

But though Philadelphia could use this as an excuse to go wild in free agency, it shouldn’t. With multiyear free-agent contracts, you can really only count on getting good value in the short term. The Phillies won’t be ready to take such risks just yet.

Instead, they should take a page out of the textbook for Rebuilding 101 and stockpile cheap veterans looking for an opportunity to turn their careers around, with the idea being to hope they can do just that before they’re flipped for young talent in midseason trades.

On this front, a top pursuit could be current Washington Nationals shortstop Ian Desmond, who could be open to spending his age-30 season rebuilding his value at a hitter-friendly home like Citizens Bank Park. Elsewhere, players such as Matt Joyce, Steve Pearce, Bobby Parnell and Bud Norris could also be open to rebuilding their value in Philly.

As the 2016 campaign goes along, whether these players can attract the attention of other clubs during trade season will be one of the top storylines in Philadelphia. The honor of the top storyline, however, will belong to the club’s growing youth movement.

In 22-year-old third baseman Maikel Franco, 23-year-old center fielder Odubel Herrera, 22-year-old right-hander Aaron Nola and 24-year-old right-hander Ken Giles, the Phillies are poised to move into 2016 with four quality young building blocks. By the end of the year, they could add five more to the big league club.

Those would be all-around shortstop J.P. Crawford, multitalented left fielder Nick Williams, slugging catcher Jorge Alfaro, power right-hander Jake Thompson and ground-ball-magnet right-hander Zach Eflin. MLB.com pegs them as five of the Phillies’ top 10 prospects, and Crawford (No. 6), Thompson (No. 60), Williams (No. 64) and Alfaro (No. 69) are also considered to be four of the best prospects in all of baseball. And of those five names, four are virtual locks to debut in the majors before the end of 2016.

The one wild card is Alfaro, as he’ll be ready next season only if his defense catches up with his offense. What the Phillies could and should do, however, is shorten Alfaro‘s path to the majors by converting him into a right fielder. It’s a position that would take it easier on his surgically repaired left ankle and would be a better fit for his bat, his plus arm strength and his strong overall athleticism

If all goes well—and remember, you’re playing along here—the 2016 season will see the Phillies establish an impressive core of young players while also replenishing their farm system’s ranks by making more trades. Throw in a bottom-10 record that would ensure top-draft-pick protection, and the Phillies’ 2016 season will have been successful without being too successful.

After all, the real work would still only be getting started.

2016 Winter and 2017 Season

After waving goodbye to a chunk of payroll following the 2015 campaign, the Phillies are due to watch even more money come off the books after 2016 with Ryan Howard and Carlos Ruiz’s contracts likely ending (both have team options).

Once they’re gone, the Phillies will be in a very strong position to advance their rebuild. They’ll have a solid core of young players in place, tons of payroll flexibility and a gigantic $2.5 billion TV contract with which to make the most of that flexibility.

Time to go to town in free agency? To the extent that a seemingly weak free-agent class will allow, yes.

A top priority should be signing an impact bat to go with the club’s gaggle of young position players. To this end, Philly should target the speed, power and defense of center fielder Carlos Gomez. It’ll take a lot of money to sign him, but that won’t be a problem. And as Business Insider can show, the relatively small amount of fair territory for Gomez to cover at CBP could be a deal-maker for both sides.

As a bonus, signing Gomez could be a way to kill two birds with one stone. The Phillies could use his acquisition as an excuse to move Herrera from center field back to second base, which could be quite the defensive upgrade. Whereas Herrera is nothing special in center field, Baseball America notes that he was named the best defensive second baseman in the Texas League in 2014.

After Gomez, the Phillies could move on an impact starter to flesh out their rotation. But since they should want nothing to do with the flimsy health and inconsistent production of Stephen Strasburg or Andrew Cashner, they should instead settle for upgrading their bullpen with one of the market’s elite closers. That list is set to include Aroldis Chapman, Greg Holland, Drew Storen and Kenley Jansen.

Of those options, Jansen would be a good choice for a multiyear contract. Whereas the others could see their success fade as their velocity does, Jansen’s Mariano Rivera-esque cutter is his ticket to age like, well, Mariano Rivera.

After adding Gomez and Jansen, the Phillies should next look to add a replacement catcher for Ruiz. Signing Jason Castro for his elite framing skills and ability to handle pitchers would be the easy option. But he’ll be on the wrong side of 30 and with an iffy injury history.

If the Phillies are going to think defense first for Ruiz’s replacement, they’d be better off targeting somebody younger in a trade. With this in mind, here’s a name: 23-year-old Christian Vazquez.

Though he only played in 55 games with the Boston Red Sox as a rookie in 2014, that was all Vazquez needed to establish himself as an other-worldly pitch-framer and running-game manager. Tommy John surgery has put his career on hold, but 2016 should see him re-establish himself as a valuable asset.

But he’s also likely to be an expendable asset, as Blake Swihart is widely considered Boston’s catcher of the future. If that future materializes more solidly in 2016 than it has in 2015, the Red Sox are likely to be open to shopping Vazquez. With what should still be a good farm system, the Phillies will have the pieces to deal if it comes to that.

With Gomez, Jansen and Vazquez joining the budding young core the Phillies established in 2016, the 2017 season would figure to be their first big step back toward relevance. 

And the following winter, it would be time to close the gap.

2017 Winter and 2018 Season

Though the Phillies will have spent big on free agents in the winter of 2016, they should still have plenty of payroll flexibility and revenue for another splurge after 2017.

This is good, because that winter’s free-agent class is shaping up to be a doozy that could help the Phillies fill their remaining needs.

One of those would be at first base, where the Phillies would still need an heir for Howard. Fortunately for them, their options on the open market are due to include Eric Hosmer, Brandon Belt and Lucas Duda. Between the three, Hosmer makes the most sense. Beyond his being the most likely of the three to actually hit free agency, he’s also the youngest (currently 25) and arguably the most well-rounded of the three.

Securing Hosmer would just leave the Phillies the need to round out their pitching staff, and the open market could help them there, too.

Among the starters poised to hit free agency after 2017 are Lance Lynn, Tyson Ross, Michael Pineda, Chris Tillman and Henderson Alvarez. Of those five, Ross would stand out due to his light workload history and how his heavy emphasis on ground balls and strikeouts would play at CBP.

After Ross, another welcome addition would be a power left-hander to pair with Jansen and Giles in the bullpen. As it happens, Jake McGee and his power fastball are set to hit the market that winter. He’d be a perfect option to round out the back end of the Phillies bullpen.

With Hosmer, Ross and McGee aboard, the Phillies would need just one more thing: a tried-and-true ace to join Ross, Nola, Thompson and Eflin in their rotation. And since we’re imagining the Phillies’ “perfect” rebuild, let’s talk about Sonny Gray.

Oakland A’s assistant general manager David Forst recently said (h/t Joe Stiglich of CSN Bay Area) that Gray is the closest thing the A’s have to an “untouchable” player. But that could change once he starts getting expensive, and that’s going to happen very soon. Gray will be eligible for arbitration for the first time after 2016 and for a second time after 2017.

By then, he could be due for too big a raise for Oakland’s pocketbooks, forcing the A’s to do their usual thing by dangling Gray on the trade market. Due to past trades and high draft picks in 2016 and 2017, the Phillies should still have enough young talent to strike a deal and bring Gray to Philadelphia.

If so, the Phillies would head into 2018 with the following roster:

After brushing up against it in 2017, the Phillies could easily take a roster like that and bring about a decisive end to their rebuild. And with it, the beginning of a new Phillies dynasty would arrive.

Or so we can imagine, anyway.

As easy as it is to picture everything falling neatly into place for them, odds are the Phillies will have to contend with numerous bumps in the road over the next couple of years. These will make putting an end to their rebuild that much tougher.

For now, though, there’s comfort to be taken in the list of possibilities for the Phillies. With their rebuild finally on the right track, it’s a long list.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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The Philadelphia Phillies set an unwanted record during the season’s first half, losing 62 games before the All-Star break for the first time in franchise history, per Sportsnet Stats.

Although there was no expectation of the team being competitive this season, the Phillies have arguably still been somewhat disappointing, as they’re in a league of their own when it comes to futility.

Sitting at 29-62 through 91 games, the Phillies have a miserable .319 winning percentage, putting them more than 100 percentage points below MLB‘s second-worst team, the 38-52 Milwaukee Brewers (.422).

The Phillies have scored a National League-worst 309 runs and allowed an MLB-high 468 runs. Only the Chicago White Sox have plated fewer runs, and even the Colorado Rockies—who play at Coors Field—have surrendered fewer.

The White Sox have MLB’s second-worst run differential at minus-73, while the Phillies have more than doubled the negative output, sitting at minus-160 heading into the second half.

They aren’t just the worst team this season, but possibly the worst team MLB has seen since the 2003 Detroit Tigers finished 43-119 for a .265 winning percentage.

And the franchise already has 14 100-loss seasons in its largely woeful history, having reached that mark in 1904, 1921, 1923, 1927, 1928, 1930, 1936, five consecutive seasons from 1938 to 1942, 1945 and 1961.

With the team presumably trying to trade the few veteran players it still has left, the Phillies are all but guaranteed to finish with baseball’s worst record and a 100-loss season.

If not for the strong performance of rookie third baseman Maikel Franco, it would truly be a lost season.

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The Philadelphia Phillies have announced on their Twitter that Pete Mackanin will remain the club’s interim manager for the rest of the 2015 season. 

Mackanin, formerly the team’s third base coach, was appointed interim manager after Ryne Sandberg resigned on Friday, June 26, with the Phillies starting the season 26-48. Sandberg was 119-159 from 2013-2015 in Philadelphia.  

A former infielder for the Texas Rangers, Phillies, Montreal Expos and Minnesota Twins, Mackanin played nine seasons in the major leagues. According to Rob Maaddi of the Associated Press (via ABC News), he managed parts of two seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2005 and the Cincinnati Reds in 2007. He is 53-53 in those stints. 

Entering Tuesday night, the Phillies are 27-51, 16.0 games behind the National League East-leading Washington Nationals. They have three more games at home against the Milwaukee Brewers before embarking on a 10-game road trip before the All-Star break.    

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Ryne Sandberg resigned from his role as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday with the team holding the worst record in baseball at 26-48. The Phillies announced that Pete Mackanin will take over as manager on an interim basis.

Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports confirmed the Baseball Hall of Famer’s departure. Although the Phillies clearly lacked the necessary talent to contend for a postseason berth this season, Rosenthal provided some thoughts from behind the scenes on why the club may have wanted to go in a different direction:

Sandberg compiled a 119-159 record across parts of three seasons with the Phillies. The organization is currently caught in the middle, with a necessary rebuild at hand but several veteran players like Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Cole Hamels still on the roster.

Fox Sports MLB passed along Sandberg’s comments about his decision to resign:

His future status with the club was also in question, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today, so his decision to leave now avoids any possible conflict:

Simply put, it’s hard to imagine any top candidates wanting the Phillies job right now. They are a team in transition, and it’s going to take some time to sort things out. The rebuild may also require some big trades at the deadline, so Mackanin could hold the position until season’s end.

The outlook for Philadelphia should become more clear after the trade deadline, as the team will likely deal its aging players while bringing in replacements to build around. At that point, it should become easier to sell the managerial job to prospective candidates, who will be able to help craft and mold the roster their way for the future.

With Sandberg apparently feeling change on the horizon, he decided to step away on his terms. And with the team struggling, it’s hard to blame him.  

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Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Freddy Galvis laid down a masterful bunt in the fourth inning of Monday’s 11-8 win over the New York Yankees.

And we mean masterful.

The ball stopped right on the edge of the third-base line.

Galvis got a single out of it before eventually scoring on a double by second baseman Cesar Hernandez, whose line drive to right field lifted the Phillies to a 6-2 lead with one out.

[MLB]

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Merely one month into the MLB season and teams are already beginning to separate themselves in the division as races start to shape up.

Although the 2015 MLB All-Star break is still more than two months out, the teams quickly descending to the bottom of the standings are beginning to figure out whether to buy or to sell before the game.

One team primed to be a seller this summer are the Philadelphia Phillies, a team that has gotten off to an 8-15 start and currently sits fifth in the NL East.

Injuries have piled up for the Phillies, which has led the pitching to fall to the bottom third of the league in most statistical categories. In addition, the team suffers from a lack of offensive production.

With the New York Mets leading the NL East and a three-way battle brewing in for second place, the Phillies are in a position to trade away their top assets. 

Just 23 games into the 2015 season, the Phillies have mustered only eight wins and are struggling to keep pace with the NL East front-running Mets. The Mets own a 15-8 record and have been dominant at Citi Field. 

Both the Miami Marlins and the Washington Nationals remain in contention, too. The Nationals have won three in a row, while the Marlins have ripped off two straight. Meanwhile, the Phillies continue to dig themselves into a deeper hole with three consecutive losses.

Currently, five pitchers sit on the Phillies disabled list. Among them are Cliff Lee and Chad Billingsley, who were expected to be pivotal parts of the starting rotation.

Billingsley is on the 15-day DL and could be activated as early as next weekend for the showdown against the Mets, according to the Philly.com.

Lee, on the other hand, is on the 60-day DL. He’s currently deciding between rehab for a left forearm strain or surgery, which would end his 2015 season. In March, Lee told Philly.com that he was leaning toward giving rehab a third chance.

With both Lee and Billingsley sidelined, the Phillies have had to rely on the likes of Jerome Williams (3.80 ERA), David Buchanan (8.76 ERA) and Severino Gonzalez (23.63 ERA). Along with Cole Hamels (3.19 ERA) and Aaron Harang (2.51 ERA), the Phillies rank 21st in MLB in team pitching, behind three rival NL East clubs.

Offensively, the Phillies have endured even more struggles. The lineup has been short of Domonic Brown all season long, while their usual sluggers, such as Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, have struggled with been inconsistent. 

Utley has batted .114 in 21 games played, and his counterpart Howard is at .194 in 20 games. As a team, the Phillies rank 29th in the league in offense with a team batting average of .223. Additionally, the Phillies rank 26th in home runs (13), 29th in on-base percentage (.280) and 30th in runs scored (63).

As the Phillies continue to sputter, they find themselves with no other options other than to start dealing. Among the chips that could be angled include none other than Hamels. 

Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro has received a bevy of phone calls about the availability of the team’s longtime ace, and according to USA TODAY, the St. Louis Cardinals, Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers have all expressed some level of interest.

Per the report, the Phillies would only send Hamels in exchange for a player they could turn into their centerpiece in the future. 

The Cardinals are without their ace, Adam Wainwright, who was lost for the season with a torn Achilles. Brandon McCarthy, the Dodgers’ prized free-agent signee, is expected to undergo Tommy John surgery. The Blue Jays need to find a suitable replacement for Marcus Stroman, and the Red Sox rank dead last in MLB with a 5.04 team ERA.

If the Phillies intend on being sellers, they also can try to shed closer Jonathan Papelbon and his $13 million salary to any buyers. 

Papelbon owns a 1.08 ERA and five saves in eight appearances out of the Philadelphia pen, but the team has little need for a stopper as it continues to plummet in the standings. To shed his salary would be ideal for Philadelphia, and the Blue Jays—who also reportedly have interest in Hamels—also have been in the mix for Papelbon, per CSNPhilly.com.

However, Toronto dropped out of those talks as the season progressed, according to CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman.

there are no discussions ongoing with the jays regarding papelbon, by the way

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) March 29, 2015

In addition to those two pitchers, the Phillies may consider dealing Utley. Although the veteran second baseman is not putting up All-Star statistics so far this season, he is an impending free agent.

The team would be wise to try to get something in exchange for Utley, instead of simply allowing him to walk for free.

Utley previously made it clear to the organization that he did not want to leave Philadelphia, according to ESPN’s Buster Olney, but that position may have changed with the team’s current standing.

But there is some curiosity about whether this will change, in the face of the Phillies’ dim prospects now or in the immediate future. Jimmy Rollins chose to leave, accepting a trade to the Dodgers, and rival evaluators believe Cole Hamels wants out, as well.

Utley is a California native that attended UCLA. Naturally, both Los Angeles teams—the Dodgers and the Angels—make season for that reason. Dodgers second baseman Howie Kendrick is batting .295 this year with 14 RBI. Angels second baseman Johnny Giavotella is batting .317 with 10 RBI. 

All signs point to the Phillies making some moves before the 2015 MLB All-Star break. They’ve been rumored to do so for months, and all signs point to it finally coming to fruition.

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Every start Cole Hamels makes is an audition. And with each performance, his audience appears to be growing.

If that is indeed the case, they must be liking what they’re seeing.

Hamels made his fifth start of 2015 Monday night, and it was a good one. The ace left-hander led the Philadelphia Phillies to a 4-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals with seven innings of one-run ball. He did allow four walks, but he also permitted just four hits and struck out nine.

That makes it three starts out of four that Hamels has pitched at least six innings while allowing no more than one earned run. His overall ERA is 3.19, which looks an awful lot like his career 3.27 ERA. If one didn’t know any better, one would say he’s still one of the best pitchers in the National League.

So, that sound you’re hearing is Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. rubbing his hands together with excitement. He has a pretty massive rebuilding job on his hands, and the guy who was supposed to be his best trade chip isn’t letting him down.

That alone would be good enough for Hamels’ trade value. But as you might have noticed, what’s helping it even further is that his list of possible suitors is growing by the day.

And at the top of the list might be the team Hamels just beat.

The Cardinals confirmed Monday that staff ace Adam Wainwright has been lost for the season with a torn Achilles. He’s a guy few pitchers are capable of replacing, and the club’s in-house options certainly fall well short in that regard. 

Because it’s still only April, the Cardinals understandably aren’t rushing to make a trade. But GM John Mozeliak did tell Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he “might have to look outside” eventually, and it’s a good bet Hamels will be at the top of his wish list if and when that time comes.

It was reported during the winter that the Cardinals were interested in trading for Hamels, with the idea being to add a left-handed ace to their rotation. The 31-year-old’s production obviously still fits the bill, and so does his stuff. FanGraphs can vouch that Hamels’ velocity is still in the low-90s, and that his trademark changeup is once again contributing to an outstanding swinging-strike rate.

There is one complication, though. The Cardinals might be able to afford to take on the bulk of Hamels’ remaining contract—four years and at least $100 million—but Bob Nightengale of USA Today says they “don’t quite have the pieces” to satisfy the rebuilding Phillies in trade talks.

Part of that has to do with how there are at least two other major suitors whose need for Hamels has only gotten larger.

One is the Los Angeles Dodgers. They were also connected to Hamels over the winter, and they too have an injured starter that needs replacing. The club announced Monday that veteran right-hander Brandon McCarthy needs Tommy John surgery, and is done for the year.

Because the Dodgers are even shorter on in-house options than the Cardinals, what Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register says here makes perfect sense:

The Dodgers are indeed a legit threat to land Hamels. This is yet another championship-or-bust season for them, and they have more than enough money to afford him. According to Baseball America, they also have the No. 3 farm system in the league to entice the Phillies with.

But the Boston Red Sox might be able to beat the Dodgers to the punch if they deem their need for Hamels strong enough. And the way things are going, it’s trending in that direction.

The Red Sox don’t have any major injury problems in their starting rotation. Their problem is more that the rotation itself is a problem, as the 5.84 ERA owned by Boston starters is by far the worst in baseball. They’re obliging the many skeptics who claimed the Red Sox rotation was lacking a truly reliable starter.

If the Red Sox decide Hamels can be that guy, they definitely have the means to go get him. They also have a lot of money to throw around, as well as Baseball America’s No. 2-ranked farm system. It’s been reported that the Red Sox won’t part with Mookie Betts or Blake Swihart to land Hamels, but they have plenty of other goodies they can pony up to get him.

The Cardinals, Dodgers and Red Sox were already lurking on the Hamels market before the season even began. Now it’s probably fair to say the three of them are front and center, and that any of the three could decide in the near future that having Hamels is a necessity rather than a luxury.

But they may not be alone there.

The Chicago Cubs were another team linked to Hamels over the winter, and they could still move on him with 2015 shaping up to be a return to form for the franchise. Like the Red Sox, the Baltimore Orioles, Toronto Blue Jays and Chicago White Sox are would-be contenders in need of starting pitching. Justin Verlander fell from grace in 2014 and is now dealing with a nagging arm injury, so don’t rule out the Detroit Tigers as a mystery team in the Hamels sweepstakes.

This is all music to the ears of Amaro. He was criticized during the winter for putting too high a price on Hamels, and warned by some know-it-alls that waiting to deal him during the summer was an unnecessary roll of the dice. But the way things are shaping up, it now looks like there’s a real chance his gamble will pay off.

For now, it’s unlikely anything is imminent. Prospective Hamels suitors and all other teams are still in the beta testing phases of their seasons, so it’s a bit soon for such a massive trade to go down. The Hamels waiting game will probably be resolved in weeks, not days.

But a blockbuster trade should happen eventually. With needs for Hamels’ services arising left and right and in all the right places, this is a scenario that’s seemingly been upgraded from an “if” to a “when.”

Assuming, of course, that Hamels can keep nailing his auditions.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Cliff Lee has sent Ruben Amaro Jr. his much-needed wake-up call.

Now it is up to Amaro to actually wake up.

Lee is the Philadelphia Phillies former ace and currently a 36-year-old left-hander whose balky elbow has him face to face with the end of his successful career. Amaro is the Phillies’ general manager and currently the man who still has not traded his one strong bargaining chip and current left-handed ace, Cole Hamels.

But Amaro should not be that guy for much longer. He should move Hamels in the near future if not immediately. And if he keeps Hamels longer than that, then he should cease to be the team’s GM. Either way, Amaro should not be that guy for much longer.

Don’t hold any precious breaths waiting for that to happen, though. Lee’s career-threatening elbow injury is not going to push Amaro into trading Hamels, and apparently, neither is any other injuries to pitchers on other clubs.

“Nope,” Amaro told ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark when asked if his asking price on Hamels has softened after Lee’s injury. “Why would it change? No reason to change it.

“I don’t know what our ‘stance’ on Cole is. Others have ‘stances,’ I guess, for us. I guess other people must think we have a ‘stance.’ Our ‘stance’ is that we’re open-minded. And that hasn’t changed one bit.”

But open-minded in Amaro’s world seems to differ from common folk.

Here is the Cole Hamels Situation, or “stance,” as we have come to know it since last July at the non-waiver trade deadline: Amaro has refused and will continue to refuse any trade offer for his ace that does not completely knock him off his designer loafers.

Many Rival evaluators find PHI asks on their players to be greatly overpriced within the context of the current market, as they did in July.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 19, 2014

The inherent injury risk of hanging onto Hamels does not even register into Amaro’s thinking.

“There’s no lesson learned from Lee’s situation because it’s a totally different situation. One guy is hurt. The other guy is completely healthy,” Amaro dissected to Stark.

“All pitchers can get hurt. All players can get hurt. It can happen any time,” Amaro later added. “That has nothing to do with the way we go about our business, [by] planning for a player to get hurt. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Understandable. You do not “plan” for a player’s injury without any pre-existing knowledge that he is prone to having one, which is Hamels’ situation. Still, trading your most valuable asset at his highest value in order to fully kick-start your team’s rebuild is not the same as planning for injury.

It is just wise, especially when we have now learned over the last eight and a half months that Amaro’s dream package is not dropping onto his doorstep. And if it does between now and next July 31, it likely means that the pieces he covets have significantly lost value to their current organizations, which also does not bode well for the Phillies.

The teams the Phillies have flirted with—the Red Sox, the Rangers, the Yankees, the Padres—have aggressive but analytical front offices. If they are unwilling to part with key prospects at this point, especially when they lack a true ace (Red Sox) or have just lost one for the season (Rangers), their minds are unlikely to change. This becomes particularly true next offseason when you consider the crop of available starting pitchers might be the deepest in the history of free agency.

And if Amaro hangs onto Hamels beyond this coming July, his value drops dramatically with three years instead of four on his contract, another year of age and mileage on his arm and plenty of other options on the market that do not cost high-end prospects.

“Again, if there were deals that we felt were appropriate for us to move forward, then we would,” Amaro told Todd Zolecki of MLB.com last month before Lee was hurt and before the Rangers lost Yu Darvish to Tommy John surgery. “So far some of the deals that we’ve discussed with some of our players have not yielded what we’ve wanted to do. And in some cases, we feel like we’re better off staying with the players that we have for a variety of different reasons. We’ll move forward accordingly.”

But what forward is there to move toward without a trade for Hamels? The team has no other pieces worth salivating over, and it is clearly not in a position to win anytime soon, with or without Hamels. Hamels understands this and has stopped barely short of asking for a trade to a contender during this spring training.

So instead of waiting for the eye-popping prospect package, which is just not available these days like it was when the Rangers traded Mark Teixeira in 2007, the Phillies ought to seek their best available offer as soon as possible and be done with this cloud of constant speculation.

At one point this offseason, we all saw Lee, if healthy and effective, as a trade piece at some point before August. That option has been erased.

Now, Lee is a simply a reminder of one of the possible risks of hanging onto Hamels too dearly. His injury is not the reason Hamels should be traded but more of a notice of what could happen in a worst-case world.

The reason for a Hamels trade has long been upon us considering the Phillies have lost 259 games in the last three seasons. And until now, Amaro has engaged in the kind of hardball no other MLB executive is willing to play, and it is costing his franchise valuable time in its attempt to regain relevancy.

Lee’s elbow is Amaro’s alarm sounding. The Phillies now have to hope his snooze button is broken.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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Cliff Lee‘s left elbow made it through just one spring training start—and all of two innings—last Thursday before he was shut down the following day with another bout of elbow discomfort in the same spot that plagued him for much of 2014.

The 13-year veteran went for an MRI on Sunday that revealed some inflammation, and while it’s too early to tell yet, Lee did acknowledge that surgery is at least a possibility. If that’s how this plays out, then Lee’s 2015 season will be over before it even begins—and there’s a chance his baseball career could be finished too.

“It would be 6-8 months out,” Lee said, via Matt Breen of The Philadelphia Inquirer. “So basically if I have the surgery this season will be done. Possibly my career I guess. I don’t know. We’ll have to see.”

And just like that, all the pressure is back on general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. and the rest of the Philadelphia Phillies front office to do right by a rebuilding organization and make the most out of the club’s final big trade chip, Cole Hamels.

Were it only about his success, experience and postseason history, Lee would make for an enticing option for the Phillies to peddle to clubs eying a proven starter—provided, of course, they made the $37.5 million Lee is owed more palatable.

But combined with that amount of money, this latest run-in with elbow discomfort or soreness makes Lee absolutely immovable.

As Ryan Lawrence of the Philadelphia Daily News writes:

The Phillies (and Lee) obviously hoped to see the pitcher progress this spring without any issues. Had Lee stayed healthy, he could have been a nice trade chip for Amaro and Co. … and Lee himself could have potentially joined another team prior to the July trade deadline as he pursues an elusive World Series ring.

That is out the window at this point. If Lee weren’t considered damaged goods after making just 13 starts in 2014—none after July 31—due to elbow problems, well, he definitely is now.

Even if Lee were to be OK enough to pitch in the first half of the season, there’s just not going to be much interest in or market for a 36-year-old left-hander with a contract that is cumbersome (and then some) and, more importantly, an elbow that is unwilling to cooperate.

Which brings us back to Hamels, who now more than ever is Amaro’s last chance to turn the aging, injury-prone core of what was a top-notch team for several years into a batch of young, cost-controlled talent to help with a long-overdue rebuilding project that has just begun.

A 31-year-old southpaw, Hamels has been at the center of trade rumors dating back to last July and continuing all throughout this past offseason, as Jim Salisbury of CSNPhilly.com notes.

While Amaro did manage to bring in some prospects, like Tom Windle, Zach Eflin and Ben Lively, by swapping longtime shortstop Jimmy Rollins and in-his-final-act outfielder Marlon Byrd, Hamels remains the lone piece that could net a return of real, franchise-altering value.

Nobody is knocking down Amaro’s door to ask about closer Jonathan Papelbon, and nobody is even picking up the phone to inquire about first baseman Ryan Howard.

The reports all along have been that Amaro has refused to budge on his terms involving Hamels, according to Jayson Stark of ESPN.com. That means the GM won’t trade him unless the acquiring club sends an elite package of prospects and picks up most, if not all, of the $96 million Hamels is due through 2018.

“Cole Hamels is a known entity,” Amaro told Stark. “A known winner. A known World Series MVP. A known top-of-the-rotation starting pitcher. If Cole Hamels continues to be Cole Hamels, which we fully expect him to be, why would [his trade value] decline?”

Funny, but a similar sentiment might have been uttered about Lee this time last year.

Further complicating matters is the fact that Hamels has a $20 million option for 2019 that he might want picked up if dealt, especially to one of the teams on his limited no-trade clause.

The good news here is that Hamels has yet to show any sort of decline or injury concern, meaning his value on the trade front remains relatively high. He is, after all, coming off a career-best 2.46 ERA last year.

That’s a big reason why Amaro needs to get it right when it comes to trading Hamels, which feels like an inevitability by now, whether it happens in the month between now and the start of the regular season or by the trade deadline at the end of July.

It’s also a big reason why Amaro should be willing to bend, if only a little bit, in his demands with regard to a return for Hamels. If nothing else, Lee—who had a 2.80 ERA while making at least 30 starts in each of his first three seasons since re-signing with Philadelphia—is an unmistakable example of how fast a pitcher’s career can be derailed.

Here’s Amaro’s bottom line: More than ever, he needs to get it right when trading Hamels, but in light of Lee’s latest ailment, the leverage is going in the wrong direction.

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