Everyone in agreement that Phillies were, are terrible

We've long been complaining about how the Phillies are bad and Ruben Amaro Jr. is not the man to make them better. But after the trade deadline and the Phillies' zero reactions to it, the team and Amaro were exposed nationally. It's now become a universal reality that what the Phillies did - which was nothing, remember - was the wrong thing to do (or not do, I guess).

So here comes the pile-on from so-called "experts" who think that overvaluing players and offering insane contracts will somehow be bad for a baseball team.

"Amaro seems to think that the onus was on other teams to bowl the Phillies over. In reality, the onus was on him."

--Ben Lindbergh, Grantland

"Pretty much the worst possible thing the Phillies could have done at the deadline is stand pat and not unload some of those contracts. That's exactly what they did."

--Mike Axisa, CBS Sports

"I don't want to be overly simplistic here, but pretty much any move, even for the proverbial bag of balls, would have improved this club."

--Barry Petchesky, Deadspin

"Well, OK. But if the rest of baseball doesn't value what you have the way you do, maybe you're the one overstating the value of what you have? Wouldn't be the first time Amaro has done this.

Anyway, like they say: if it ain't broke, oh, wait. Never mind."

--Craig Calcaterra, Hardball Talk

"The Philadelphia Phillies are looking like a real mess."

--Tom Van Riper, Forbes

"I think we have pretty good people doing these jobs. We saw, over a long period, pretty good success with this group of people. Obviously, Ruben is part of that group."

--Phillies CEO David Montgomery, a little over a month ago

Ha ha, whoops! How did that get in there?