Ruben Amaro Jr. shows why change is needed

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"We can't do what's best for the fan. We have to do what's best for the organization so the fan can reap the benefit of it later on. That's the truth."

"Dad, what did you say about the fans?" Andrea Amaro texted

"Sweetheart, I'll talk to you later," the Phillies general manager texted back to his high school-aged daughter. "I'm going to go and apologize now. There was a little bit of a misunderstanding."

Compare Nola to Matt Harvey, the Met's 26-year-old ace pitcher. Harvey (who like Nola was drafted with the No. 7 pick) made 46 starts in the minors before being called up to New York. Nola, who had another strong outing on Saturday, has only made 21 minor league starts.

And it's not like this is the first time Amaro has had to apologize over inartful comments he has made. Back in February, Amaro apologized to Ryan Howard after getting on the radio and saying, "We've talked to Ryan. And I told him that in our situation it would probably bode better for the organization not with him but without him."

This became even more akward when Amaro was unable to trade Howard to another team, and the slugger showed up in Florida for spring training:

Deep down, maybe Amaro believes that he's entitled to more latitude than he's gotten from the Phillies' fan base, that the team's three division titles and 2009 World Series appearance over the first three seasons of his tenure as general manager should have earned him a kinder, gentler, longer grace period. And he'd be right if the Phillies' subsequent collapse weren't so predictable and preventable, if he and the team's ownership group and decision-makers hadn't held on too tightly to that brief period of greatness, if the Phillies hadn't wasted the 2013 and 2014 seasons in a laughable attempt to reload instead of beginning their rebuilding then.