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Gillick knows losses are on the way for Phillies

CLEARWATER, Fla. - The memory is always what amazes Pat Gillick's coworkers. It's as if he is performing some sort of magic trick.

Pat Gillick. (Steven M. Falk/Staff Photographer)
Pat Gillick. (Steven M. Falk/Staff Photographer)Read more

CLEARWATER, Fla. - The memory is always what amazes Pat Gillick's coworkers. It's as if he is performing some sort of magic trick.

"It's a fabulous memory," Phillies senior adviser Dallas Green said after a recent workout at the Carpenter Complex. "I wish I had one-tenth of it. I really do. He has phone numbers of scouts who worked for him years and years ago right in his head, and he can just dial the phone. It amazes me every time he does it."

Gillick, in his first spring training as the Phillies' team president, has an encyclopedic memory that has served him well in a variety of ways.

"He has a great recall on ballplayers," Green said. "He has a great recall on what has happened in the past, and he's also up to date on things. He's on the computer a good bit, and he reads as much as he can. I was a general manager and I learned things from him since he's been here that I wished I had known when I was a general manager."

The Phillies are hoping that Gillick can remember how to rebuild a baseball team, which would be quite a magic trick given how far the franchise has fallen in the last two seasons. In truth, Gillick never has actually rebuilt a team. He built the expansion Toronto Blue Jays from the ground up as their general manager starting in 1977.

After six straight losing seasons out of the gate, the Blue Jays had a winning record for 11 straight years, collecting five division titles and two World Series championships along the way. By his own admission, his other stops as a baseball general manager were different.

"Going way back to when I was in Toronto, that was a building situation," Gillick said. "The last three places I've really been were Baltimore, Seattle, and Philly, and they had a group together, and we collectively threw in some pieces that they needed to win right then, and they did win right then.

"This is really a challenge. It's a little different because you not only have to develop younger players, there are also certain players on the roster you have to remove."

This is more than a little different, and it is also going to be extremely difficult. Gillick was 39 years old when he started building the Blue Jays, and there was plenty of time and room for patience from the ownership and the fans. He is 77 now and not the general manager. He is the team president. Unlike David Montgomery, the man who preceded him, Gillick does not have to worry too much about the business aspect of the Phillies operations. What the owners want from him is an immediate step in the right direction.

Gillick knows he doesn't have much time for that to happen. He is on record as saying he has no intention of making his tenure as team president a long-term deal.

"I think he is pretty resigned to the fact that this is a one-year deal," Green said. "I don't think he has designs to go any further than that."

What then does Gillick want the organization to look like at the end of the 2015 season? What would be considered a success for a team expected to finish last in the National League East for the second straight season?

"I would like to be able to say we were able to integrate some younger players into the lineup and that they had got their feet on the ground both physically and mentally," Gillick said. "I think the mental transition is a greater transition than the physical transition."

Gillick did not make the transition so many Phillies fans wanted to see this offseason: the firing of Ruben Amaro Jr. He knows how unpopular the general manager has become, but he still believes in Amaro and is bothered that he has become a human pinata.

"Oh, yeah, but what are you going to do?" Gillick said. "Now somebody can sit in their basement and take punches at you and never show up. I think Ruben is a really good people person with the players and the staff."

Gillick is also open about the greatest weakness of his general manager and the entire organization.

"He wants to win so badly because he is from Philadelphia, he played for the Phillies, his dad was a Phillie . . . and sometimes he wants it to happen right now, and he gets a little impatient," Gillick said. "I think it's difficult for anyone to make that transition. Not only for him, but I think it is for everyone. Looking back, we probably started this rebuild a year too late. It should have started after 2013, for sure. We probably lost a year. Fourteen should have been '15."

In that scenario, the Phillies probably would already be rid of Cole Hamels, Cliff Lee, and Jonathan Papelbon. They would have even more young prospects than the stable of arms they acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, Cincinnati Reds, and Pittsburgh Pirates this offseason. They would have more guys closer to being major-league ready.

Instead, the first four members of the starting rotation - Hamels, Lee, Aaron Harang, and Jerome Williams - average 34 years of age, and there is a good chance none of them will be around when the Phillies are good again.

"If we had some young people that could compete for those positions one through four, then those young people might displace one of those four guys," Gillick said. "Right now that's one of the voids we have. If we move a veteran guy, we're going to have to put somebody in there that's probably not ready. We want to rebuild, but we don't want to be embarrassing. I don't think we want to embarrass the fans, and I don't want to be embarrassed when we go on the field."

That, however, is what a lot of people believe is going to happen to Pat Gillick and the Phillies in the man's first, and perhaps only, full season as the team president.

"That doesn't bother me," Gillick said. "That is just people's opinions. We're certainly not one of the best teams in baseball, but I'm not sure we're the worst team, either."

Perhaps not, but Gillick's memory of all those losses during his early seasons with Toronto should serve him well in 2015.