Phillies changing the way they do business

In the heyday years that surrounded their first World Series championship in 1980, no Major League Baseball team was more hidebound to the traditions of how an organization scouts prospects, develops its roster, and plays the game than the Philadelphia Phillies.

It was in that incubator of old-school ball that Ruben Amaro Jr. first experienced the Phillies Way as a batboy during high school. Paul Owens was the general manager, a believer in the virtue of a bountiful farm system and the legion of bird dogs who stocked it as they sat in sweltering stands at high school and college games and didn't need a stopwatch to know if a player was fast or a spreadsheet to know if he could get on base. The Phillies, from top to bottom, worked hard and played hard, both on and off the field. Just like always.

That era was hell on wheels in some ways and always backed by the patrician ownership of the Carpenters, one of the last of baseball's dynastic families, and then by the hand-in-glove fit of the mannered group put together by Bill Giles to purchase the team in 1981. Not much changed.

In the end - and the firing of Amaro should be considered the real end of that era - that became the problem. Not much changed. The team enjoyed some decent seasons over the years, and a second championship, but now, after all this time, things have finally changed. An owner has stepped out of the shadows to put a face on expectations for future success, and an outsider team president has excised a general manager whose life in the Phillies Way was handed down from his father the way the team itself had been once handed down from Bob Carpenter to Ruly Carpenter.

This is a parting from the past, and before Amaro is vilified for failing to bring about the fundamental change to an organization that really needs it, understand that he didn't create the culture, but was instead a product of it. If you loved the 1980 team, he was there, handing bats to Schmidt and Luzinski and Maddox. If you thought the 1993 team of overachieving dirtballs was endearing, Amaro was on that roster, having taken a circuitous path to return to his roots. And if the most recent run of great baseball is freshest in your mind, Amaro's role as assistant general manager is part of that story, too.

On Thursday, the organization - as represented by part-owner John Middleton and incoming president Andy MacPhail - closed the book on those pages. The sense, gained more from Middleton's comments than those of MacPhail, who steadfastly declined to paw the ashes of the past, is that change was necessary because any success gained by using the old methods was doomed to be both short-lived and based more on good fortune than good planning.

"Even though people are making decisions in groups, there is still a person who is primarily responsible for that decision and has to be held accountable," Middleton said. "So, I think we recognize that we had a problem, and we're trying as fast as we can to get out of that problem and get back to winning. That's what this is about. This decision was only about how we get back to winning sooner rather than later."

The search for the next general manager is under way, and MacPhail said it is a mistake to limit that search to candidates with only one kind of toolbox, but it would still be a shock if the hire is not young and very interested in basing decisions on an analytical approach that lessens the influence of spit-in-the-dirt gut instincts. That is clearly Middleton's preference, and it is easy to imagine the organization's vision of a new-age general manager working in concert with the more experienced MacPhail to make decisions.

"The person . . . has to be able to think outside the box and be willing to do that. He has to be able to push himself and this organization and make it better, has to be able to embrace change," Middleton said. "[MacPhail] has to find a partner who can drive that culture, who can drive that change and work with him to do that."

Middleton said the new direction has been so long in arriving because "one of the hardest things to do when you're a very successful organization is to push change through it."

That doesn't explain the team's static approach during the 23-year span from 1984 to 2006 when the Phillies made one postseason appearance, but it does speak to the hold that Giles and Dave Montgomery exerted over the ownership group during that time. The Phillies did things the way they did things, and that was that.

It can be fairly argued that the last decade has seen more alteration in what it takes to win than any decade that preceded it, and that is what pressed Middleton and the other owners into action. But the last decade was also pretty good to the Phillies. Throughout the recent cycle of boom and bust, Amaro was there for all of it. Now he's out, and a good deal of what the Phillies have been, going back to the Carpenters, went out with him.

"This was a more difficult decision than I anticipated it was going to be. When I came here, saw the record, and saw that first four-game series against Milwaukee, I didn't think this one was going to be as hard as it turned out to be," MacPhail said. "But I have a responsibility to the franchise, the fans, and ownership to do what I think best and get this thing back where it was as quickly as I can and as efficiently as I can. So that was the basis for my decision."

There will be a new Phillies Way. It will be designed to be more modern and nimble. It will be designed to win baseball games. The old way won some games, too, but living in the past is not only out of favor these days, it is out of work.

bford@phillynews.com

@bobfordsports