Phillies’ shortstop Jimmy Rollins has once again stirred the pot of controversy, this time by questioning his own front office.
While on Dan Patrick’s Radio Show, Rollins reignited the debate of why the 
Phillies couldn’t keep Cliff Lee when they traded for Roy Halladay.
“I have no idea. I’m sure we could afford him. We turned nearly 4 million people through the turnstiles last year. I don’t know. You should have (Phillies GM) Ruben (Amaro) on here… When the trade happened, I actually got a text from Jayson Werth and he was like, ‘What are we doing?’ And I was like, ‘Didn’t we get Halladay?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, but we traded Lee.’ And my mouth dropped like, ‘That wasn’t part of the deal.’
“I really don’t know. I thought we had enough to keep him. I thought we could have done enough to keep him. I guess that’s just a move the Yankees do… That’s just the truth. The Yankees would have been like, ‘Hey, we got a chance to keep both of them. We’ll pay them both for a year or two and we got a chance to win a championship.’”
(The transcript is from Sports Radio Interviews. You can find the audio here.)
While I would certainly have loved for the Phillies to have both Lee and Halladay at the top of their rotation, I don’t fault Amaro for making the move. I understand his desire to not entirely deplete the team’s farm system. And I also understand the counter argument that their window is now and they need to put the best team on the field possible to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox.
Regardless of how you feel about the Lee move, it’s disingenuous for Rollins to gripe that the Phillies haven’t done enough to put a World Series caliber team on the field. Yes, they traded Lee, but they also acquired the best pitcher in baseball. They’re paying Ryan Howard $18 million a year. They have the best second baseman in baseball and one of the best outfields in baseball. Their new third baseman is a Gold Glove fielder and one of the better contact hitters in the game. Not to mention that they tolerate Rollins being the worst leadoff hitter in baseball history (I may be exaggerating there, but not by much).
This is just another example of Rollins sticking his foot in his mouth. In 2008, he called out the Philadelphia fans as being too fairweather and harsh. He apologized a couple days later after the fans erupted in outrage.
Craig Calcaterra of Hardball Talk over at NBCsports.com made a good point in his column Thursday that,
Of course, it’s not like Rollins has any special insight as to whether trading him was the right move. Veterans will always, always, always prefer to keep their fellow veterans on a team over making trades that will help replenish the system with prospects.
Nevertheless, I think it’s inappropriate and disingenuous for Rollins to call out Amaro like that. I’m not saying he has to tow the company line all the time, but his complaints are unwarranted.
He’s right, the Phillies aren’t the Yankees. They don’t own their own network and don’t play in the biggest media market in the world. But they have the fourth highest payroll in baseball.
And that ain’t nothin to sneeze at.
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