Amaro: “I always feel under the gun.”

General Manager Ruben Amaro addressed reporters today and there were a number of notable soundbites. As reported by Todd Zolecki, Amaro stated he is beginning to feel the heat of not delivering a winner and on missing on players like Delmon Young, Danys Baez, and Chad Qualls. From Zolecki:

“I always feel under the gun,” Amaro said. “I put myself under the gun. I don’t listen to a lot of it. But listen, I’m the GM of the club, so I fully expect to take heat for it. I’m the one making the decisions on player personnel. I’m accountable for the things that have happened. I didn’t have a very good year; our team didn’t have a very good year. I think we win as a team and lose as a team. The fact of the matter is that I should take a lot of heat for it. I need to be better, and our guys need to be better. We need to evaluate better, we need to make better decisions and try to create a little better mojo overall.”

Perhaps the most notable comment of Amaro’s address was his concession on analytics. From Zolecki:

“We’re going to make some changes,” Amaro said. “I think we’re doing some stuff analytically to change the way do some evaluations. Look, we are going to continue to be a scouting organization. That said, I think we owe it to ourselves to look at some other ways to evaluate. We’re going to build more analytics into it. Is it going to change dramatically the way we go about our business? No, but we owe it to ourselves to at least explore other avenues. We may bring someone in from the outside, but we have not decided that yet.”

Other notable thoughts from Amaro’s address:

• Darin Ruf is not believed to be the solution in right field, particularly defensively. Amaro noted the Phillies could get creative and move Ben Revere to a corner outfield spot, possibly Revere in left and moving Domonic Brown back to right field.
• Amaro noted that “One (right fielder) just got tied up in Hunter (Pence),” which is enough for some to believe Amaro would have made a play to bring back Hunter Pence.
• Amaro wants to bring back Roy Halladay but noted that the largest hurdle is that Halladay would like to “come back to a contender”.
• Amaro noted his main priority was finalizing Ryne Sandberg‘s coaching staff, working on bringing back Carlos Ruiz, and trying to secure Halladay for 2014.