MacPhail: Phillies much better off already

One hundred and 99 days ago, the Phillies introduced Andy MacPhail as their president-in-waiting, the successor to Hall of Fame executive Pat Gillick. MacPhail, a lifelong baseball man who had stepped away from the game for more than three years, sat down that night in a private box at Citizens Bank Park to get a closer look at what he was getting himself into.

The Phillies were beginning a four-game series with the Milwaukee Brewers and even though they owned the worst record in baseball, the Brewers were only two games better in the National League standings.

"We were behind before we got an at-bat in every game," MacPhail, now the team president, recalled Monday afternoon inside his spacious ballpark office at One Citizens Bank Way. "Our pitchers, a lot of them had some age on them and you could tell they weren't the long-range solutions."

In order, the Phillies starters were Sean O'Sullivan, Cole Hamels, Aaron Harang and Chad Billingsley. Hamels was the only one with an ERA under 4.00 and the only one with any value beyond being available to pitch that particular night. The Brewers swept the series.

"So I'm thinking, 'Man, we're going to have to do some serious work about augmenting the pitching,' " MacPhail said.

By the end of July, the serious work had commenced. Closer Jonathan Papelbon had been traded to the Washington Nationals, an addition-by-subtraction move that ridded the Phillies of a clubhouse malcontent. A few days later, Cole Hamels, along with reliever Jake Diekman, had been sent to Texas Rangers in return for six players, including five minor-league prospects.

A whirlwind of events followed. Chase Utley was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, bringing the Phillies one step closer to removing all the roster remnants from the glory days that had gone bad. Ruben Amaro Jr. was fired as general manager. Matt Klentak was hired as his replacement. Ken Giles became trade bait rather than the closer of the future. Analytics became the franchise buzzword at the behest of ownership partner John Middleton.

Now, with spring training just over a month away, MacPhail looks forward and sees a bright future.

"I'm very pleased with the results," he said. "I think those transactions that we were able to make with Ruben at the trade deadline on top of what Matt has been able to do since that time has probably been about as much as I could have hoped for in terms of bringing in younger players and trying to augment the numbers of the starting pitching."

At 62, MacPhail was energized by his time away from the game. He walked away from his job as president of baseball operations with the Orioles in October of 2011 because he wanted to spend more time with his dying father, Lee, a baseball Hall of Famer who once served as the American League president.

"I never had regrets," he said. "My dad was dying and I spent time with him. I fulfilled my contract, so I was a free agent. I could leave if I wanted. I had started to become resentful of the amount of time that I was spending at the ballpark and there were a lot of things I wanted to do."

Summer travel was one of them and that's an impossible endeavor for a man running a baseball team. Vietnam, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru were among the stops he made with his wife, Lark.

"I still have visions of people when I was in Hanoi," he said. "There was this road with buildings on either side and they all had retail on the bottom and the people living up at the top. You'd see them sweeping in front of their stores at 7 o'clock at night and I'm thinking, 'There are a lot of people grinding this out pretty hard. You're not the only one devoting a lot of hours to your profession and you ought to be damn grateful for the environment you're in when you are working.' "

MacPhail is living in Old City and loving the long hours again.

"The thing that I missed the most was the offseason," he said. "I missed that more than the season because that was the time [the front office] got to play. I missed trying to put the stuff together in terms of the trades and what was going on with the sport in general. I enjoy all that stuff and obviously I missed spring training like every human being does."

Time will tell what the trades of Hamels, Giles and others have done for the future of the Phillies, but MacPhail sounds like a confident man when he talks about his new team.

"I don't have any doubt in my mind," he said when asked if the 2016 Phillies are in better shape the 2015 team. "It is much better positioned. Not only is it going to be younger, but it is going to be more flexible going forward. We're going through a process right now that is going to be very helpful to us in the future."

MacPhail believes one sign that the Phillies are headed in the right direction should come when outlets like Baseball America do their annual organizational rankings.

"I would be surprised if those people who evaluate baseball farm systems don't put the Phillies in the top third," he said. "I think that's where it belongs."

Baseball America's rankings came out last year at the end of March and the Phillies ranked in the bottom third at No. 21. They were 23d in 2014, 24th in 2013 and 27th in 2012, so if MacPhail is right, it would represent a huge leap in the perception of the franchise's young players.

Baseball Prospectus said this about the Phillies last week: Long a laughingstock for prioritizing athletes who couldn't hit, the Phillies are now as loaded at the top of the system as any team in baseball. The rebuild started later than it should have, but it might not take long.

"It doesn't assure success, but it's going to be a snapshot in time and I think that's where that snapshot is," MacPhail said.

The Phillies' new president is correct. There are no guarantees that all of this is going to work, but you have to appreciate his confidence and his accountability.

"To me, everything is here," he said. "The ownership is here. The resources are here. The facilities are here. If we don't get this thing turned around in an appropriate amount of time, it's nobody's fault but our own."

It sure sounds as if the team president feels the Phillies have come a long way in 199 days.

bbrookover@phillynews.com

@brookob