Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Ryan Howard (L) and Albert Pujols.

CLEARWATER Fla. — The Ryan Howard for Albert Pujols rumour was, to Philadelphia Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr., a travesty.

"It's ridiculous," Amaro said, after the alleged trade talks were reported on ESPN.com this past week. "It's unequivocally false. It's unfair to Ryan. It's unfair to the organization to have to answer the questions."

Unfair to Howard? I guess you could argue that.

But unfair to the organization?

A rumoured deal of this magnitude was, in fact, a compliment to one of the premier baseball organizations of the new millennium, and a tribute to a GM who has shown he has the guts to contemplate that magnitude of a trade.

It is hard to win, even harder not to deplete your farm system at the same time. But Amaro Jr.’s Phils are on the verge of becoming just the 17th club — and only the ninth organization — to appear in three consecutive World Series’. Meanwhile, he recycled Cliff Lee for Roy Halladay in the biggest deal of the off-season, and kept his organizational depth intact in the bargain.

On one of the first sunny, warm days at Bright House Field this spring, Amaro began his Saturday at a boosters breakfast stocked full of red-pinstripe-clad oldsters escaping the cold of Philly for a little Grapefruit League ball.

He took the microphone to field questions, as successful a GM as these blue-hairs had ever seen in their many days as Phillies fans. But alas, they were still Philadelphians, so the questions were tough.

"Why did you have to trade Cliff Lee," one old bird asked him, "just because you brought in Roy Halladay?"

The answer is not an easy one, considering that Lee was the only starting pitcher that the New York Yankees couldn’t solve in last fall’s World Series. But Amaro —who played more than 3,000 minor league games in his day, including a couple of Triple-A seasons as an Edmonton Trapper— is pretty savvy at coming up with tough answers.

Did he know when they dealt for Halladay that the soon-to-be free agent Lee would be out the door?

"At the outset? Probably not," he told sportsnet.ca afterwards. "But we got to the point where we knew we would have to move so much talent (to Toronto for Halladay), then we’d have to replenish it. When we tried to review, and talk about some other players who we (could trade) and replenish our system with, Lee turned out to be the best bet for us."

This was Sustainability 101 for the Phillies. Amaro had traded Kyle Drabek, Michael Taylor and Travis D'Arnaud to Toronto for Halladay, seriously depleting his farm system.

Drabek was the best up and coming arm in their organization, gone for a pitcher who will be 33 in May. The order of succession that was once Lee (31) to Cole Hamels (27) to Drabek (22) was now just Halladay/Lee to Hamels.

So was this going to be about being good right now? Or being good long-term?

Amaro bet on Hamels having a bounce back season and being his No. 2 starter, and he moved Lee to Seattle for Gatineau native Phillippe Aumont and prospects Tyson Gillies and J.C. Ramirez.

In the end, the farm system is happy, and the big league team didn’t get any further away from the Series.

"I think anytime you get Roy Halladay," reasoned manager Charlie Manuel, typically boiling things down to their least complex state, "it's probably got to be pretty good."

After missing out on Halladay at the trade deadline, Amaro pursued. Sure, Lee was the guy who struck out 10 Yankees in Game 1 of the ’09 Series, refusing to allow an earned run in a 6-1 victory. Then he won again in Game 5.

But Halladay was something else again. His arrival marks an infusion of hunger into a clubhouse that has played a lot of fall ball over the past two seasons, and a cell of confidence that makes even the best teams better.

"I call him a Chase Utley on the mound," Amaro said of his intense, competitive second baseman whose Series production in ’09 was, as they say today, sick. "These are guys who are so incredibly dedicated to their craft … when you have a lot of those guys in your clubhouse, it resonates. It makes a difference, the more guys you can have who are dedicated to their work the way they are."

Amaro is just as dedicated to winning, but not just today. It has become an every day — and every year — thing in Philly.