Ruben Amaro Still Believes In Domonic Brown
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Domonic Brown is finally getting his chance to play every day for the Phillies. After injuries and a trade for Hunter Pence stood in the way of the opporutnity for consistent at-bats with the team, Brown won the left field spot with a dominant Spring Training.
Brown's regular season hasn't start off quite as hot as his Grapefruit League season did, hitting .228 with a double and two home runs. Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. still thinks Brown can get the job done.
"I believe in the guys that are going to get opportunities here," Amaro told 94WIP's Michael Barkann and Ike Reese. "We believe in Domonic Brown being able to be a guy who can contribute to us on a regular basis. He still has to be prove that to us, but we believe in him. He has the ability to do that."
"Again, it's still fairly early in the season. It's a short sample size right now, but at some point the guys are going to have to start producing hopefully a little bit on a regular basis," Amaro said.
The corner outfield spots were a question coming into the season, and the questions in both left and right field remain. It probably doesn't help that Ben Revere hasn't been as productive as the team has hoped yet.
Delmon Young, who Amaro says he expects to play right field, is in Clearwater on a rehab assignment.
"Delmon Young is getting closer, he's probably somewhere between a week and ten days away," Amaro said. "He'll probably go on to Lehigh Valley at some point within the next several days. But again, we got to play well enough defensively out there to be able to hold down the fort for our pitchers. We've got to catch the baseball."
"I'm hopeful that at some point, we get either Delmon [Young] or whomever to step up and be that guy. If we can't, then we'll try to find someone who can."
The Phillies, at 8-11, sit in fourth place in the NL East, 5.5 games behind the division leading Braves.
"The good thing about it is, we haven't played great baseball and we still have eight wins under our belt, which is a good thing," Amaro said. "We are a better club than we played so far. When you have guys like Chase [Utley] making errors, and some of our guys not making plays and playing the kind of clean baseball that we are accustom to out of our guys, for us to be where we are not having swung the bats very well at all, being kind of where we are right now is not the worst thing in the world. I'm not pleased, necessarily, about how we've played don't get me wrong, but at the same time we could be at a lot worse positions than we are now and we just have to start playing better baseball. We haven't done it and I think as a group, collectively, I think everybody understands it."
