After a day of voting on the 94WIP Awards, Pat Gillick is running away with Best GM of the 2000s while his predecessor, Ed Wade, remains an afterthought.
Considering how he retooled a historically bad franchise into a winner all while building a championship foundation, Wade might be the most underrated general manager in recent history. By the time he was fired after eight years, Wade left the team in a drastically different place than he found it.
And still, Wade sits in the shadow of Gillick, the classy GM who put the finishing touches around a championship core of players Wade drafted. Every step along the way, Gillick graciously passed credit to Wade, including after the championship parade when he humbly said "This is Ed Wade's team."
It's time to wake up to Gillick's assertion and correct our misconceptions.
Wade is often defined by what he did not do: make the playoffs. It is no doubt a huge hole in his resume, but let's look at what he did accomplish:
Wade drafted incredibly well (Utley, Howard, Hamels, Myers, etc.), including in the Rule 5 draft where he selected Shane Victorino. He stole Bobby Abreu in a trade when he was assistant GM and acquired Billy Wagner, Doug Glanville, Kevin Millwood and Kenny Lofton for peanuts. He wooed Thome from the Indians after sending him heart-felt email on Thanksgiving. He went against the grain and hired Charlie Manuel, the greatest manager in Phillies history.
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From 2001 to 2005, the Phillies compiled the sixth-best record in the National League and their star players were just arriving on the scene. When Wade inherited the team in 1998, the Phillies had finished dead last in the division for two straight seasons and had posted a losing record in 10 of the previous 11 years. There was little talent in the pipeline. If anything, the early 2000s Phillies competitiveness was a result of an overachieving group of average players.
Wade made plenty of mistakes (David Bell, trading for relievers, Burrell extension, etc.) but so does every GM, including his successor in Gillick. For every Jason Werth, there was an Adam Eaton. Remember Freddy Garcia and Arthur Rhodes? It's more likely you remember Jamie Moyer and Brad Lidge. How about the haul the Phillies got back for trading Bobby Abreu?
Point being, Gillick was afforded misses at the margins because the team was winning. Wade, after reversing a decade of losing, made mistakes when the Phillies relaxed the payroll budget and didn't acquire the talent needed to take the next step.
But Wade was cognizant of something we ask GMs to think about all the time: winning now and in the future. He never traded his top prospects. He could have saved his job by getting an arm (Barry Zito was offered for Chase Utley and Ryan Madison) or bat to put the Phillies in the playoffs. Instead, he kept his draft picks, and seven of them wound up started in Game 5 of the 2008 World Series.
If anything, Wade never put the team’s future in jeopardy for a cheap playoff appearance.
Patience and mistakes cost him his job, but patience paid off. Gillick, Utley, Howard, Rollins, and Abreu all paid tribute to Wade’s part in changing the fortunes of the franchise. It’s time fans do the same.