‘Phillies Extra’ Q&A with Ed Wade: What the trade deadline is really like, a deal with Dombrowski, and more

Take it from Ed Wade: July is every bit as hectic as you may think for a baseball general manager.

Wade spent 12 seasons as a GM, including eight with the Phillies, from 1997 to 2005. He orchestrated a few trade-deadline blockbusters, notably sending Curt Schilling to Arizona in 2000 and Scott Rolen to St. Louis two years later.

So, with the July 31 deadline now only three weeks away, Wade was a guest on Phillies Extra, the baseball interview show from The Inquirer. He discussed his memories from previous deadlines, his anticipation of being inducted into the Phillies’ Wall of Fame on Aug. 1 at Citizens Bank Park, and his post-baseball endeavors as a novelist.

Here’s an excerpt from our conversation, which has been edited for clarity and brevity. Watch the full interview below and subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

A: There’s no question about that. It’s something that I never even dreamed about. In all candor, everybody remembers when they get fired and the way things were viewed at that point in time, at least I do. John Middleton, at the alumni event last year, sort of intimated the possibility of something and then we didn’t have any more conversation about it. I didn’t think a whole lot about it. And fast-forward about two and a half months ago, I’m picking up dry wood, deadfall in the backyard and came back in and had an email from him. So yeah, it’s an incredible honor.

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Realistically, the way that I look at it, it honors a lot of people. I can’t address all of them that night. But the theme of what I think is going to be a three-minute speech, it’s really going to be dedicated to all those people that have been involved from the very beginning of my career and all the way through to when we had a chance to build that club and see what happened in 2008.

A: Oh, it absolutely is. And it starts well before then. It starts when people like Mike Ondo, who ran the pro scouting group, make sure that we’ve got guys in the field seeing the right players and getting from the standpoint of where we felt the fits were to then determine what types of players may be available. Are we getting second looks at guys? And we’re sending scouts everywhere. Somebody might be scouting a game on the West Coast. The next thing he knows, he’s in Houston or Dallas seeing a player that maybe we hadn’t got second looks at. We’ve got guys all the way down to A-ball watching players. We’re reading reports. We’re meeting internally to talk about what may or may not work. We’re initiating phone calls, whether it’s myself or [assistant GMs] Ruben Amaro or Mike Arbuckle to other teams to see if they see a fit with us and express interest in a certain player. And you continue to do this right up until that deadline. And sometimes you sit back and say, ‘I think we did well.’ Other times you say, ‘We didn’t get anything done, but I think we did well because the price to pay was going to be too high.’

And one of the things I always think about is time and circumstance. And that really comes into play when you’re talking about the trading deadline and you think you’re a club that’s close to winning. At what price are you willing to pay to take that next step to get there? Is it realistic to think that one move or two moves are going to take you to exactly where you want to be? And if that’s the case, then you’ve got to think about maybe trading some of your prospects.

But when Chase Utley’s name comes up when you’re talking to Oakland about pitching, it’s a non-starter for us. And I’m sure it would have been an attractive thing for our fans because they weren’t quite sure about what Chase Utley was at that point in time. But realistically, we were building for the long run. And as I’ve already indicated, I wish it had happened sooner from the standpoint of 2008. I wish it had happened in 2005. But the reality was that if you’re going to deviate from your plan that you think is solid, you better make sure that it’s the right move to make. And sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes you’re forced to use the trading deadline to maybe save some payroll because, again, our circumstances at the Vet were different than what they’re going to be at Citizens Bank Park. So you push the accelerator as hard as you can, but don’t push it hard enough that you’ve closed your eyes to what impediments might be there in front of you if you don’t put your foot on the brake.

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But I always felt that we had a lot of good, great people working as our pro scouts, great input from our player development people who live with these minor league players and the prospects and not only cultivate them but also get to know them and try to figure out, are these the types of players that really fit in the city of Philadelphia, where the demands are high? It’s a big price to pay to wear that pinstripe uniform in Philadelphia, and your minor league people have a way of knowing some of the pluses and minuses from not only a competitive standpoint, but also are these guys mentally up to the challenges that they’re going to face, not only at the big league level, but facing it in a town like Philadelphia.

So all these things come into play. You hope you make the right decision when the clock goes past one minute after midnight on July 31. You hope you’ve done the right thing for your club, but now you’ve got to go out and play the game.

A: I think I was probably still interim general manager and we’re moments away from Santa Claus coming down the chimney and [I] made the Doug Glanville trade [for Mickey Morandini in 1997]. And then I think I signed Alex Arias at the same time [three days later]. And I think there was another deal. And my wife said to me, ‘Is it always going to be like this?’ And I said, ‘Well, yeah, pretty much so.’ And it turned out to be such. Because for whatever reason, good, bad, or indifferent, a lot of the things that you have to do in that job push the more important things – your family, vacations ... there were no vacations. Vacations were bringing your family on the charter to games or deciding that they may like to go to see games in Scranton, things of that nature.

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So there’s a lot of things that get missed along the way. And fortunately, my wife and our son and our two daughters clearly maybe didn’t completely accept that lifestyle, but understood what it was all about and the demands that it entailed. But at the end of the day, we try to do the right things on all fronts, but you are put in positions at certain times to be a little bit conflicted along the way. But that’s what the job description doesn’t say. But it certainly is what it is.

A: Dave was always to the point. His mentor was Roland Hemond, who worked in baseball from his teens on through — a great mentor for him. I had Tal Smith, and then after becoming the general manager in Philadelphia, I had Paul Owens and Dallas Green. So I had the types of people that Dave had on his end, and the conversations were also always to the point. There wasn’t a lot of dancing around there.

There were some [GMs] that, when you get off the phone, you felt like you had to take a shower because of not only the context of the conversation, but going on and on and on. We had several conversations [with Dombrowski] that never led to deals. But at the same time, when we got to the point of the Urbina-Polanco deal, it was short and to the point, which is what somebody would expect, both on his end and my end, because there’s no sense to dance around things. Let’s get to the point and see where it leads us, and maybe it doesn’t lead us anywhere.