Historically haven't the Phillies always been bad at development, and devalued the farm? I think that era (and let's not forget Ryan Howard) was a perfect storm of Arbuckle (as reflected in the quote you mention) and draft position, with one or the other (and often both) lacking since Gillick took over (he was fine at putting the finishing touches on that group of course, and really just got lucky with Werth- when we traded for all those Seattle guys that Gillick and his team had drafted that didn't work out so well).
And the team's ability to spend $ has only compounded it, somehow. In the Giles era they were cheap and bad, now they're not cheap and not bad, but still not good enough.
It doesn't seem to matter who actually owns the Phillies (Ruly included), it just takes an extraordinary confluences of luck and circumstance and a good person at the top (Owens and Green, Arbuckle if not Wade) to overcome the inherent weaknesses every 20 years or so.
And these days, the only thing you can do is point at franchise history and ownership, because the baseball people change too frequently for any failings (or successes) to be constant. The people who gave up on Mead or long gone. Heck aside from Gillick so are the people who drafted and failed to develope Moniak (two regimes, even!)
