Nov. 7 -- AMARO SETS FRONT OFFICE (UPDATED)

BY SCOTT LAUBER

So, Barack Obama is making appointments to his Cabinet, and in a way, Ruben Amaro Jr. did the same thing this week at the GM meetings. Amaro set the Phillies' front-office staff today by hiring Benny Looper and promoting Chuck LaMar to assistant GM positions.

Looper, 60, will oversee the scouting and player development areas, responsibilities previously held by Mike Arbuckle, who resigned last weekend after Amaro was named GM. Looper has worked for the past 23 years with the Mariners, so he has a history with Pat Gillick. For the past three seasons, Looper has been the Mariners' VP of player personnel. For the previous three years, he was the Mariners' VP of player development and scouting. And, if his name sounds familiar, it's probably because he's the uncle of Cardinals pitcher Braden Looper.

Lamar, 52, will manage the player development department and will work with the pro and amateur scouts. He joined the Phillies last October and spent the past season as director of pro scouting. Gillick has given LaMar great credit for his advanced scouting of the Rays before the World Series. He spent 10 seasons as Tampa Bay's GM, so he has significant experience in this area.

In other moves: Mike Ondo has been promoted to pro scouting coordinator. Ondo, 33, is kind of a rising star in front-office ranks, and he has spent the past two years as the Phillies' assistant minor-league director. He also has assisted the major-league staff on scouting reports and statisitcal analysis. Dallas Green (senior advisor), Charley Kerfeld (special assistant), Gordon Lakey (major-league scouting director), Steve Noworyta (minor-league director) and Marti Wolever (scouting director) will remain in their positions.

More on this in tomorrow's News Journal.

(Updated, 4:38 p.m.): Just spoke with Amaro and got a better sense for the division of responsibilities in the new front office. Looper essentially will replace Arbuckle, while LaMar will, in Amaro's words, "run our minor-league department," with assistance from Noworyta. Amaro plans to hire another assistant GM, likely from outside the organization, within the next 10 days. That person will be responsible for handling Amaro's old responsibilities, namely negotiating contracts and preparing arbitration cases.