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MLB WINTER MEETINGS

December 11, 2017

Aaron Boone

Orlando, Florida

Q. Do you like the looks of the lineup that you potentially could be sending out?
AARON BOONE: I'll take your entries. No, I'm obviously very excited. One of the fun things was once the news came down and became official, to sit and toy around with different potential options, yeah, I think obviously what he's going to bring to our lineup, but also to what I believe is a great young culture that we have already growing in New York, and I think he's going to have.

Q. What are you thinking right now as far as juggling the outfield?
AARON BOONE: We're going to juggle it. That's the plan. I think that both with Aaron and Giancarlo are open to doing a number of different things. Those are things that we'll flesh out in Spring Training, who do we believe potentially would move over to play left field in a 20, 30-game situation. Use the DH role strategically, play different matchups that give certain guys days off depending upon the matchups.

So I do feel like it's a really good problem that we have, and I think the one thing that makes it workable, too, is both Giancarlo, Aaron, the two guys that obviously play the same position, are great people, and I think are open to doing what we need to do to make this the best we can. And we're talking about obviously guys that 59 homers, 52 homers, MVP, Rookie of the Year. These are excellent athletes and outstanding defenders as well. So I believe that they have the potential to have the versatility that we might need on a given night.

Q. Can you bat Judge, Stanton, Sanchez back-to-back without Didi or do you have to break them up?
AARON BOONE: Well, Didi Tweeted me that he's No. 4.

No, absolutely you can. That will be one of those things that we flesh out. What's Greg Bird's continued development? What is the matchup? Do we feel like we want one of those lefties breaking those three guys up? It's something that is a possibility, but I would have no reservation if we feel like it's best to string those three dudes together. I think we would be all right.

Q. What was your reaction when you first heard you guys were getting Giancarlo or even the possibility? When it was a surprise even?
AARON BOONE: Yeah, it was exciting. It was actually a few days ago, when the possibility of it emerged we were actually conducting coaching interviews at Yankee Stadium, and we were getting ready to start one and Brian called me into his office and was like, "I think we might be getting Giancarlo. Something came together overnight." There was still some hurdles we needed to get through but obviously exciting news.

You add the National League MVP to what we feel like is already a very strong lineup, the possibilities start to run through your head of what that could look like.

Q. Have you settled on your coaches?
AARON BOONE: Josh Bard will be my bench coach. Obviously Larry Rothschild is back as pitching coach. Phil Nevin is going to be third base coach. Reggie Willits from within is going to be first base coach, and then we're real close on probably three other spots, and hopefully by week's end we'll have those buttoned up. But I don't think there will be a lot of surprises. I've seen some of the names out there. We're excited to bring back a couple guys, and hopefully add a couple more guys that are going to really have an impact on a young roster.

I feel like -- I'm not just saying "I feel like", I'm really excited of what we were able to put together with the staff so far. Especially this late in the game with a lot of guys that are already in places, I think it's going to be a really impactful staff for our team.

Q. Is it important to have a Spanish speaker as part of your coaches?
AARON BOONE: Oh, right, that will happen. That's imminent.

Q. (Inaudible).
AARON BOONE: Well, obviously losing Starlin was one of the tough parts about it. He was one of the first guys I reached out to when I got this job. And what we feel like we have really good internal options. Obviously we all think Gleyber Torres is going to be a really special player. The question is, can he be that guy and will he be that guy from the start? We know he's going to impact us for a number of years to come, but that will be another one of those things that fleshes out over the course of the off-season. If there's more moves that we make that maybe impact that, but Gleyber is certainly going to have every opportunity to be in that mix because obviously we can't survive without him.

Q. How did you settle on the coaches that you mentioned?
AARON BOONE: Well, it was easy for me, those were two guys that I had kind of in my mind as guys that I would want in those roles. So they both came out for interviews, just to kind of go through the vetting process, and check off any boxes that the organization felt we needed to do. So they went through a pretty extensive interview process, and I'm excited about what those two guys, very different personalities, but two guys that I think are going to have a big-time impact on our team.

Q. (Inaudible).
AARON BOONE: Phil? Phil will -- there's a potential that he could be kind of the driving force in putting together Spring Training. Obviously with Rob Thompson leading, he was a guy that had a reputation for being amazing at that, and so that's something that might fall under Phil Nevin's job description, I guess.

Q. When Brian pulled you aside, what day was that?
AARON BOONE: About Giancarlo?

Q. Yeah.
AARON BOONE: I think, what are we at? Monday. I feel like it might have been Friday.

Q. Day after the --
AARON BOONE: Yeah, yeah, I think we were having the meetings, I believe it was Friday when it first looked like it had a chance to be a real thing.

Q. (Inaudible).
AARON BOONE: Everyone at the game was congratulating us, but obviously there was still a couple of hurdles to get through at that point, but, yeah, we had a pretty good idea that it was happening.

Q. (Inaudible).
AARON BOONE: I got to get back up to the room and get to work.

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