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MLB WINTER MEETINGSDecember 12, 2018Andy GreenLas Vegas, Nevada Q. (Inaudible.) ANDY GREEN: Obviously that's from a roster construction standpoint, that's where A.J.'s main focus is. My main focus is looking at the guys on the roster and continue to make strong connections, and impact them in strong ways. I know we've identified some areas we need and talked a lot about. A.J. has had a thousands conversations to figure out what fits best. I haven't been overwhelmed with anything at this time. A.J. and our front office will continue to work, we feel good about where we are right now. And if we end up with one of the absolute best farm systems in the game, and moving into Spring Training with that group of guys, we're excited about what's coming. Q. (Inaudible.) ANDY GREEN: I think the first off it's when you make the choice their opportunity is now, the timing of that. And I think everybody wants to see the prospects faster than they actually get to see them, because there are some finishing touches that need to take place in the Minor Leagues. And you understand that Major Leagues now as quickly as guys get across the game, it's a development league still. You're still helping guys get better at the Major League level. It's not hey, you're here, you know how to play this game completely. It's trying to make that transition as seamless as possible. And making them better. Q. When did that transition happen? ANDY GREEN: I think everybody started to realize that the athleticism of the game, the speed of the game, that it used to be guys in their late 30s were being really productive and we're not seeing that anymore. There's a lot of good years from 23 to 27. And 23 years old, a lot of those guys are coming straight out of college and they haven't played a ton. In our case we've got a couple of prospects that are 19 or 20 and have a great chance to be in the middle of our infield. Those guys are really good baseball players and where we are in the process since I've been here, it has been about development at the Major Leagues, it has been about learning, we're definitely looking forward to flipping that page, and having much more developed guys. And that still takes time. Q. (Inaudible.) ANDY GREEN: Yeah, we've sent Johnny Washington, our hitting coach was over there watching him hit and Chris Kemp, our field coordinator has been there. We've had our guys watching winter ball. Front office guys have cut video, and I've seen every at-bat he's hit. And Franchy Cordero, all our guys that are playing winter ball, it's easy to get their video, it's easy to be in communication with them. We've definitely watched and get to see everything he does on the bases, everything he does on the field. And that goes for all of our guys that are over there. Q. (Inaudible.) ANDY GREEN: He's playing short, hitting middle in the order every single day, and it's the hometown team, his dad is the manager, pretty sure I won't be his favorite manager ever. He's playing well. So we're excited that he's playing go, the playoffs are coming up shortly over there and we'll continue to be in communication with him and all of our winter ball guys as to when we feel it's best for them to start preparing for the 2019 Major League season. But right now we feel great about him playing, and all the guys out there playing. Q. Guys that get so much hype and so much attention before they see a pitch in the Major Leagues, do you approach them differently when they do arrive because there are all these expectations involved? ANDY GREEN: It's a different game. Everybody is very keenly aware of prospect status in the game now. At the end of the day he and every other prospect has to show up and produce. They show up with the weight of expectations, and in general this game is about managing expectations, you show up in the Major Leagues and deal with expectations your entire career. So I think we've done a nice job in the Minor Leagues of preparing guys mentally for that when they arrive in the Big Leagues, had some guys through in the last couple of weeks, Chris Paddack was in, and he talked about this is my plan for assimilation in the Big Leagues. You start hearing that and that's the thought process of the young guys, they're going to mature faster. But everybody is wear now of who guys are in the Minor Leagues. And 10, 15 years ago that wasn't the case. Q. Could you expand a little bit on that? ANDY GREEN: Opened up something I probably shouldn't have opened up. I finally got some time to spend with him for the first time. And very impressed. Very impressed with the way his mind works. His drive. His passion. And we talked through some of the things that are really important to him, his family. And it was just more get-to-know-somebody session. And he talked about that particular thing that some things he wanted to do. And definitely don't want to run all the way through his plans as he gets ready for the Big Leagues. But from my perspective it's really nice to see a young pitcher as motivated as him, as driven as him. And someone who is thinking through all the obstacles he's going to see when he puts a Major League uniform on for the first time. Q. You have a guy with obviously that kind of talent and the numbers and stuff when the ball comes out of his hand, when your couple that with the drive and mental makeup, is that makes him a special potential ballplayer? ANDY GREEN: The experience I've had in the game, all the great ones might be a little bit off by the world standards, they're so driven, they're so motivated, they're so consumed. And you see that little bit. And when you look across the game you see Max Scherzer's routine, the way he does his bullpens, the way he works out. You see it in Scherzer, all the great ones. Some people say this guy works too hard. All the great ones work incredibly hard. You see unbelievable parallels in great athletes across the board. I think in his case we're excited about the way he works. And excited about how driven he is and how great he wants to be. And he's not the only one that falls into that category, but we're talking about him right now, we're excited about that. Q. Who else? ANDY GREEN: I think there's quite a few of them throughout the Minor League system. You can look down to the lower levels, MacKenzie Gore -- and when you start listing people off you inevitably leave a couple of names off and people assume that other people don't have it. I think we'll stop right there. There are quite a few guys in our organization, about the way they go about their job that we're really excited about and the hunger, and we're really excited about. Q. You have a lot of unknowns in your starting rotation, but you also have the opportunity to be very creative this year in how you approach games. Talk about that and what might it look like? ANDY GREEN: Yeah, I think we're in the position right now that the dust will settle on our roster construction hopefully in the next couple of weeks. And we'll have a better idea how we can use the guys that we have, that we expect to be in rotation, I don't think anything is off the table for us. Traditional starting roles for guys, want to get them through 7 innings. And understanding that certain guys they're a one-time through the lineup guy. I think going into '19 we'll test some guys, see what we can get out of them and not pigeonhole them. We'll settle on roles once we have a better understanding of who's with us. And we are looking at Lucchesi, Lauer, guys that did nice things for us, and a lot of open competition after that. Q. You have the ability with some of the guys you have to do different things, even have traditional starters go different ways? ANDY GREEN: Yeah, I think we're definitely open to any possibility right now. And if those possibilities mean you have a six man rotation or you have starters piggybacking and going three innings or if you're matching up situations to give you a better chance to beat a good offensive club, I think all of those things are on the table for us going into next year. Q. In the outfield you have the same guys you have right now, (inaudible)? ANDY GREEN: He's going to have the opportunity to compete. We go back to his last year and we think about what he was doing before he started having elbow issues, his numbers were outstanding offensively. And he played for probably the last two and a half weeks with the elbow issue, couldn't finish his swing, had surgery after that. He's healthy. He's strong. Watching him swing in the Dominican right now, the bat is coming through the zone, hits the ball as hard as anybody in the game. He's competitive and driven. He's going to be right in the mix. And I don't know that there's like some fast, established role for anybody at this point in time. It's definitely wide open for a host of guys that have shown they have what it takes, but nobody has moved over to this star status. But your past experience, it's experience, it doesn't give you entitlement, it gives them experience. They're going to continue to fight for those roles. Q. (Inaudible.) ANDY GREEN: I think anything is possible. I don't think we're going into the season limiting ourselves. I don't think we're coming into the season with some, this guy is our opener. We have interesting pieces, bullpen-wise. We have Robert Stock and Max Strahm who could start from the bullpen and do all kinds of different roles, like starting and going three innings or going one inning or going five innings. We have some really interesting guys that we like what they did last year, and we'll leave open a lot of possibilities going into spring. Q. How important is it to you give will some guidance on what his role might be next season? ANDY GREEN: I think just continue to partner with Wil, and identify defensively where we'll have him. I texted with him before we came out here. I said we'll talk a little bit. We'll continue to talk to Wil through the offseason. I think the best thing about him is when it came to the challenge to play third base, we sprung that on him in the middle of the season. We didn't go into spring, hey, this is a great plan, we're going to transition you at some point in time, but he was open for that challenge. I think he's still very much open for the challenge if we ask for that and we think it's best for the club. I don't think he's going to shy away from anything. And I think sometimes stories get spun, like if you just give this guy a position, everything would be great. It's not really the way the game is played today. There's a ton of guys to move all over the field, if you just look north to division rival to us, nobody is saying that about Cody Bellinger, Chris Taylor or Hernandez or guys that are bouncing all over the field. In Wil's case for us, continuing to talk to him through the process, and being honest and open with you fit better here now. I think he wants to win and that's chief of his concerns, is like flipping this around and starting to win more baseball games. He's been open for every position challenge we've ever given him. Q. Talking about the shifting teams in baseball. How is that roster personnel versus personal philosophy? ANDY GREEN: We definitely moved back last year, I think we were the top ten first couple of years, and as the League has shifted more and more we've gone more in the other direction. I think we'll continue to look at our process and how we apply the shift and what reasons we use to do it or not to do it. And I don't think we have any goal to finish top three or bottom three. I think we want to make a case-by-case decision. And I think more or less last year our infield was more productive from a metrics standpoint than it was the previous year. We're making decisions on a case-by-case basis. We've added some really bright people in the front office mix, and they'll have an opportunity to impact what we do moving forward. Q. Talking about making the shift, where do you fall in that? ANDY GREEN: I don't care. You've got to play by the rules. As a manager, when you talk about putting the DH into the National League or removing shifts, you're taking decisions off my plate. I enjoy making those decisions, but that's selfish in nature. I'm not that concerned if you take the shift off we're not going to be able to create a competitive advantage. Everybody is playing by those rules. Some people might have a real strong passion. The game is effectively going to be the same. We play baseball for a hundred plus years shifting one or two guys, not that concerned about the game changing drastically if we're not allowing shifts. Q. (Inaudible.) ANDY GREEN: I think competitive advantages is mostly derived from the baseball players you have on the field. Making real good decisions. And if you have really athletic infielders -- Cubs, bottom of the League, shifting team, a couple of years ago, they had players that were across their infield and didn't shift much. Houston shifted a lot. They have really good baseball players moving around. We're really excited about the athleticism and what's coming in the middle of the infield. You put really good athletes on the field and you let them do what they're gifted to do, end of the day you're going to look really smart. So we're excited about some of those young guys. Luis when he came up and played second base for us, was outstanding, turning double plays, range plays, he was outstanding. That's exciting for us to see that defense in the middle. Q. (Inaudible.) ANDY GREEN: For us, this is a topic of conversation every week for all our winter ball guys, not just him. And I say that to like we kind of assess where they are at the end of the week. We have people checking in on them constantly. 19 year old kid, who missed the last two months of the season. He's probably the bottom of the list of our concern guys. We might want Francisco to prepare for the season, it's a different grind for catchers. Every week as a staff we've talked and said what's the best case for Franchy Cordero who also missed a lot of time. We'll make those decisions as we watch them progress in the playoffs and say, hey, at this point in time we feel it's best to shut down. We won't shy away from it. Those at-bats, competitive environment, passion they're playing with, those are positive things, especially for guys that still need to develop in the game of baseball. They're getting tested constantly. And we're excited about that and like that. Q. What's your wish list for A.J.? ANDY GREEN: To actually get out of the suite for more than five minutes. Other than talking to you guys, I don't think he leaves the suite. Actually walk outside for a while. We know what we're looking for. We're very precise with what we're looking for. And at this point in time if the price doesn't come down to what A.J. wants to pay, we're going to continue to move forward with our guys. We're excited with the depth we have, especially from a pitching perspective. There are a lot of teams that love our young pitching. We know what we did last year with the starting pitching, that is a -- we really know what we're looking for and if it doesn't come at the right price, A.J. will be patient. Q. (Inaudible.) ANDY GREEN: Yeah, I think every single player has a preference at the end of the day how they want to be utilized. Some guys want to play third, center field, if you ask Franchy Cordero, he has a strong preference. But everything has to be done in the context of the team. We asked everybody, especially guys that are more established how would you like to be used, what do you think is best for you, where are you most comfortable in the batting order, that is a piece of the equation. And definitely how he feels means a lot to me, means a lot to the organization, how these guys feel what they're being asked to do. But you have to fit that in the context of the team. Understand where everybody is on most of those things, where they are comfortable playing. But he's a guy when you talk about it, I'm on first base, I'm great with that. He's never been hesitant to sacrifice in that regard for our greater good. And I don't think he'll be hesitant at any point in time. And those preferences I think oftentimes are a product of questions, like would you like an every day position where you don't bounce around? Sure. Those are not like just preferences. Q. How much bouncing around do you see for Luis? ANDY GREEN: It's possible. Really disappointed when he got hurt last year, because he was going to play short. We brought him up to get your feet under you, let you play shortstop. We don't have any concerns about his ability to do that. But we didn't get a chance to do that because of the hamstring injury. For us, though, like he's a second baseman first and foremost who has the capacity to move to the left side of the infield and play it relatively well. But we do think he's the type of guy that's well above average defensive second baseman. We've obviously cleared some guys off the roster with the understanding that we expect him to be that for us. Q. You have a 19 or 20 year old anchoring the middle of the infield, what are some of the challenges of that? ANDY GREEN: My experience with both those guys is they're very bright and they're going to grab things really quickly. Freddy is across the game probably the steadiest infielder in baseball, make the routine play better than anybody in the game of baseball. Fernando has been sprinkling more highlight plays than most guys in baseball. He's a 19 year old, 20 year old. If that day comes we move him up and he earns that opportunity there's going to be some of the balls that Freddy caught that we're going to be okay with some of the mistakes with the 20 year old playing short at the Major League level. I think both those guys, their minds work, they understand the game. They're going to be great in time. And they're going to have to earn opportunities and those opportunities are real in front of both of those guys. Q. Talk about the defensive metrics. ANDY GREEN: It's a mixed bag. There's not a reason to dive deep into that from our perspective. We know some of the things that we think he does very, very well. I don't think that every metric quantifies everything he does very, very well. We brought Easley on staff. He went and saw Eric in Florida, spent some time with him in Miami, and said we're going to work on defense, too, we're not finished. Eric is the type of guy that is really crushing it from a hitting perspective, working incredibly hard, and real excited to be getting after it defensively. I think Damion is going to be a terrific partner with him, and draw things out in him and expect him to get better. There's stuff he's working on. I don't think you're seeing a massive overhaul program. He's definitely working to do some things that he's passionate about doing more consistently this year. He's most excited in my time talking to him about having a normal off season. Last season was anything but that, where he's getting paraded around in the free agency game, and waiting to land in a place, and basically landed with us the first day of Spring Training last year. So he's definitely excited about just normal offseason with no distractions, and workouts for him are going well and hitting really well, too. Johnny Washington has been over there and spent time with him as well. We feel good with where Eric is. Q. As it stands who is your starter as catcher? ANDY GREEN: That's the beauty of December 12th, I don't have to decide that right now. Couldn't be more pleased with what Austin did the second half of the season, from everything we've ever wanted to see from him. Started to become second nature to him. And sometimes it takes a while for a guy to get it. He definitely comes in as a guy that I'm expecting, we're expecting really big things from this year. And Francisco got his feet wet in the Padres uniform. We're excited about his future. Austin is coming into this in my mind with a lot of momentum from what he did in the second half for us last year. We'll see how it plays out through Spring Training. Couldn't be anymore pleased with what Austin has done and what he's doing the offseason. Q. (Inaudible.) ANDY GREEN: We liked Drew a lot, obviously it was one of those things from a roster perspective, we made a trade. They got a really nice pitcher over there, who is a great kid. I do thinking like the first time in Big Leagues for him was wide-eyed experience, and we got back Esteban Quiroz for him. And when you look at offensive profiles, that's the kind we've been wanting to find and pursue a guy like that. He played really well in the Fall League. Left-handed bat that gives us some depth in second base, third base position, and not on the roster. I think in Colten Brewer's case they added a great pitcher. And he helped us bring back a bat that we're really excited about. Q. Any discernible changes from the Spring Training training point of view in trying for figure out what the emphasis might be, how your time is going to be spent, the evolution of that so far for you? ANDY GREEN: I do think it's changing. I think every year you step back and reassess what you've done in the past. The first year we came in and we flushed bunt plays and first and third plays. And spent a ton of time on that. We've seen that kind of dwindle as that impact on the game has lessened. And spending more time on as we go into this year, mental approach, mental side of the game, approach and talking much more is the anticipation. A little less work on the field. Every team is going to reassess and I try to meet the guys where we are. We're going to be on the field and rep it out. But definitely seeing a shift in drills we do and the way we prepare and the type of drills we do with guys. It's changing. Honestly our hitting coach, our assistant hitting coach, our infield coach, they're definitely the kind of guys that want to do things on the cutting edge. Q. What about guys in the back field in terms of coming over to the bigger part of the park, that approach of giving more time for the guys in a bigger park in Spring Training? ANDY GREEN: We've definitely given our young guys as much opportunity in Major League Spring Training as anybody. We've gotten a lot of at-bats. We'll continue to do that. We saw young guys last year all the time, we had some come across and make a huge impression on the staff. It's a great way to get a guy's feet wet and we continue to utilize that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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