AL DIVISION SERIES: MARINERS VS ASTROS

October 11, 2022

James Click

Minute Maid Park

Houston Astros

Pregame 1 Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We'll start in the back left for James Click.

Q. Dusty just said that there's an injured player. Can you go into detail on that and kind of what's going on there?

JAMES CLICK: Yeah. Phil Maton suffered an injury off the field. He'll be available to you guys to go over the details of that when we're done here.

Q. Wanted to know, with Pete Putila leaving to go to the Giants, just what does that kind of do for your front office and how do you plan to fill his spot?

JAMES CLICK: Well, what it does to our front office is creates a huge hole. Pete is one of the brightest young executives, or really brightest executives, period, in the game today. I couldn't be more excited for him. I think it's a well-deserved opportunity. I think he's going to do very, very well there and bring a lot to that organization.

We are obviously still working on how we are going to adjust and adapt, but this is a chance for the depth of our front office to show what they can do. This is part of the reason that we want to have quality people at all levels of the organization so that we can fill in internally. I don't anticipate us going external to try to replace Pete.

Q. With the roster decisions, why carry six starters or six traditional starting pitchers on your roster?

JAMES CLICK: One of the things that we've done over the last few weeks of the regular season is try to see if those guys could succeed in different roles than traditional starting pitching roles. So while they may have been starters for us all year, the reason they're on this roster is because they can affect the game in a variety of different ways.

Having potentially three games in a row starting in Game 3 also gave us the idea that we would probably want to prioritize length a little bit on the roster maybe more than we would in a normal five-game series.

But I would anticipate those guys providing both potential length but also possibly being used in a short appearance as real weapons against the Mariners.

Q. Is the injury the reason Maton isn't on the roster?

JAMES CLICK: Phil's had an up and down year. We were having active discussions when we found out about the injury. So I don't think I have a yes or no answer to that question. We all saw how good he was last year in the playoffs. One of the things we talked about with this roster was the priority of having postseason experience and guys who have been there before and been under the lights. What Phil did under the lights last year was very, very impressive. So he is somebody that has been a big part of this team and will continue to be so.

Q. You speak of filling Pete's void in your front office. How do you approach that when you're not under contract next year? Like how do you approach building a front office when you're not even sure if you'll be here next year?

JAMES CLICK: That's not on my mind at all. We're completely focused on the playoffs right now. We'll take this in stride. We will adjust and move forward. We have a lot of quality people here in this organization and I think this is an opportunity for a lot of them to show what they can do. Because there may be a cascade affect where somebody has to step in to his role. We may redefine roles, we may move things around a little bit. But this is why we prioritize having a deep bench in the front office.