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MLB WINTER MEETINGS

December 6, 2005

Phil Garner

DALLAS, TEXAS

Q. How do things change for a World Series manager now during the off-season or have they changed much for you?
PHIL GARNER: Yes, everybody that I -- I mean, I didn't know I had so many good friends, and I didn't know how many charities that everybody is involved in. It's been unbelievable, yeah. I don't mean that in a had a bad way. I just mean it's been very busy in that regard.

Q. All of a sudden you're very popular these days.
PHIL GARNER: Yeah, where were they last year. Well, a lot of them were here last year, but a lot of my good friends have been around for a number of years, so it's fun to share with this with a lot of people.

Q. What's your take on the news that came out yesterday, what Randy Hendricks had to say about Clemens and his status?
PHIL GARNER: I am not aware of it. I have not read the paper. Bring me up-to-date.

Q. He is not going to have a decision basically until end of January, early February.
PHIL GARNER: Well, that puts us in a little bit of a difficult situation, but I think we need to move on and do what we need to do.

Q. What does that mean?
PHIL GARNER: It means that I don't think it would be prudent on our part. Of course, this is our general manager's decision, but it's important on our part to wait and see what's going to happen. We'll do what we have to do.

Q. Do you have to assume that you're going to need another starting pitcher then?
PHIL GARNER: Yes, I would go ahead and say that we would like to do that although we feel like we have some kids that are pretty good. Astacio, we feel like he'll be okay, and we have some kids in the Minor Leagues. So I don't think that we're -- Rodriguez, I don't think we're at a total loss.
I'd like to have somebody with Roger's caliber. I don't know who it would be, but at any rate, you'd like to be able to sign a quality pitcher, but I don't know that that's going to be a possibility so we'll look at other things. We're exploring all avenues in terms of what we might be able to do for our offense, and are there any possibilities of changing it around a little bit and maybe improving our offense some without really hurting the makeup of the club or hurting the good things about the club. And that's what I'm talking about by do what we have to do.

Q. What is this time of year like for you as a manager? How involved are you in the process?
PHIL GARNER: I have my say. I think I carry a little weight, but I think we all -- there's a lot that when it comes to the National League, when it comes particularly to the Central Division, a lot of people I see, I think that what I say might carry a lot of weight. When it comes to the American League or it comes to the other divisions that you don't see as much in the National League, I think that the scouts carry a lot of weight there and ultimately the decisions are up to our general manager and so we all have something to say in that regarding the makeup of the ballclub that we have now, what we'd like to do to improve, and when we talk about other players, possibly other players.
And then the ideal is this is only really the second year that Tim and I have worked together. Tim got the job just right before the winter meetings last year, so he didn't have much time to really get into this role. So I think that there's some mutual respect there, if I absolutely don't think it's a good thing, I think he would listen to that. If I said this is absolutely a good thing, he would listen to that, too.

Q. If he said because of budget restraints you can only acquire a starting pitcher or another hitter for your lineup, what's your priority?
PHIL GARNER: Both. Actually, when you talk a look at our position players, there's not a whole lot that you would do. So if you're talking about acquiring a bat, where are you going to put him? And I would assume that Ausmus would come back, and I assume Bagwell would be back and be able to play. If you look at that, we have Biggio at second, Everett at short, Morgan at third, Berkman in left field, kid that finished second, Rookie of the Year in second field, and Jason Lane who had a very good year last year.
So I don't know what you would do. Are you going to sit Berkman? Are you going to sit Bagwell if he's ready to play? Are you going to sit Morgan Ensberg; would you sit Everett? You know, I don't know where you are going to get the bat might fit into the lineup. Yeah, we felt like our offense was not our strong point last year but we did go to the World Series with.

Q. What is the perfect scenario for you, off-season scenario?
PHIL GARNER: Rocket would sign tomorrow and we'd go on, we'd be ready to go.

Q. That's it?
PHIL GARNER: That would be okay, yeah. Basically everybody else is signed. I mean, like I say, we had a pretty good team last year. Take my chances again with that team.

Q. How important is it for Ausmus to return for you, you depend a lot on him?
PHIL GARNER: I think it's important but I've also learned over the years that sometimes the things you're forced to do may end up being okay. You might not want to have to go look for another catcher. You might not want to put another catcher in there. I would parallel this to what happened with Willy Taveras last year. We really did try to get another centerfielder, not because we didn't think Willy was going to be a good centerfielder, but we just thought it was going to be a couple of years from now. We all sat around and said, well, let's play him until Berkman gets back and we thought Berkman might be back in a couple of weeks or three weeks. Well, it turned out he was not back for six weeks and Willy just kept playing good. So you get to the point where it says, gee, we're -- something that we were forced to do turned out to be very good.
So the short answer to your question is: I think Ausmus is very important, but if we don't get him back, certainly we may be surprised on what we're able to do there.

Q. There's a lot of talk on the radio and message boards about Burke possibly playing short. Is that something you would consider or is Everett your starting shortstop?
PHIL GARNER: Everett is our starting shortstop. I don't know how the Burke-at-shortstop got started. He played shortstop, he signed as a shortstop. Of course we moved him to different positions and we feel like he's probably his best and highest utilization would be second base, but obviously we've got a Hall of Famer at second base. So that's not probably going to happen right now.
If we needed to -- if we were in a situation where we had to have him play shortstop, he probably could play shortstop. But I'm not looking to put him at shortstop right now.

Q. Several players have committed to play in the World Baseball Classic. What are your views on that, not having them in Spring Training for an extended period of time?
PHIL GARNER: I'm a little more concerned about pitchers than I am anything. We had guys to go a long time last year. You're pitching into October, and I think it's a bit unrealistic to ask some guys to pitch that long back-to-back. And so I'm concerned about that from a pitching standpoint.
Position players, I think it depends. I know Biggio probably wants to play in this thing and there have been some big names mentioned and I think we have to be very careful about it. What's more important? World games are important, no doubt, because it puts baseball on the world stage so to speak. But it's also important to the franchise to do the best we can.
And we're talking about a long season in our professional season, and it's going to be difficult for players to play at a very highly competitive level from the 3rd to the 20th -- is that the correct dates in March -- and then kick right back in to six months of highly competitive baseball in the summer. I think you're beyond the breaking point for players mentally and physically if you do that for a lot of veteran players.

Q. Some of your players came to you and asked you for your advice on this matter, would you advise them not to play?
PHIL GARNER: Some I might. Some I might do that.

Q. Older ones?
PHIL GARNER: Some I might do that, yes.

Q. Have they?
PHIL GARNER: No, they have not asked me for my advice.

Q. Spring Training, Biggio you try to rest him as much as possible. Is he one guy you might say --
PHIL GARNER: I would say, you know, think long and hard about this. And take a look, Craig is a classic example. I wasn't sure he was going to be able to play when the season started last year. He had paced himself all along in Spring Training, you saw him, I wasn't sure he was going to be able to throw. Well, when the bell rang, he was -- he played good. He had a very nice year last year, and he ended up strong and we all, you know, play him in the field strong, he always goes down a little bit in September average-wise, but the whole key is you're talking about playing highly competitive baseball and adding another three weeks to it. That's difficult to do and maintain for a whole season.

Q. If Clemens doesn't come back, has he made an impact on your staff down the road because of the way he prepares?
PHIL GARNER: Yes, he has.

Q. Can you just talk about that?
PHIL GARNER: Well, you answered the question, the way he prepares, the way he pitches, his competitiveness, how he gets himself up for the games. I think Rocket brings all those things to the table. I think he's been a powerful influence, probably in the short term on Backe and perhaps some of our other pitchers.
In the long run I think a guy like Roy Oswalt will remember things as Roy progresses in his career that Rocket does, and I think it will help Roy down the road a little bit. Those are all good things to have in your organization. Plus, it's all part of your persona, what you would like your organization to be, and Roger is the type of guy you would like everybody to look at and say this is what the organization stands for. Of course, we're blessed to have a whole bunch of good guys like that and Rocket would be the top of that pyramid.

Q. Last off-season you said you had a day with Rocket where you talked --
PHIL GARNER: We did not talk about baseball.

Q. Have you had any conversations with him?
PHIL GARNER: No. He's been gone a lot, I've been gone a lot, we missed each other a couple of times on the phone but we have not talked.

Q. Do you have any plans to see him like you did last year?
PHIL GARNER: I have some ideas but I don't know that we'll be able to pull it off. His schedule is very busy and mine has been pretty busy, too.

Q. How much does the uncertainty of whether he comes back have an impact on just trying to get yourself ready for another season in terms of adding players, knowing how much money you have to spend, all those issues?
PHIL GARNER: I think the issue is most difficult is the money to spend issue. I think we learned a valuable lesson last year with Beltran, and hopefully we did, anyway, that you just can't wait. You know, you get to a certain point and you say we need to move on, and I think we need to do that, too.
The big question for the other guys, not necessarily me, I mean, I'll spend the money, it doesn't matter to me. Old guy wants $20 million, give it to him; he wants 100 million, good, give it to him. I don't have a problem at all. Matter of fact, I can say I want to win more than anybody because I can prove it because I don't care how much money we have to spend. Some people say we need to stop at 250 million, but it doesn't bother me.
That's the particular difficulties that Tim Purpura has, it has to make sense financially for him. I have to make my recommendations regardless of what the costs are going to be. I would say I'm ready to move and go ahead and sign whomever we can get signed regardless of the cost and let them worry about that if Rocket decides to come back down the road.

Q. Is that not realistic in the real world?
PHIL GARNER: Yeah, they have to deal with that. I can say I'm ready to go and sign. Tim has to deal with that.

Q. So you think the club should foresee if Roger not coming back at this point?
PHIL GARNER: I think you don't want to short yourself down the road. You try to make sure that you feel like if we started tomorrow, if Rocket wasn't here, we need to feel like we have a good team.

Q. Cardinals look like they are going to lose a lot, Morris, Sanders is out there --
PHIL GARNER: Morris won't be back?

Q. He's getting big, big offers, so it doesn't look like he's going to be.
PHIL GARNER: Oh, I hate that. Go ahead. (Laughter.)

Q. Talk about the impact, they have had 100 wins each of last two years, about what those losses have.
PHIL GARNER: For what it's worth, my track record on predicting is pretty rotten. I said that Cardinals could not possibly play as good as they did the year before, and they did. So I'm not sure I have any credibility on what they can play. Certainly, when you have a guy like Pujols on your team, you're always going to have a good competitive ballclub; it doesn't matter what you put out there. Beyond that, everybody is going to be a little bit better when you're playing with that guy.
So I respect the Cardinals greatly and I feel like that no matter what they do with their starting pitching, they are still going to be competitive, and I would still say that I think that we are the team to beat in our division by the fact that we went to the World Series. But I think the Cardinals will be right there with us.

Q. I know it was disappointing but have you reflected on that disappointment or have you reflected on the accomplishments as a whole?
PHIL GARNER: Reflect on the accomplishments of the whole, and that's over and done with. I'm ready to move on. I've even forgotten about some of the things. We did get to the World Series, I was disappointed we didn't win a game. Disappointed we didn't win it. But I'm also very proud that if you just go back four months, it didn't look like we were even going to be in the picture. Some people had written tombstones for us and spread them all over Houston. So it was gratifying, and I will admit, they were very big about admitting that they were wrong. We came back and we went to the World Series. The first time anybody has done that in Houston.
There's a lot of good things, yes. In one sense of the word, I recall when I first went to the World Series as a player, your whole life you train, your whole life your dream is to go to the World Series, and when they are knocking on the door and you're getting ready to start the World Series. And you're 30 years old and you say to yourself, this has been my dream for my whole life, that has been my driving force. What happens if you achieve your goal, 30 years old and you're going to live another 40 or 50 years and you say, you know, what are we going to live for at that point from a professional career standpoint. So very quickly decide this is pretty much fun, we want to did it for a second time. It took 27 years to get back, 26 years to get back to the World Series.
So in terms of trying to accomplish something, we accomplished something. In terms of what do we shoot for now, well, we didn't complete the task, so now we've got another chore on hand and that's to get back and at least win a ballgame. So that's what we're looking to do.

Q. That moment in the series when you were frustrated and threw the chair, there was talk about, how would the players take it, would they think you were showing them up or anything, has that come up this winter? Have you talked to any of the players about it? And looking back, heat of moment thing, is there anything you regret or, just, hey, it happened?
PHIL GARNER: There seemed to be two things in the World Series that pissed me off, excuse the French, and that is the way that some people wrote about that. Because they said I threw the players out of the bus, and the day when they asked me how I felt when I said I'm upset, I'm angry, I'm mad. And people want to write that as I was blaming the players for that.
The fact of the matter, it's frustration, and I explained it at that time and I didn't hear anybody write it otherwise to rectify what they had written prior to that. But I'm frustrated when we play 12 innings, 13 innings, we have opportunities to drive in a run and then the guy that I least expected -- well, not necessarily least expect, but we make a decent pitch on the guy and he hits it out of the ballpark, I'm frustrated. I'm not saying it's a bad pitch, because it wasn't a bad pitch; it was a pretty doggone good pitch, it was down in the zone; so I'll throw the chair again. I just expect it to be reported properly.
And I'll say again, if we're not winning ballgames and I'm frustrated, I'll say again I'm mad. I expect it to be reported properly. I'm competitive. I'm part of this ballclub. When we win, I'm happy. When we lose, I'm upset and I expect the players to be upset. So if you ask the player if he had gone 0-for-4 in a game we lost in 12, 13 innings and he says I'm upset, I don't take it that he's mad at me. I take it he's mad because we lost.
So I in no way mean that I'm mad at the players because they lost. I'm mad because we lost. Now, if you ask me I'm mad and I say I'm mad because our effort is not there, I'm angry and upset, now that's a different story, I am getting on the players at that point. And I'll make it clear at that point. But no, our players are conscientious, they were busting their hinies; they all wanted the same thing I want. Those are the two things that upset me. And I do not believe that the players took it any other way. Matter of fact, some people said that I -- somebody reported that I had shown up Brad about it, and so I called Brad and asked him about it and he didn't feel that way at all.

Q. Are you surprised you get that reaction in what is essentially an honest show of emotion?
PHIL GARNER: Yeah, one of the beautiful things that you would hope, I mean, too many times I think you guys report all the time. But wouldn't it be nice for somebody to be to be honest sometimes in these situations you just had your brains beat out: You how you're feeling; life is wonderful, I'm healthy. Crap; I was angry and upset and I don't like to get beat, my players don't like to get beat. Only thing is I expect it -- and you guys, the people that knew me know what I what I meant by it.

Q. Do you think that was more of the case though, a lot of the people throughout the World Series, there are all of these assumptions that you were changing and it's like, have you guys not watched one damn game of the Astros?
PHIL GARNER: Yeah, you should know better. I do applaud most of them that try to get the stories right and I think that was a bit frustrating. Those are the only two things as far as I was concerned that I felt like that I was not fairly portrayed, and I guess if you only have those two things to complain about, but I think your original question was did the players feel like I had -- I do not think -- the short answer to the question I don't think so, at least I haven't had any feedback, and I've talked to quite a few of the players since then and I have not had any feedback that that was a problem.

Q. In regards to most of the Clemens starts, those comments were actually tame compared to what you would say after the shutout --
PHIL GARNER: Well, I just said the situation was stupid when Clemens is pitching 11 games where he gave up one run in a row or something like that and we didn't score a run -- yeah, that's -- and ultimately the players are to blame. But I never say that I'm not part of that. Because when a player fails, whether it's offensively, defensively, or pitching-wise, then I feel it's a coach's responsibility and ultimately my responsibility to improve, to help improve that player. So if it doesn't happen, I'm part of it, too. I don't think you can -- yeah, one player is just telling me, go take a fly and kiss an elephant's rear end, it's all on you then at that point. But we don't have anybody like that. We have guys that are very conscientious, everything we ask a player to do in the season, during the season, they tried it, they worked at it, they tried to get it done, we failed to execute in the end.

Q. How is Bagwell's progress coming along?
PHIL GARNER: I saw him a couple of days ago and he looks really good to me. He's training, he's starting to lift a little bit, actually threw a little bit, so it's way too early to determine about he's throwing, but he looks good. He looks to me like he's starting to muscle up a little bit more. I thought, you know, you guys have seen him over the years and he lost his muscle definition just a little bit, still a long guy but he lost a little bit of muscle and now he looks to me like he's getting a little bit stronger.

Q. So he's going to be able to put some weight on that shoulder and lift?
PHIL GARNER: And lift a little bit of weights, that's what it seems like right now. And I think that's a good sign, because that's important for him psychologically as well as physically because that's the way he likes to train.

Q. What's your realistic projection about next season?
PHIL GARNER: Numbers wise or playing time wise?

Q. What he can be.
PHIL GARNER: He probably won't be the player he was but odds were if he had not had this shoulder injury he might not be the player in terms of just raw numbers. Will he hit 40 home runs? Probably not. Can he hit 20? Yeah, probably so. Can he hit for an average? Yeah, he can still hit for an average. He's still got a good eye and down in the end even when he was not 100% coming back from surgery, I still felt comfortable with him going to the plate to drive in a winning run. So I don't know what the numbers could be. I don't think it's fair to probably start that kind of projection until you see how he is in Spring Training.

Q. Is there an intangible just to have him available in the clubhouse and in uniform?
PHIL GARNER: Yeah, he's been a big part of the organization.

Q. St. Louis and Houston have dominated the Central the last few years. Do you see any teams like perhaps Milwaukee making a dent?
PHIL GARNER: I'm concerned about Milwaukee, just going over the meetings, we were talking about what Milwaukee needed and we had a fit and I was saying, I don't know that I want to trade with Milwaukee. I don't want to help them out. They are a club that I think they made big strides pitching-wise last year and that frightens me because I felt like they have been swinging the bats pretty good the last couple of years and last year, big strides pitching-wise that makes them a tough ballclub, it's going to make them competitive. They fought to get to the 500 mark this year but they are a team that could bother you, could worry you. So I'm concerned about them.

Q. Missing Sheets for 11 weeks. How much difference does that make?
PHIL GARNER: Makes all the difference in the world. How many starts is he going to make; six, seven starts?

Q. He made 22 -- so he missed like a dozen starts.
PHIL GARNER: Yeah. Well, consider you just win half of those games, six more games and certainly you're in the picture.
In our viewpoint, we play them down the stretch, they might knock us out and we only win by one ballgame. You face him a couple of times down the end that makes a big difference. You'll be able to take all kinds of shots at me this year, when you're sitting almost on top of the world you get shot at, don't you?

Q. You were asked initially about how life will change, since you were being semi-facetious about the good friends but I imagine you heard from a lot of people?
PHIL GARNER: Oh, yeah it's been incredible. The phone calls that all of a sudden I said, where was this guy two, three years ago.

Q. Relatives that you don't know you had?
PHIL GARNER: That only happened once. Bunch of ticket requests were involved, yeah, but it's kind of fun. I'm sure everybody goes through that.

Q. You were able to sort out the genuine from the less-than-genuine?
PHIL GARNER: Oh, yeah.

Q. You had gotten accustomed to that life but the fire had never gone out for baseball or had you pretty well smothered that?
PHIL GARNER: Well, part of it was I was busy, I didn't really get that -- I had thought about it some and it would not be true to say I had not thought about it. But I didn't like the way things ended in Detroit. You know, and by that I mean, I didn't like the fact that we had lost in Detroit and I wanted a chance to try to say, hey, you know, I'm better than 0 and 6, you know. (Laughter.)

Q. Apparently you weren't.
PHIL GARNER: But apparently now I am. (Laughter.) So now we have come back from that. So from that standpoint, I had hoped that -- I had thought for another chance but from the other side, I had been involved in some other things and some pretty exciting things and they were turning out pretty good. It really helps when you're doing some other things that are really kind of exciting or doing pretty good.

Q. Had the exhilaration from that ever begun to match what you knew from baseball or gratification?
PHIL GARNER: Well, I think the game is in your blood. I've matched it, but you still enjoy this game, yeah. I tell you it's a lot of fun to drill the well and see it come in real good. That's a lot of fun. A lot of fun.

Q. You managed to unite the Longhorns and the Aggies.
PHIL GARNER: It turned out to be a good game, but unfortunately I didn't believe it was going to be a good game going in. I was underneath the sign that says "Home of the 12th Man" and they were beating on the line where the kids were the whole game and my eardrums were going like this and I had to stand the whole game.

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