	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

MLB WINTER MEETINGS

December 8, 2008

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

BRIAN BRITTEN: Good morning. I am Brian Britten with the Detroit Tigers, and we are here to make an announcement. We made a deal with the Texas Rangers and we are joined by David Dombrowski, our CEO and general manager, and our field manager Jim Leyland.
At this time I will turn it over to Dave to give you the specifics.
DAVID DOMBROWSKI: Thank you. We are pleased to announce the acquisition of Gerald Laird from the Texas Rangers in exchange for our right-handed pitcher Guillermo Moscoso and Carlos Melo. Melo will be assigned to the Dominican summer roster.
We are excited to get Laird. He is a proven big league, catcher and someone at the top of our list as far as trying to acquire for our organization. There was no doubt we had a need there at catching. He is a good, all-around player defensively, and can contribute offensively. He fits one of our biggest needs as we head forward.
We are thrilled to get this type of player. We have talked to him already, and we will give him the opportunity to catch a lot of ballgames, and I think that makes us better.
JIM LEYLAND: Like Dave said, you can tell we had a glaring need for a catcher. We feel like we acquired a very, very solid Major League catcher. He's a pretty versatile guy for a catcher. He has pretty good leg speed for a catcher, in particular. He can do some things offensively, as well as catch and throw. You know, it's going to be nice to work with him and get him acclimated to our pitching staff.
He is a bonafide Major League catcher, and we are thrilled to get this out of the way. Obviously it was one of our biggest needs. This is behind us, and during the day we will continue to move forward.

Q. Before this trade was made, can you say if Jason Varitek was someone who was on your radar at the catcher position?
DAVID DOMBROWSKI: He was a guy that was one of the names that we looked at as being a free agent. He is a guy, when we looked at the situation for us, once he was offered arbitration, that probably put a big dent in any pursuit we would have at that point being in a situation where you would have to give away a high-ranking draft choice for us. So it would be a number two pick.
He is a guy we considered, but I will say that we did like Gerald Laird a great deal.

Q. Can you describe the two pitchers that you gave up, please?
DAVID DOMBROWSKI: Well, Moscoso, he's the more developed of the two. He pitched for the Astros, and he's pitching in Venezuela right now. He's got to be protected this year for the first time. He's been in our system for an extended period, somebody that we signed. Has an above-average arm, solid breaking pitch.
We were looking at his potential of competing when he came to camp for us. Would be a long shot to be in the bullpen this year. He has started more so, and we looked at him as a starter in the past. But our biggest need would have been in the bullpen. But he's a solid prospect.
Melo is a quality arm, a young guy that our people in the Dominican like a great deal. He's not a guy that we really wanted to trade by any means. He has a plus arm and fastball, and he's a quality player. Would have pitched for us somewhere in the States, but I'm not sure where that would have been.

Q. Would you still like to add a Major League experienced backup catcher before the end of the off-season?
DAVID DOMBROWSKI: Well, we'll look, but it's not as high a necessity because we have a couple of people within our organization that we think can do it. So it's not something that we have to do, but we'll be open-minded to still looking out there, yes.

Q. Two things about Laird. His bat generally seems as though it has hurt Detroit in the past, and he has a little extra base power but not necessarily known for that; what did you see in him offensively? What about his throwing arm in your evaluation?
JIM LEYLAND: He is going to be a guy for us that really is a perfect fit for our ballpark. He's not a big power hitter and we know that. Our ballpark is suited for guys that hit the ball in the gaps, and I think he's the type of guy that he may not hit doubles but he'll hit triples in our ballpark. This guy runs very well. He has some experience.
I think he's a very usable bat, and I think we need a little bit more. Everybody who follows our club -- and there's nothing wrong with us, if you do it often enough. But we normally have to hit it over the fence or bounce it over the fence to produce runs.
We are not a club that has a lot of speed, and we think we have added not only a good catcher but we think we have added a guy that can help us in that area, as well.
So I think it's a great ballpark for Laird. He did not hit a lot of home runs in Texas, which is a home run-hitting ballpark. But he's a gap hitter, and a gap hitter in our ballpark is a good thing to have.
And he can catch, and so everybody knows that. He can catch. You know, we've seen him obviously for last few years and myself and the coaching staff have been very high on him. I think we are very fortunate. You know, Johnny Benches are not out there. That's the way it is, and we think that we have got a guy that's really going to fit our club. He will change our club a little bit, really.
I'm thrilled to death to get this behind us. A month or so ago we were pretty nervous about a couple of our situations, and all of a sudden we have one of them out of the way, basically prior to the meetings even starting. So I'm thrilled about it.
DAVID DOMBROWSKI: Also, I think in this case, too, in Texas and being a good catcher, that's one organization, not only us, but I think anybody else probably pointed to, having depth at the catching position. There's not many of them, and they are in a situation where they have some good, young catchers that are able to play for them. They wanted to give him that opportunity. He is a guy that got earmarked, and a lot of focus because of that.

Q. If you could address how Laird handles pitchers, his work on film, and sort of behind the scenes, that side of him.
JIM LEYLAND: Well, we really don't know the answer to that just yet.
I will say this today, and I am not looking for issues here. But a lot of times when your pitching staff doesn't do very well, the catcher never calls a good game. You hear managers talk about it and you hear scouts talk about it, and I think that's always a fall back to put the blame somewhere. I think that's very overrated.
I think in 2006, we pitched real good. We called a great game. 2008, we didn't call too good of a game. That's just the way that stuff works.
I think he'll be fine. It's going to be interesting, because one thing about it, when you get a new catcher like this that will be dealing with new pitchers, I find that very interesting, because you know he'll spend a lot of time in spring training to figure out each pitcher and figure out what he can and can't do.
I'm looking forward to this, and I think he'll be fine. I think you'll find if the pitchers can locate the ball, normally all of the catchers call a pretty good game.

Q. Are you looking for closers from the outside, or do you think you have solutions?
DAVID DOMBROWSKI: Well, we are looking to improve our closer role. We do have somebody in-house in Fernando Rodney who is pitching well and throwing winter ball in the Dominican at this time getting ready for the season.
We would like to add an arm in the bullpen, and we are looking at people that are in the free agent market and in some trades. So we are exploring both of those at this time.

Q. Obviously everything is interconnected, and like you said, you still have the closer and the shortstop needs to fill. By being able to get a catcher without having to give up too much, how much do you believe that helps you in your other pursuits?
DAVID DOMBROWSKI: Well, I don't really know that right now, so I don't know if that helps. It doesn't hurt that we didn't have to be in a position where we gave up a couple of guys that were in the upper-level part of the organization. But I don't know if that will have any effect or not, really.

Q. Do you have a sense of where you would like Laird to hit in the order, where he might fit in?
JIM LEYLAND: Well, I haven't really had time because I didn't know this was going to happen. But I think he'll fit in the lower part of our order pretty good, and I think that -- like I said, I think he'll be able to generate a few runs with his legs.
And when I say that, I'm not talking about stealing bases and that type of thing. But this is a guy that can score from first consistently. He can score from second on a base hit. We like that, to be honest with you, in some areas. We are not a very fast team.
He'll fit down there somewhere, lower end of the lineup, and we'll see how it plays out.

Q. Last year at the meetings, the deal for Cabrera came together quickly, very quickly. Is this something you've been working on or did you have this pretty well in place before you got here or did it all just happen in the last few hours since you got here?
DAVID DOMBROWSKI: No, we have been working on trying to get Gerald Laird for all winter, really. So ever since we had our meetings and talked to John Daniels numerous times. We have talked directly. We have talked about three-way deals. We thought we had a three-way deal that was going to be consummated last week, and something happened where that fell apart on Friday.
So we ended up getting -- we really agreed to the deal on Saturday. But what we said at that point was, let's see if we can do our best to hold it since we are all going to the Winter Meetings and there will be guys like Jim Hawkins here and we would like to give him a new story. So that's when we really agreed to it.
We figured that a lot of people would be traveling on Sunday, Saturday and Sunday, so we ideally felt that we would try to hold it until now. We did our best until last night, but we had worked on this for a long, long time and had a lot of names involved in it.
But we were finally able to close it out this weekend.

Q. Obviously you guys got a good look at Dusty Ryan in the final month last year. Is he somebody who can still make the Major League roster as a backup, or does this kind of seal your desire to have him get some more seasoning in the Minor Leagues?
DAVID DOMBROWSKI: Well, I mean, could he? Yes, because it depends what other catchers you have around.
Ideally, I think our feelings are it would benefit him to go out and play every day at AAA. Could he still be there when we put everybody else in spring training depending on who else we have? Possibly. But our plans would have him go out and play every day, or hopefully every day, mostly at the Minor League level.
BRIAN BRITTEN: Thank you, everyone, for taking a few minutes to join us.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297