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MLB WINTER MEETINGSDecember 9, 2008Ken MachaLAS VEGAS, NEVADA Q. I guess the big news is CC hasn't said no yet. How difficult is the uncertainty for you? KEN MACHA: Well, for me I just have my fingers crossed, and for Doug who's trying to build the team, it's kind of difficult when it's getting stretched out like that because you're working under a type of budget constraints and you've got to make everything fit. But the positive thing is that by him not going anywhere else, I think he has said already that it was a great experience for him in Milwaukee, he liked the team. He very much enjoyed the organization, and he sees the players on the field as a positive. So as long as he continues to have not signed anywhere else, there's still hope. Q. Back in a Major League dugout now, I'm sure you have an appreciation for what a better manager you would be if you could pencil him in every fifth day, 200-plus innings, 35 starts? KEN MACHA: Well, one of the things I always told my pitching coach, Make me look smart, have the pitcher throw a shutout thing. So he did a lot of that last year. Pitching very well for the Brewers down the stretch. I thought it was incredible, pitching four times on three days' rest. So that's something else. So you get a top-of-the-line pitcher like that, I mean, I managed in Oakland, we had some great pitchers there, Hudson, Mulder and Zito, all three of them, Rich Harden, also. It's nice when you send somebody out there that's capable of throwing a shutout just about every time out. Q. Without having any clarity with Sabathia's situation, is that hamstring done any other way trying to make any other moves? KEN MACHA: No, he's got a pretty good idea what he wants to do with the club, and mainly it's pitching. If you really look at it, the eight position players are pretty much set, which he said to me, and the way I look at it, too, there's not a whole lot of clubs out there that can say they've got their eight position players set. Now you have to just sift through the pitching. So that's what they're going to do. If CC decides to go somewhere else, then we'll turn and focus on somebody else. He's guy a list up on the board of possibilities of filling in the gaps both in the rotation and in the bullpen. Q. With so much focus on Sabathia, where do you stand with Sheets? KEN MACHA: Well, here again, that's probably a question for Doug to answer, but I talked to them. I haven't seen Ben Sheets pitch as much as I have some people. But he's a great pitcher. When he first came over he was lights out, had 31 starts, I think, last year, which was a tremendous amount for him, one of the highest of his career. So he's another guy who can go out there and be top of the rotation guy. Q. Because the pitching is in flux, you could lose CC, you could lose Sheets, both of them, and if that happens you'll probably have to find some type of a replacement. Does that stop you from doing any planning, or is it still early enough so that it doesn't really matter? KEN MACHA: Well, I think there's planning already. If I was to look at it, and if you looked at it, you've got Suppan and Gallardo and Parra and Bush and probably Seth McClung. He's got a great arm. So that would probably be the rotation right now. And the bullpen right now, you're right, it's a little thin. But there's going to be a lot of guys out there, second-level guys, to be able to fill that out. I remember my third year managing in Oakland, they traded Mulder and Hudson, top two guys out of the rotation, and we had to go out and fill the rest of the pieces. So went ahead and did that and still had a successful year. Q. You haven't made any pitch to CC yourself, have you? KEN MACHA: Well, one of the things I tried to do was call most of the players on the team, and this was a funny story because a lot of the guys are not answering the phone. They probably see that area code and say I don't know who this guy is. So it was a Sunday afternoon, and my wife is in there, and I said, well, let me try this guy. He's never going to answer. I called and he answered. Q. Really? KEN MACHA: And I spoke to him for about five or six minutes. It was a good conversation. I complimented him on exactly what he did here in Milwaukee as far as carrying the team down the stretch. I knew he had a big decision to make for his family, and I wished him luck on it. Out of all those calls I made, I never thought he'd answer, and he wound up answering. Q. Is that before Doug made his offer or since? KEN MACHA: I couldn't put a finger on the day. Q. Soon after you -- KEN MACHA: That particular day I talked to Riske, and he was watching the Seahawks play somebody. He had his helmet on (laughter). I can't pinpoint that day. Doug might have already given him the offer, yeah. Q. Did you try calling Ben Sheets? KEN MACHA: I did. I had no idea. Q. How many guys have you talked to? KEN MACHA: I'm going to say 14 maybe, 13, 14 guys, the ones that answered. I'm not into leaving messages, okay. Q. What's your message? Do you have a message for them or are you just introducing yourself? KEN MACHA: I introduce myself, I tell them how excited I am to be able to take over this club that got in the playoffs last year. A guy like Ryan Braun, I told him congratulations on third in the MVP and he got a Silver Slugger award, and I haven't really seen him play, and I'm looking forward to seeing him playing. This organization and the players on the team deserve a lot of congratulations because of the trip they had made in six years since Doug has been there, going from a team that hasn't made the playoffs the whole time and then all of a sudden gets in the playoffs, so there's a lot of congratulations for the organization and the players. So a little different message probably to all the players. I tried to reach out to all of them. But like I said, there was a lot who didn't answer the phone. Q. Did Kendall pick up the phone? He probably knew your number. KEN MACHA: I spoke to Kendall. Q. You're in a situation where to get to know what you need to know about these people doesn't happen until spring training? KEN MACHA: I agree with that, and you're relying more or less on the evaluation of the people in the front office. One of the nice things we've got, a lot of holdover coaches, Dale Sveum is here and Eddie Sedar and of course Billy Castro, Willie Randolph has seen this team, maybe in a little different light. Willie and I go back in the Padre organization where we signed the same year, so I'm going to value his opinion on these players, and of course his help with the national team. At this particular point in time, players that I have not seen, I'm going to rely on the other people. But you're right, spring training -- Mike Cameron, I've seen him play a whole bunch, Shouse (phonetic), he pitched for me in Pawtucket, and of course Suppan pitched for me in the Red Sox organization, as well. And I've seen David Bush pitch. But you're right, I think right now being in the meetings and go over players and how the team is formulated, I've got to kind of sit back and let Doug do his thing and trust what he's doing. You know what, you've got to give Doug a lot of credit. Like I said, six years ago to where it is right now. And B, if you're worried about the bullpen, he brought in Kolba (phonetic) from Texas and he did such a great job. And then they went and got Turnbo (phonetic) and he came in and did a pretty good job. So he's got the knack for going out and getting somebody relatively unknown and doing a good job for them in the bullpen. Q. In the case where you don't have great familiarity, there is obviously evaluation and testimony from other people, do you sort of keep an open mind for yourself until you get to evaluate them personally? KEN MACHA: You know what, when I managed in the Minor Leagues with the Red Sox, our farm director always used to call me up and say, I'm sending this guy up here, he can do this, he can do that. I said, I'll tell you in two weeks. Let me watch him play for two weeks and then I'll let you know. I think that's invaluable, the experience of managing in the Minor Leagues, so you can sit back and watch guys play for a couple weeks in spring training and see what they're doing or not doing and make their own judgment. Q. So you haven't looked at scouting reports of the guys you're inheriting? KEN MACHA: Actually I've looked at more scouting reports for the teams in our division than I have for our club. Q. Have you had any interaction with Mark Antinazzio (phonetic)? KEN MACHA: A phone call the day I was hired. That's it. Q. Are there any pressures in coming following a playoff team that hadn't been for 26 years, because now the fans kind of liked that and would like to see it. KEN MACHA: Well, I think the front office likes it. I think probably the ownership likes it, and I know myself as a manager out there in Oakland, we competed all four years and got to the playoffs twice, and I like it, too. But the reality is that there's only four teams that wind up getting in, and you've got to be one of the elite teams in the league. It's not an easy thing to do, as you said, 26 years of not getting in. But I'd much rather have a team with expectations than have a team that's looking just to fill out the season. Q. Obviously CC had a huge part in getting them there. He was very high in the MVP balloting and he was only there three months. If he's not back will you be able to sell that you have a playoff team going into the season? KEN MACHA: I would hope that all the players looked at what happened last season, and that's team, and sure, CC had a hand in it, but I believe they got off to a great start on when the season opened and had a nice lead midway through the year. Got a lot of young guys there. They've got to start believing and improving every day and becoming better players. Just taking a look at the position players, I think guys -- it takes at least three years in the Major Leagues around a lot of young players developing, and it takes at least three years to settle in and go to the ballpark this day, and I know how this guy pitched to me the last time or he pitched to me last year and start having a little better at-bats. When you do that, you go from like 100 RBIs and say to 25 home runs to 25 home runs and 125 RBIs because you start having better at-bats and becoming familiar. With or without CC, these position players, as I said, got to have improvement with them, and they did extremely well in the first half of the season. There's no reason they can't just carry that throughout the entire season. Q. Do you enjoy the winter meeting stuff, the meetings up in the suite and that? KEN MACHA: Well, like I said, I'm absorbing more than anything, listening to everyone else talking. Players' names come up, players who I've seen play, so I'm not afraid to voice my opinion on that, either. But I'm a teacher. I'm ready for the pain. The other guys do the planning. Q. Dale has never been a hitting coach before and Billy has never been the pitching coach. He's been the bullpen coach but it's a little bit different responsibilities. Will there be any learning curve for them or do you think not so much because they've already been around these guys? KEN MACHA: Well, first of all, I will address Dale first. Terry Francona and I are very good friends, and Terry mentioned to me because Dale had worked for him what type of passion this guy has, A, for the game, and B, for hitting. I had never been around Dale for an entire season like Terry had. He said basically that -- he talked hitting a lot, particularly with their players in Boston there. That was the year I believe they won the World Series. That was in '04. When you get somebody that has that type of passion, I'm not really concerned about it. I think he'll do a good job. Billy has been around these pitchers a whole lot. He knows them very well. He's been in the organization all these years. He's been through the preparation, been with the various managers, and is probably going to be part of my job to help him out, also, okay, as far as becoming a pitching coach. I went through a transition in Oakland where we had Rick Peterson there my first year and then we brought in Curt Young who really had done none of that at the big league level, and for me Curt Young is one of the best pitching coaches in the league now. He's done a great job with the pitching in Oakland. If it wasn't for the job he had done with their pitching, who knows where they would have been the last two years. I believe pitching coach is extremely important, and my background is basically in pitching, so together we can just figure it out. Q. As a manager, how do you see the relationship with your bench coach, because I think every manager has a little different idea or a little different relationship than the next guy. KEN MACHA: I think the -- see, one of the things that I feel is a strength for me, I've been a third base coach, I've been a bullpen coach, I've been a bench coach, haven't been a hitting coach. I was a pitching coach for two weeks in Montreal one year. So I filled all these various positions. I looked at my job when I was the bench coach for Art in a certain way, and I wanted those guys to do that job for me. Four years in Oakland, I had four different bench coaches. Q. You had a different one every year? KEN MACHA: Different one every year: Terry my first year, Chris Byer (phonetic) my second year, Rene Lachemann and Bob Geren. Q. All but the last one with a Milwaukee connection. KEN MACHA: And all Major League managers except for Chris. I hope that Willie understands that I want him to be open and voice his opinion, and I believe that the major job for the bench coach is to be even more prepared for the game than the manager so that he can look ahead in the game just like the manager does. Q. Will this be kind of a wild spring training for you, because you're going to be looking at a lot of guys you've never seen before, and you told us at your introductory press conference and then again today that you really would like to make judgments from what you see, not what you hear. KEN MACHA: Correct. Q. I mean, six weeks is a long time, but in a way it's not. KEN MACHA: That's true, and here again, you know, you look at the track record a lot of players have. Position-wise, again, I hate to keep pounding that drum, there's not going to be a whole lot. I'm going to be watching those guys there. The decisions that are going to be made are in the pitching area. Q. You said you delved deeply into the scouting reports on the other teams. What do we think about the division there, particularly the Cubs, who are obviously the king of the hill right now? KEN MACHA: Well, a whole bunch of rumors, Peavy is coming and Johnson is gone, all that stuff. I'm pretty familiar with the Cubs. They've got a very strong team. I think their pitching is just off the charts good, okay, and then Jay Peavy would be something else. But Rich Harden and Ted Lilly both pitched for me, and I kind of followed them quite a bit. One thing about being in Pittsburgh, I saw a lot of the games from the division. I watched a lot of games in Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee did very well against the Pirates this year. Q. After years of being a whipping boy, they couldn't win there to save their butts. KEN MACHA: Yeah, they did very well there. Cardinals, you know, a lot of respect for Tony LaRussa and the job he does and Dave Duncan with their pitching. I think they had a remarkable year this past year. Everybody kind of wrote them off. Reds are starting to put together a pretty good rotation. It comes down to pitching, so that's what the thing is in this division, and the Pirates -- it looks like they traded a couple of their good pieces away in Bay and Navy (phonetic) and it looks like they want to move Wilson so they might still be. But I look at their rotation, and some of those guys have pitched well. Zach Duke had a great year several years ago, hasn't the last couple years; Ian Snell was a top line guy, didn't have a very good year last year; (indiscernible) lost some velocity on his fastball and Gorzelanny pitched very well, Capps has done great out of the bullpen. So they've got some pitching pieces in place. McLouth wins a Gold Glove and hits some home runs, he came out of nowhere, so you never know. Q. What do you think about Houston, they kind of came on at the end? KEN MACHA: Houston, probably I'm least familiarized with them as I am with the other clubs. But here again, they've got a couple good pitchers down there, also. How do I see the division? Let's see, they've got some big-name managers in there, myself not included, but baker and LaRussa and Piniella (laughter). Q. You're leaving out the former Brewer, Cecil Cooper. KEN MACHA: Cooper, yeah. I'm just saying the big-name guys. Q. That might be why you're the manager of the Brewers. It had a lot to do with the experience of the other managers, so it might have worked in your favor as far as employment? KEN MACHA: Okay. Q. Do you buy that there's a certifiably different style of play in the National League? KEN MACHA: Oh, I think there is. We played the inner league eight years in Oakland as a coach, too. But we're relying a little bit more on -- you never produce runs and steal bases and aggressive on the base paths. And in our division Mike Scioscia relies on that a little bit, too. The guys are aggressive and stealing bases and if you're not holding them they make you pay and they squeeze bunt and all that stuff, too. I do think there's a different style of play. But I can liken, because of what I said earlier, there's five players in this lineup that can hit 25, 30 home runs that liken this club to an American League club because of that. Q. Are there any really tempting free agents out there on the market that you have a personal relationship with that you might be able to steer to Milwaukee? KEN MACHA: I haven't -- I mean, I looked at that. I just looked at the names up there. There's none that I'm familiar with those people there. Q. I didn't know if you could be a recruiter in any way. KEN MACHA: I'll do my best. Q. When you come in as the new manager of this club, or a veteran manager in your own right, what kind of tone to you look to set? What is the basic premise that you want to proceed from? KEN MACHA: Well, I think what you need to do is let these players know what is important to you, okay, playing good, fundamental baseball is important to me. Going out there and grinding it out every day is important to me, okay. Putting a good day's work in every day and trying to get yourself improved is important to me. I believe in process. If you've got to think of what you're going to do every day to get yourself better, go out there and follow that process. And if you follow that process over the course of the whole year, you're going to be pleased with the results, whatever the results are. So to me, figure out what you need to do every day to get yourself better, go out there and play hard, prepare yourself properly, and you're going to get the most out of what you have. Q. Do you settle on a place in Milwaukee yet, or does that come later? KEN MACHA: Not yet. We were talking about that on the way down. I think he's got me a houseboat out on the lake. Just kidding. Q. You have one of the best facilities in baseball in Miller Park? KEN MACHA: Yeah, I just think that's such a plus, a dome stadium. I know they're going to build a non-dome stadium in Minnesota, and that makes it tough. You're unsure whether they're going to play and all that stuff. I thought when the Houston Astrodome opened and I was with the expose for a number of years, you knew you were going to play and there was going to be no rain delays and you were going to set up your pitching rotation and it was all going to fall into place. Basically Oakland was like that, too. You're not going to get rained out in Anaheim and places like that. I look at Seattle's dome and say, that's perfect, good weather, you move it out of the way and you've got the sunshine coming in and all that stuff, so I'm good with the dome. Q. Just a little -- you seem you're a little under stated in a lot of ways. Does that change if things -- you don't like what you see on the field in your team? What do you see your emotions -- like when is the right time to show that? KEN MACHA: My emotions? If you're looking for me to jump up and down, it's not going to happen. That's not happening. I mean, I'm very excited about this opportunity and I'm excited about the team. Is that the question you're asking me? Q. And just also on the other end, if things aren't going the way you want, do you have a dark side? KEN MACHA: Do I have a dark side? Q. Or a temper or -- KEN MACHA: I think everybody has their own way of getting their point across, put it that way. I don't know if I'm going to go out and throw my hat down and kick it all over the infield like Piniella does. I don't think that's going to happen. Q. You used the word teacher to describe your job earlier. Can you expand on that? What does that mean to you? KEN MACHA: Well, you kind of look back at the background. I described all different aspects that I had coached, ran spring training for ten years in the Major Leagues, and then in the Minor Leagues you've got to stand at one station and teach everybody -- six teams come through, you're going to teach everybody the first and second bunt plays, six different teams. So through all that experience, I've learned how to teach guys how to block balls, run the bases, hit the cutoff man, run down plays, look for pitches in situation, how to use your fastball, how to get your change-up put in there and all that stuff. So everything that I have done has put me in a position where I had an experience somewhere in almost all aspects of the game, and I think I can go out there and give some of that knowledge to the guys. Now, you can go out there and give it; they've got to accept it, too. Q. You kind of pointed out that you've got your position guys set. Can you be successful with two left-handed bats? KEN MACHA: You know what, I played in Montreal, and we had one left-handed bat in Montreal, and that was in '79 and '80. I was a player on the team. I didn't play a whole lot, and we had only one left-handed hitter on the whole team. We lost in '79 to the Pirates on the last day of the season, and they won the World Series, and we lost to the Phillies on the next to the last day of the season in '80 and they won the World Series that year, so they were two pretty good teams. If you're worried about left-handed, right-handed, no, you just want guys in your lineup who can hit. End of FastScripts |
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