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MLB WINTER MEETINGSDecember 9, 2009Jim TracyINDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA Q. You talked about Betancourt the other day, the importance of getting him back. How important is that for your pen? JIM TRACY: It's huge. You know, we were sitting there the other night, and obviously waiting for the confirmation that he was accepting salary arbitration, and the clarity and the way it looked after we wrote his name back on there made so much sense, and I say that for this reason, is because he helps to complete exactly more or less where we were at last year from a bullpen standpoint in that you can define roles, you have returning people that have already -- hold those defined roles. But I think the other thing that I can't say would have been a year ago at this time, that to a certain extent is now, and that is we have put ourselves in a position that it goes without saying that somebody is going to stub their toe or you're going to have to wade through a little bit of a sore arm or a period of time where a guy might be down. Our opportunity to fix things in-house, I think that's really -- when you can talk as openly and feel as good about it as I do bringing it up, you know that you've made and you're making serious progress not only as a baseball team and a championship caliber baseball team but also as an organization. It goes without saying that you take a hit to a somewhat significant piece, the last place you want to be is sitting there putting your hands up in the air as much as to say, hey, where do we go from here, what do we do with this, because you know the possibility is there to fix it, but in order to fix it, it's either going to cost you a heck of a lot of money, or it's going to do damage to your farm system. I really don't feel that we're in that position. We have Manny Corpas, who pitched for the first time in winter ball last night, and you couple that with 11 other names that you would want to talk about sitting here today, and then add on to that the likes of Jhoulys Chacin, Esmil Rogers, Sammy Deduno, two of those three which pitch for us and pitched for us in the months of August and September when we were trying to do something very special and be one of four clubs in the National League still participating in the post-season. You know, depth-wise you feel really, really good about where you're at. But reliability is the term that I like to use. When you start talking about nine outs or less to go in a baseball team, reliability is the term that I will always speak about in dealing with our pitching staff and more specifically our bullpen. You've got to be able to throw the ball over the plate. It's really very important. Q. You talked about fixing things. What needed to be fixed when you walked into the Rockies' clubhouse? JIM TRACY: Well, everybody likes to make an awful lot of that, but I've said this more than once: The biggest thing that kept jumping out at me night after night through the course of the first 46 games, I saw a real passiveness to our approach in general in any facet of the game you want to talk about. That's something that I spoke very strongly about that I wasn't going to be a real fan of that. I do not like to see passive play. It's not conducive to winning. Along with being passive, I think, comes the fact that -- the other observation that I made was that we were playing baseball not to lose, and when you play baseball not to lose, you're going to lose. Fear of failure is a bad thing to have within the walls of your clubhouse, and I strongly encourage them to go out there and play the game not fearing failure but also not using failure as an excuse as to why -- here's the reason why we're going to get beat tonight, because we did some of that, too. And I tried to dismiss all of that. I felt like we got to a point where we had accomplished that, and then quite frankly, another thing I think that these players really relished, they appreciated it, and when I say treating them like men, when I got to a point where I felt like they understood that this is exactly what I want, then I moved out of the way and let them do their thing. And we have some very, very special players. The credit goes to those guys, and I mean that sincerely. Moving forward, the credit will go to all of those guys, because I don't throw any pitches, I don't swing at any, I don't catch any balls. They did that. Regardless, change or not, they had a choice to make, believe me, back at 20 and 32, that either they believed in what I was saying, that I really still felt like we could make something of the 2009 season, or basically, nice try. Nice rah-rah speech, nice try, but it's not going to work. I don't want to say they took the high road. They tried playing for a while up to what I thought was their capabilities, and they amazed themselves at actually how good they were, and I continued to encourage to them you are that good, and moving forward you will continue to be that good. Q. You had Brad Hawpe, he was one of the things you turned this thing around at 20 and 32. You wanted to use him as an example, but things didn't finish well for them. After the season did you talk to him a bit and let him know, hey, I'll still behind you here? JIM TRACY: I think the best message I could send to him is simply this, and this is the way I feel about it, if we had to play a game tomorrow, he'd be hitting fifth. You don't make All-Star teams, and you don't do the things that Brad Hawpe has done over the course of his career by being in a slump your entire year. Anybody that is a really good player like he is, you go through a period where you'd like it to be a heck of a lot better, but as hard as you may try, the situation either doesn't change or quite possibly there's times where it gets worse because you start trying too hard. But that's all behind us, and now we go to Spring Training, an it's a brand new season. You know, there's a part of me that steps back and says that, hey, maybe I was partially responsible for that. Maybe I played him too much. Maybe I played him into the ground. So shame on me if that's one of the reasons why he went down some in the manner in which he did post-All-Star break. But I can promise you this, I can't begin to tell you what an integral part of this team this guy is, and if we play tomorrow, he's hitting fifth behind Troy Tulowitzki. Q. The first base situation, is that one of the ways you can maybe preserve him a little bit? JIM TRACY: I talk about preserving both guys, because that's obviously something that we look forward to being able to do, and that is try to keep people as fresh as possible, because I think one of the lessons that was learned by several of our guys is that when you play 162 games and you're going to be a contender for a post-season spot, those games in August and September, some of those feel like you play two games, and in actuality you only played one, the length of the season, the toil, the stress, the beat-down of that. The fresh you are you can keep your players, because you become somewhat versatile, and obviously that's something we will continue to work very hard at in Spring Training, I think it behooves you to do it. Because when you get to August and September, and if you can be strong by having everyone involved and getting people the rest that they need to keep them fresh, I really think our team is obviously better served, and I also think it's a better baseball team for it to do that. Q. This is the winter meetings I know, but have you given any thought to the lineup and what you would like to see? It was weird in the playoffs because of the left-handed thing, but do you still view Carlos as a lead-off because of the power that's there? JIM TRACY: I guess really the term I'd like to talk to you about and the dynamic that I feel we have is versatile, you know, because how good is Carlos González going to become to where there's a given day, if you're giving Player X a day off, and when I refer to Player X, I'm referring to like a Helton or a Hawpe, some significant piece in the middle of your order. How good does Carlos González become to where you can entertain the thought of this guy hitting in the middle of your lineup. If he continues to improve as an offensive player, I don't think it's too far fetched for me to think along those lines. I'm talking on a day where let's say Helt is in, and you're giving Hawper the day off, and you have Eric Young -- you move González over, and you have Eric Young playing left field on a given day, and you have him and Fowler up at the top with a Helton, Tulowitzki, a González, plus where we added six and seven and a fellow by the name of Barmes on a given day hitting eighth, and that's pretty dynamic. It's athletic, it's versatile, they're going to catch the ball. It really can vary. Not drastically, because you know me, it's not going to be I'm hitting first today and eighth tomorrow, but there are some things that you have to do just a little tiny bit for it to make complete sense. But it's not going to be a shockwave when they walk in and have to look at two different spots in that big lineup card to find where they're at. Maybe Barmie might have to on a given day. Q. You said Hawpe is at fifth (Inaudible). JIM TRACY: To me that's out in Tulowitzki territory. You know, I like the dynamic of the balance to the lineup. You know, I'll say this, Tracy brings up a very good point, and that is when you look at our club and the fact that we won 92 games last year and the fact that Chris Iannetta -- we dealt with an awful lot of this with regard to Chris, and he's an extremely talented player, and we got power out of Ian Stewart, but I personally sitting here with you guys can honestly tell you I don't view Ian Stewart, especially when he gave me a glimpse of what it could look like if he figures out the word consistency and how to become that, I don't view this guy as a .220 hitter, but if these two guys step to the forefront and become the players they're capable of being, the consistent performers that at some point in time in your career as a Major League player you have to realize, we have a real good baseball team. Q. What can you tell us about Jorge La Rosa? JIM TRACY: I can tell you that he was 0 and 6 and then won 16 games from that point. I can tell you that. You know, I think he has a chance moving forward of being a very, very special left-handed starter in our league. Maybe one of the more special ones in our league. But I think that there's an asterisk with that, and that is not only Jorge, but with several other guys, and basically a format for us to follow in Spring Training, and part of our plan of attack is fastball control. I don't want to say command. I think there's a difference between control and command. You learn how to control a fastball first, then you learn how to command it. But control meaning your capability of throwing the fastball to both sides of the plate, and the command part being that once you have mastered that, that you can pretty much with any of your pitches be looking at an area where you want it to end up, and more times than not it does. With the type of stuff that Jorge De La Rosa possesses, if he can get to the point where he realizes what I'm talking to you about, how special does he become? You go back, is there an example? I think an example of when he has it working in that fashion, you know, you go to eight scoreless innings in probably one of the most important games we played all year in San Francisco, and he shut them out for eight innings, and there weren't too many balls that were put in play that were hit all that hard, he has overwhelming type stuff. He's got a great change-up, he's got a put-away type slider. He's got a good curveball he can throw for strikes. Let's face it, he gets his fastball, he commands and controls his fastball, and the opposition begins to realize that, hey, this guy is going to be strike one on everybody. What's going to happen? They're going to start swinging, because I don't think you're looking real forward to hitting off of this guy with two strikes when you know that he has the type of arsenal that he possesses. So as a result of that, instead of sitting there with 104 pitches in the fourth inning, we can push the pitch count back and hopefully he can become another guy in our rotation where you just leave him alone on his good days and let him pitch right to the back end of your bullpen and preserve your bullpen. As I used this term so many times, one hand feeds the other. Well, if you're not working bullpen from April up until August, from the fifth inning on, then obviously it's going to be a little bit better when you get to August if you just have to use pieces and parts of it from day-to-day. Every once in a while you're going to have to, because when it becomes a daily occurrence because a guy pitches himself out pitch-count-wise or we get blown out three days in a row from a standing standpoint, your bullpen is not going to be as good as you thought it was on paper. It has no chance of being. Q. What's the story with the catching situation? I know you have not lost confidence in Chris, but there is still a desire to bring Yorvit back. JIM TRACY: Yes, there is. You know what, I like competition. When you're a good baseball team and you have interest in being a good baseball team consistently year in and year out, I don't like the term entitlement or the sense of it to filter into our clubhouse, and I like competition. I like competition. I think it's very important to have that. And I think if you look at any area of our club, we have some of that. We've got five pretty doggone good starters as we sit here today to write down on paper. But as I mentioned earlier in this conversation, we have three young kids that are -- that you're hopeful they're going to push. You hope that Rogers is going to push, you hope Chacin is going to push, you know Deduno comes along and pushes, you know, bullpen-wise. As I said, the neat thing about Betancourt was he's now on that board, and everything else seems to make a lot of sense as a result of it. So as I said if you get a little injury or you stub your toe and the job is not getting done and you have to make a little bit of an adjustment or you have to pull somebody away for a little bit and plug somebody else in, you may have to redefine a role, and then you ask a young kid maybe to filter in there and pitch some of those middle innings for you and things like that, and you're not just throwing him into the lion's mouth, you can ease an potentially real good Major League pitcher some day and do it the right way. Competition is what helps to create that, and I'm very hopeful that that's the direction we're headed. Q. Buchholz, when he comes back in June -- JIM TRACY: There's another guy, Buchholz, like you're mentioning, where is Manny Corpas going to be as we get closer and closer to April? Because you know Buchholz is a little ways down the road, but if Manny comes back and is the Manny Corpas that he's shown us brilliant signs of being a very special guy in the bullpen? Well, you've got four guys in your bullpen that have closed significant baseball games in Corpas, Morales, Betancourt when we needed him, and Huston Street. You just don't give the ball to anybody to pitch the ninth inning. That's not a good idea, a very good idea. Q. When you talk about competition, how does Seth Smith fall into that? JIM TRACY: He'll find his way, I can promise you, and he'll get his at-bats. He did a really, really nice job for us last year in the manner in which we used him. So now I think that's still in my opinion, that's still an ongoing thing. But also Smith has to, in my opinion right now, rest assured, be assured of, is the fact that he's going to get his at-bats and he's going to get his playing time and his pinch-hitting off the bench are going to be a very large nature, game changing type of bats. Once again, the dynamic that we have of such versatility and being able to move people around and keeping people fresh that way -- you know, Keith, our head trainer, enlightened me on something that the more and more I watched it, it became very apparent to me that that was the case, and playing lengthy home stands in Coors Field -- say, for example, it's a ten-game home stand or whatever, you get down to about game eight or nine of that home stand, you start to see the effects of that. So what is it that we can do collectively as a group so that we don't have to visit that and feel like because we've gone so hard to be so good during the course of this home stand that now we have to take a two or three-day period and look like we're jogging in place a little bit because we have to give them a chance to recharge their battery a little bit. That's what having versatile pieces and guys that you can plug in and unplug and give them the break that they need, that's -- that will help you. And that's all part of competition. Q. What is the expectation for Francis, because you saw him go against you, and -- JIM TRACY: I saw him way too good at the time that I saw him. Way too good. Q. Should he be a three or four starter type? JIM TRACY: Yes. Here's the way I look at it: He's a 17-game winner from a couple years ago, and our ballclub wins 92 this past year, and he didn't throw a pitch. And yet I watched the progress that he was making during the course of his rehab and things like that. So with that being said, he comes into Spring Training, and he proves to us that he is a picture of health and that he is ready to perform and participate. There is no reason to hold him back at that time. I don't believe in that. Let him go, because he's worked, he's worked his rear end off to get himself to that point where it's more or less, hey, enough of this. I want to participate. So let him. You know, I think that along with that, the thing that we will have to keep our eye on is my experience in the past is that early on, you may experience a little bit of this (motioning up and down), and with shoulder surgery you keep an eye on that, so that if you do have to back off of him -- here we go again, talking about these kids that we have and the depth to our pitching staff. We've got an answer for it, and we can give him the time that he needs to get with Doogie and get it back to where it needs to be. I look for Jeff Francis to be an integral part of our rotation. I have every reason to feel that way, and I think that's the way he would want me to feel about him. Like I said, it's not often that you play a season without a guy that won 17 games for you in the previous year, and now all of a sudden you've got him back, and you like what you have in your rotation when the previous season ended, and you get to add him. That's really exciting. Q. Does Hammel come in in the rotation, too, ham I will? JIM TRACY: Oh, yeah. I mean, off the top of my head, sitting here today, you know, it's easy to think along the lines of had Ubaldo Jimenez, Jeff Francis, Aaron Cook, Jorge De La Rosa, Jason Hammel. With kids like Esmil Rogers, Jhoulys Chacin, Samuel Deduno, Greg Smith, who we're going to find out just as much about him probably in Spring Training as we are Jeff Francis. You can't ignore the fact that he had an injury-plagued 2009, but he pitched 190 plus innings for an American League club back in 2008 and did a very, very nice job. You know, he's facing nine hitters and pitched 190 plus innings for the Oakland A's. So where's he at? This is another guy. We have depth. Q. (Inaudible.) JIM TRACY: Absolutely. Q. What about this club makes you feel that -- JIM TRACY: Because I think you identify yourself as an organization when you put together a plan, you follow through with it, and then you build on it, and building on it is not taking steps backwards, and I'm not telling you something I didn't tell these players after Game 4 of the Division Series. The idea is not to disappear. I'm not as good as you guys are. The idea is to continue to push the envelope. It's hard to win a World Series. It's really hard. First of all, you have to be really good, and somewhere along the line, you have to catch a break here or there. It helps to catapult you. But I know for a fact that in order to get to a World Series and have a chance to win it, you have to knock on the door of opportunity as many times as you possibly can. That's how hard it is to win one. But you're there one year, you disappear for three, you know, you show back up the fourth year. That feeling of what it was like in the case of like two of our real young outfielders to go out there in Citizens Bank Park and see what it's like and try to convince them to say, hey, we can simulate this for you in instruction, you'd be nuts. But then keep that vision and keep that taste in their mouth real fresh, and you don't do that by disappearing for three years, and in the process of doing so, the complexion of your ballclub changes. So you're reteaching the whole dynamic when you allow yourself to do that. I don't want to see that happen. We're too good, and we're too young to where we shouldn't be thinking along the lines of becoming the type of organizations that I've looked at over the years that I've always held in very high regard. You can't throw enough negative at them and get them to crumble. They're going to figure something out. This injury, that injury, we're not going to allow that to deter us. We're going to figure things out. Q. Do you see Ubaldo as your staff ace now? Obviously you kind of threw that out there? JIM TRACY: I'd like him to be. Is he ready? Yes. Is he going to take that step in 2010 early on? That remains to be seen. But are the capabilities there? You and Troy and the rest of our group, you've heard me say that; it's all there. It's all there. The question was asked about Jorge De La Rosa earlier. There's a great example of fastball control and then command of his pitches. We can still continue with that. This is another guy that if he gains that, and you can see why where some of these names and stuff that these guys present us that it's going to be a real, sticking point on day one of Spring Training. How many times did he do it anyway in 2009 where he went seven innings plus, what was it, 26 times in a row or something like that? Six innings or more, whatever. You know, he pitches you right back there to some very special people. But he could make it easier on himself, and quite frankly maybe ensure himself the opportunity of finishing his own game. That's what I want to encourage to him. But you can't do it when you're teetering on 105, 108 pitches after five and a third or five and two thirds. You can't do that. And a lot of it has to do -- the biggest sticking point with Ubaldo was getting him started and trying to stay away from the 30-pitch first inning, that type of thing. Unless somebody starts swinging a bat at you and taking some early count swings and putting the ball in play and we're recording outs, that 30-pitch, 30-plus-pitch inning, you never get that back. You're not going to pitch a complete game unless that happens. You're not. I want to see that from Ubaldo, from Jorge. I know that because I've talked enough about it, that they know how much better this would make them if they -- Franklin Morales, good luck hitting off Franklin Morales if you know that he's just going to pound the strike zone with his fastball. This guy will not be fun to hit off of because you hope that you get up there and you fall into a real hitter's count or something like that. If he has fastball command, like he gave us glimpses of a few times, it's hard to hit off him. Q. Could you characterize your discussions to date in terms of discussing with other clubs how I can improve your club, whether it's here or before the season opens? JIM TRACY: Well, you know, we will always entertain anything that makes sense to help make us better. But like Troy was just talking to me about a moment ago, the infrastructure of our club, I like it an awful lot, and you don't really want to feel like you're doing damage to that. You don't want to feel like you're robbing Peter to pay Paul and look up at it and feel like, hey, we got better. But let's face it, you know, we're looking at things -- we're looking at the possibility of if there's an infielder out there that is as versatile and makes sense for us, we're throwing some of those names around. And beyond that, you know, any time you want to talk about pitching and the possibility of just -- you can't have enough of it, that's a real true statement. Whether it's a non-roster standpoint or whatever, those are the kind of things we're looking at. But we're not trying to reinvent the wheel. Q. How has been your relationship with Vinny Castillo? JIM TRACY: Vinny Castillo? He's tremendous. How is he doing over in Mexico, by the way? I was going to ask you, what does he want to make a come back or what? Is he looking to make a come back? He's playing right now, isn't he? End of FastScripts |
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