I didn’t catch the part where Hinch spoke and maybe he didn’t and I didn’t quite get all of Harris but probably about a half hour.
Going to try to do a synopsis here
Addressing the bullpen was a combination of looking at how they couldn’t stay out of more high pressure situations and how they couldn’t get Finnegan on track all year to deal with high pressure situations and to similar degree with Jansen. Talked about preventing a number of those High pressure situations earlier in the game by playing cleaner baseball defensively and base running and not having so many tight games. He really did talk up the makeup of Finnegan as far as his Clubhouse personality and they expect him to be a Madman this offseason trying to fix it so reading between the lines he’s coming back and he’s under contract to do so so I imagine he’s still going to have a late inning role but probably not closer.
Said they’ll be a lot more change internally under the hood than what we’ll see in the roster most of it around how they strategize for the season as a GM and then implementing a little bit different strategy on the field as regards being more aggressive in stealing bases and preparing them better, but also specifically asked about the platooning and sounded like he said there will be less of that based on the life cycle of the players
Almost all the time he took the blame for the season and talked a lot about how he felt they really were not able to execute his personnel and play strategy from a death perspective where they thought they would have more depth on the team earlier than what ended up happening because the hitters didn’t quite develop as quickly as he thought they did and the injuries put them in a position to have to play guys that they didn’t expect to have to play or play other guys more often that were depth pieces and he didn’t say this but obviously those guys didn’t play well and it didn’t work out especially in May.
Likewise the starting staff injuries forced them to do the opposite of what the original plan was which was to take the young guys who were rehabbing early in the year and turn them into bullpen pieces mid-year and late in the year and instead they had to start converting relievers into starters and it also didn’t work in May specifically but overall didn’t work on either side of the ball the way he had set it up to work and then wasn’t able to adjust. In the off-season he said the priorities going to be to make sure that we have depth early that can step in if needed if there’s a repeat of all these injuries early in the season, so look for a much better AAA lineup and bench.
He said he expected Anderson Briceño and Hope specifically to be guys that contribute at the major league level next year and that they’ll come into camp knowing that they’ll be able to compete for jobs and the veterans will understand that they will be competing for their jobs in Camp this year as well and that’s an organizational strength.
Specific player wise he said that he expects Torkelson to be a guy to lead them back into the playoffs next year and that Keith’s versatility will continue to be a feature for him and that they need to get him ready to implement that versatility in case of injury both in the field and at bat. Dangler had an amazing season and a lot of what he does can be Quantified but there’s plenty of his value that can’t be Quantified that continued to shine through even when there wasn’t the same performance quantifiably and they expect him to get stronger and ask to play more games at catcher next year. Riley green centerpiece of this team would not go into anything about contract negotiations for him or any other player but it seemed clear that he’s the next guy up for an offer and basically a stay tuned type wink and a nod. No news on Melton’s entry status they said they haven’t gotten all the way through it yet and they’ll let us know when they know I’m not so sure that sounds very positive to be honest.
Says that the biggest improvements won’t come from the free agent Market or at least won’t be their main focus, though that was asked more in the context of the lineup. I think they will go out and address the closer situation. He did say he was surprised in the end about how he would have thought that Kenley would have locked down the high leverage situations and maybe struggled in low and medium and instead it was the opposite and especially the same for Finnegan to a greater degree.
Towards the end he spoke again how he thinks hinch is the best manager in baseball and has a great staff but they’re going to do a little work on how they go about preparing guys because the players are younger and how they go about approaching games without aggressiveness and a little bit of a nod to the excessive platooning, which seem to be what he laid at the doorstep of trying to mix and match a bunch of not great Alternatives that were put in hinch’s lap during the injury riddled 6 and 22 stretch which Harris took ownership of again by not having a better depth piece available thinking that the young guys would be those guys earlier in the season and they weren’t and thus didnt block thrm with mlb fa bench guys on ML or AAA roster.
Said he had no regrets about making those trades at the deadline and looking back and at that time both are the same in his mind as being the right call. Feels there’s a ton of talent coming up in waves and those three hitters mentioned are the next wave, and then there’s a wave after that which I’m going to assume includes Rainer and some of the pieces they got in the deadline trades. I would bet that Ryan is probably part of this next wave with the three hitters. When asked about it he said he would not share any details about any conversation she had with Skub about contracts either during the season before the season or at any point.
There was just a little bit of side I talk so to speak about having to stick with certain guys too long and I’m sure that meant Jones but all in all Harris took ownership of it and Hinch Barely said anything and really only when discussing Dinglers positive makeup
TL;DR
More young guys come up and theyr’ll be competition for jobs among guys already on the roster, they’ll do things internally and externally to fix the bullpen, and they will upgrade the depth.
