Aaron had a very consistent year in 2005 and he has found his niche with us as a valuable piece of the bullpen mix. |
Brett had a solid year in 2005, and we are hopeful that he will step up even further in 2006. |
David is fine. We're not too concerned. |
He's a veteran bat off the bench. He's a guy who can drive the ball, get the ball out of the ball park. It's nice to be able to have a guy who's a professional hitter, a guy who's been around the league and understands that role. We think he's going to help us. |
He's had some issues with volatility, but we felt that he probably was the only available bullpen guy at that time of that ilk. And we needed one. He ended up being a very good acquisition for us. |
It will be a three-headed-monster-type thing. |
It's great to have them. I'm glad we have depth there. They're good, solid Major League players. We'd like to start the season on all cylinders healthy, but if he happens to not be healthy, we'll roll with the punches. |
Our main goal right now is to get him on the field and playing. We want to have all our bullets when we break camp. |
Robinson is concerned about making the club more than anything else, and that's understandable. We encouraged him to play, but it's one of those things where we can't really endorse it. We understand that he's battling for a spot on our staff, and that's important for him. |
The question was whether he was going to actually pitch, and compete. We know he'll get that opportunity here. It's one of those situations where it's an honor to get picked, but he has to make his own decision. |
This has happened for years. Guys aren't re-signed for whatever reason and are upset. That's part of the game. Obviously Pat had a lot of other things going on and we were still trying to make a decision on which way we wanted to go. |
Tom Gordon hasn't been in [the closer] role because he pitched in front of Mariano Rivera for the past two seasons [in New York]. He solidified that bullpen for them. He's pitched in pressure situations before and can close again. I see at least 40 saves. |
We felt it was important to have a face-to-face meeting with them. We had an excellent dialogue regarding Billy's future with us as well as our desire to keep him in Philadelphia. We made a proposal, received feedback, understand we have ground to cover and plan to have further discussions. |
We want to make sure that he doesn't get on the mound until he's physically fit. |
We'll probably have something in the very near future. |