It was kind of a split camp. And most of the recent conversations were limited almost exclusively to using it for fair or foul calls. It wasn't with the thought of creating a mechanism for managers to challenge calls like in football. |
It's been discussed at the general managers' meetings the last couple years, |
It's something we'll have to address at some point, |
Kiss my [bleeping bleep], Sam. |
That?s usually how it goes (at this time of year). I think a lot of deadlines have passed us by. |
The expectation is that you need to make the playoffs, and we didn't live up to those expectations. I've seen it happen in other places. There's never a good time for something like this, but that's not my decision to make. |
The price was high, but to be able to get a proven bullpen arm who has pitched at a championship level, it was too good to pass up. |
The price was very high, ... But to get a prime bullpen arm, you have to give up something. |
There were a lot of things out there that made me fairly certain that there would be rough spots. Still, to me, I thought some of the stuff was absolutely bizarre. |
There's always an attraction for the marquee player. That's not going to change. A guy with the quality of Burnett — there probably isn't a bad year to be A.J. Burnett. |
There's no question that's ultimately how you're judged, by how you do in the season and how you do in the playoffs. By that measure, we didn't get there. |
Way to go, boys! |
We believe Brett has a very bright future in the major leagues. We wanted to give him time to develop in AAA. We feel the opportunity is now and that he's prepared for it. |
We didn't encourage clubs to get overly aggressive, because we knew what he meant to our club in the midst of a pennant race. Ryan's an extremely talented player and is going to be an outstanding every day player in the big leagues. Despite the fact that a lot of people thought we should have been more aggressive in sending him away, we're happy we didn't. |
We knew what he was capable of doing at the big league level. He's still a developing player, and I feel in my heart that he benefitted from getting four at-bats a day in Scranton vs. being on the bench here at the beginning of the season. |