In the session, both men discuss the season just finished, and what the team need to do, in order to be more competitive going forward. Yes, I know it's difficult to hear the questions being asked, but you can generally work backwards, and more or less figure out what those were, from the answers given. Here's a quick summary of some of the standout points:
Kevin Towers
- "We had some players that regressed, along with the injuries and some things that we're going to look at, as we go into the off-season - hit into a lot of double-plays, gave up a lot of home-runs."
- "Probably need s little bit more power in the line-up, a corner infield position or a corner outfield position... Maybe it's from within our organization, maybe it's Matt Davidson - he performed very well. Have to take a strong look at our bullpen, we still struggled a bit left on left. I don't see wholesale changes."
- "We're probably looking more at trade partners than free-agents."
- "I wouldn't say that I'm overly worried about our starting pitching."
- "I'm happy with the Upton trade... The depth that we acquired in the deal, we'll have a better idea in the next 2-3 years... but long term, the depth helps and being able to control those players for multiple years."
Kirk Gibson
- "We had a good clubhouse from start to finish... Had some tough times in the middle of the season. by the end of the year, the guys were a bit worn-down from grinding it out. But they stick together; there were really no cliques, you guys were in the clubhouse - they like it each other, they feel bad about where we finished, and we feel like we've got a great nucleus of people... I don't feel like we're that far away
- "Pitching-wise, it didn't work out the way we thought it would. The three guys we thought would be significant contributors - not that they didn't contribute, but not how we thought they would. The bullpen, we had out troubles midway through the season, then later, our hitting went south on us."
- "We want to play a very aggressive game... You look at the Pittsburgh team, what did they do? They weren't that far away: they executed, they had a special year, they had a lot more depth in the bullpen this year. We're not going to have 50 different things: it's going to be a couple of things, then we'll retool and we'll go."