Sandy Alderson is happy that tings have gotten better and credits Eric Young Jr. for part of the turnaround. He had his eye on him for a while and felt fortunate when he was placed on waivers and that he happened to have someone on waivers too, so he called the Rockies and it clicked.
Alderson spoke to Mike Francesa yesterday and they had a substantial discussion on a variety of topics.
I broke it up into a series of three posts.
Alderson on Marlon Byrd: “What I’ve said for some time is that we wanted to stockpile talent without compromising the competitiveness of the major league team. Regardless of what happens this is now about changing perceptions. For two seasons we became less competitive in the second half and Marlon will help keep that from happening again.” (As I’ve maintained all along, Byrd isn’t going anywhere.)
Francesa asks Alderson to weigh in on this perception that the team is about to turn the corner based on some of the young pitching including Noah Syndergaard and Rafael Montero who fans saw first hand a few days ago in the Futures Game. Also that players such as Dillon Gee and Jeremy Hefner may now be complicating things with their unexpected stepped-up performances.
“That actually a nice complication to have considering how for years we suffered from a lack of depth at starting pitching. As we see more and more of our minor league players inch their way to the major league level, we’re going to keep developing more depth. But at the same time, we seen Gee and Hefner develop nicely at the major league level. One of the reasons I’m excited about for next year is that we now got so much depth in the starting pitching area.”
Francesa asks him as he tries to move the team toward contention, what does he do with all the questions he has yet to answer with regard to who will be part of the coming seasons in Ike Davis, Lucas Duda and Ruben Tejada. Why this delay and isn’t it only making it more difficult to analyze these players?
“Well. your right. At some point you gotta make a decision. You can’t analyze the same players for year one, year two, year three and year four. The players have become more expensive than they are worth. And for some the jury is still out. We don’t have to have All-Stars at every position.”
“We need to have a quantity of core players so that we can build around them. So as we go into next season we need to be able to identify those players. A month ago we had Ike Davis down and Duda and Tejada not performing well and the core was not really the core. We’ll see where we are a month from now. But at some point you have to stop evaluating and start making decisions and I believe we’re at that point.”
Will we be seeing Syndergaard and Montero this season?
“It’s unlikely we’ll see Montero or Syndergaard this season because we need that flexibility right now on our 40 man roster to protect some players like Jacob deGrom. We’ve suffered from a 40-man crunch the last two seasons and we have to try and avoid that so we can protect some good young players and avoid losing them.”
