On 1-6 Record
General Manager Kevin Chmura wrote:Not the way we wanted to start the season. Looking at our roster, it has obvious holes and we are actively trying to fix them. The three glaring holes are CF, SS & 2B. At second, we have Hru in the minors, who will be up sometime in the next year, but in the immediate future, we hoped Knowles would be able to fill the gap. Knowles defense has been awful. We could live with average, but we cannot live with awful. So, the plan now is to use recently signed Stepan Shabrov as a short term fix at second and move Knowles to DH/1B platoon with Frank Collins. Sadly, this means Rashad bin Hadad will be demoted as we do not have room for three players that can only play DH/1B.
In CF, we made the decision to move on from Carlos Garza and promote Justin Steel. Heading into the offseason, we debated whether or not to bring Garza back and since it was fairly cheap, we decided to. But through Spring & 1st week of season, his offense has been lacking and his defense is not where it needs to be. Do we think Steel is the answer? No, we see him more as a utility backup, but for the near term we would rather have him gain experience than Garza, who we don’t see as part of our future.
At SS, more to come soon hopefully, but for now we are going with Rich Moore.
On Anthony Jones
General Manager Kevin Chmura wrote:Jones is going to get the Jorge Diaz treatment from last year. We will give him up to 5 starts to show he can be a member of the rotation. Otherwise, he will go to the bullpen and either Felipe Mendez or Bobby Sherman will replace him. With Jones, we don’t expect amazing things. We are hoping for a .500 record and ideally a below 5 ERA.
On Salary
General Manager Kevin Chmura wrote:From the outside looking in, some have wondered why we haven’t spent money. No, it’s not because we are being cheap and do not want to sign players. With any free agent, we set a dollar and year amount in mind and do not want to overspend, specific to quantity of years we offer. When the time comes, we will spend. This limited spending will not last for long. But we are still in the “finding out” phase with this roster and want to give the players opportunity to earn a spot rather than bring in 35 year olds that may or may not help us win 5 more games.
