Reflection on last season:
Any regrets on last year?“We had a great year. We didn’t finish where we wanted, but we put ourselves in position to do so. We had the opportunity. We won a tough Heartland division, and you don’t win 105 games by accident. I am proud of the way our guys played, and the moves that were made to give us the best opportunity.”
What are you most confident in for the next coming season?“You can’t live with regret. You learn and move on. We didn’t get the job done, so we look at what we learned, and we move on to next season.”
Do you have specific positions you're more confident in than others?“We'll, we have a great front office who I am confident is going to help set our team up for continued success. On the field, I have confidence in just about every position that we are currently sending out there. “
What about on the mound?“Of course you have your spots where you know exactly what you are going to get. We know that Luis Pina for instance is going to vacuum up anything and everything that comes his way. We know that our outfield is going to play great defense and hit a bunch of home runs.
What is your team’s greatest need?“We had a great coming out party for some of our guys last year. Nakamura performed great for us, but a few things that surprised me the most was just how great Dave Ferrell was this year closing out games for us. I mean, we knew what we had, we just had to get his mechanics down and by God. What a rule 5 pick from our front office, especially one coming from our own division.”
Last question, with the Andre Ly extension, is there more in the works?“We’re going to need to shore up our starting pitching a little bit. I think we were 5th in the league last season in starting pitching ERA, but that isn’t good enough. Our bullpen was first with a 3.20 ERA, and we want our starting pitching to follow. That’s the goal. They had the defense to do so, as our .719 EFF was 1st in the league. We scored 910 runs last year and were first in just about every major category at the plate. We ran the bases well. I just lean back on the starting pitching. You know, Dooley missed 6 weeks, but rebounded well in his 13th season with us. We welcomed back Jose Barron mid-season, who did phenomenal with a 2.91 ERA in his 17 games. Jacob Cruz, who was another rule 5 pick also surprised me. He finished with an ERA under 3 in 29 games pitched, where he actually started 8 of those. Another great find by our front office. Esteban Cruz pitched okay as well. He actually put up nearly the same numbers as the year before when you figure his 2.1 rWAR and ERA. We just need a bit more consistency. We do have the entire rotation returning so while it is a need to improve, it may be difficult to boot any of these guys out of the rotation. I think more of an additional depth piece to fill in for any injuries would be big. We didn’t even mention Chandar who will be back in late April/early May. We have only gotten about 130 innings out of him the past 2 years, partially by design, but we need him to get healthy, and step up to be the final throat punch of our 1-2-3 gauntlet of Nakamura, Dooley and Chandar.
Omaha is currently projected with about $13,000,000 in salary cap space for the 2054 season. According to GM Justin Niles, if you, believe what he says, that money looks likely to go to starting pitching."There is always more in the works. I think I know who you're asking about, and let's just say that we are confident we will get a deal done."
