Some highlights from general manager Alex Anthopoulos’s chat with media Saturday morning:
Q. On what factors will you decide between Eric Thames and Travis Snider for the left field job?
A. For those guys, swings are important, quality at-bats, how hard they’re hitting the ball. I think I said this at the end of camp last year that I remember that J.P. Arencibia’s numbers didn’t look good. He hit .120 or something. I thought he had great at-bats. I thought he hit the ball hard. And I wasn’t worried about him. Whereas some other players may have hit .400 but we had concerns about their swings and how they were getting their hits. You’re just not buying it or at least aren’t sold entirely. That’s going to mean more than anything else. And then how they play in the outfield, from a defensive standpoint. It’s definitely part of what we’re going to use to evaluate the players.
And, what they’ve done in the past has to factor in, as well. The fact that Eric ended the year as the everyday left-fielder, that’s going to count for something, as well, but nobody is going to be handed the job.
Q. After last season did you lay down the law with Brett Cecil?
A. That’s not my style, laying down the law. I called him, beginning of November, and I just told him I thought he was at a crossroads in his career. His ability is such that he should be a part of this rotation, shouldn’t have to think about getting optioned and so on. From that standpoint I wanted to do it at the beginning of November, three-four months ahead of camp. And it wasn’t calling him to be upset at him or anything like that. It was just more of a frank talk. And I always tell players, one thing that is important to me no matter what that they know where they stand — either way, good news, bad news, they’re happy, unhappy. At least they won’t ever say they don’t know where they stand.
Brett’s important, he’s important to this staff of what he can do. … The year he had in ’10 was so good and it came so easy for him. I think what happened last year for his career long term may have been a good thing for him.
I treat players like men, the way I want to be treated. There’s no laying down the law or things like that. It’s just a very frank, candid conversation — what I think. And I give them the freedom to say that back to me. There are no surprises. …
I’m so proud and thrilled by the way he’s carried himself and handled himself. And I just think there’s been a real change in his mindset, his maturity. And I think his career has become a real priority for him.
Q. What’s the offensive ceiling for Colby Rasmus?
A. Hard to say. You look at what he did in 2010, even 2009, either one of those years we’d be thrilled with. You look at the production you get out of centre field on average, I think you’re looking at a low to mid .700 OPS, that’s average across the board and he’s capable of that, no doubt about it and he’s capable of more, he’s done more. I don’t want to put any expectations on him. I think be solid from an offensive standpoint, defensively is going to be a big help for us, what he brought at the end of the year helped a lot too, and just go out and play. We have a deep lineup one through nine, and he’s just one of nine guys who adds to our depth.
Q. Kyle Drabek also had some things to think about in the off-season but seems to be at camp with a new attitude. What do you see?
A. There’s no doubt, and his stuff is there. And I saw him his last start in Vegas before we called him up. The line I don’t think was great but I was so encouraged. Then he came up last season and threw one outing out of the bullpen against New York, I thought he looked great. The other outing against Anaheim he didn’t throw as well. But it’s in there. He’s so young. I always use Clay Buchholz as an example. He came up, did great early on. It took two years before he finally was established. But his stuff was always there. And a lot of people felt it was going to come. And I think Kyle’s in the same boat. So it could come at any time. It could come in camp here, it could come during the year.
But you look at the five guys we’ve talked about that could break with us and the other guys that are sitting there in New Hampshire — from Kyle to Deck to Jenkins to Drew. Those are all young guys with pretty high ceilings. And then you have another wave behind them.
I think we’re now going to start getting to the point, a year from now if you fast forward, we have a lot of depth on the mound.
Q. If Drabek doesn’t make the team you’d send him to double-A New Hampshire instead of triple-A Las Vegas?
A. We’ve talked about having a lot of our starters potentially go to New Hampshire. But it could be Las Vegas. He ended the year there so that hasn’t been determined. One thing is he’s going to come in and compete to win a spot on this team. The hope is that he comes in and throws the ball great and he does make the decision tough and we want to break with him as one of the five.
Q. How do you decide between Las Vegas and New Hampshire?
A. The one thing we’ve talked about is on their way up we’d like to keep them in New Hampshire. On their way down, send them to Las Vegas. That’s kind of the rule of thumb that we have for the most part. Again, on their way up to Toronto we normally would camp them at New Hampshire. But once they got sent back down we didn’t think it was the worst thing to go to Las Vegas, learning to throw deep in games, you’re going to give up runs. You go to New York, you go to Boston, it’s going to happen where you’re going to give up four runs in the first and you have to find a way to go five or six. So that was the thought of going to Vegas, just the environment there, the offence.”
Q. What does that mean for pitching prospects Drew Hutchison, Chad Jenkins and Deck McGuire?
A. They’ll go from New Hampshire to Toronto. But a guy like Kyle, who’s already been up there, he could end up in Las Vegas. We might decide depending on how it breaks. I feel we have so much depth here with some of the arms. We probably have too many guys. We may have to move some things around between Los Vegas and New Hampshire. But guys that are throwing the best we’ll end up calling them up.
