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L2Sports: Now process begins, where do you stand on a timetable
Wade: The housekeeping of roster begins immediately. Primary focus is on mangerial search. We’ll meet later this week and form committee that will talk to each candidate and go through process to ask for permission. see where it leads from there.
L2Sports: 13 games with Dave Clark, did you like what you saw, will he be a serious candidate?
Wade: absolutely, dave did a fine job. sort of fast break into the job. i thought from standpoint of communication and fitting in with group, he did very good work for us. He’s a solid candidate going forward
Local2Sports: What characteristics do you want in your manager?
Wade: We want experience, minor lg or big league. This core group will be veterans. It’s important for vets to understand credentials the individual brings to the job. The more qualifications someone has, the more respected they are. It’s important development process doesn’t stop at triple-a.. continues at big league level, we’ll going to try to fold some young players in next year. with that comes frustration, movement can be slow.. impt that guy understands that teaching part won’t end at triple -a.. his job to bring these kids to next level and several levels beyond where they are now.
L2Sports: You have a good track record of hiring managers, rely on that?
Wade: I’ve been through it enough to know you don’t want to go through it often ( laughs). it’s tough..everybody interviews well. I have 3 pages of names, we’ll whittle it down to under 10. Guys don’t eliminate themselves. Case of us doing our homework and looking at a body of work and to see if he fits the profile of our personalities here. I’ve told people, end of day, we’d like to have a mgr, we bump into a player at the airport and he says– “the best manager I ever played for was that guy in Houston in 2010″. If we can do that we’ve hit a pretty good mark and go towards our goal of running a parade down Texas avenue.
L2Sports: Fine line between a team that misses out and a contender?
Wade: one of the most difficult things to do is to objectively assess where they are, particularly right after season ends. You’ve lived through the plusses and minuses and this season, a lot of minuses. It’s easy to put opinions in stone and not have open mind. Important we step back and look ..we know from payroll we’ll make downward adjustments , bring in kids, 10 prospective Free agents to pick from, we don’t want to have oldest opening day roster in baseball.. If a few things had gone differently it would of been different. We have to spend x-number of months to assess and try to get better. Sometimes it means stay the course , sometimes you shake it up.
L2Sports: What’s the payroll situation?
Wade: The economy has impacted sports now. We’re recognizing we have to pick and choose between some of the guys we have. Backend of bullpen is eligible for FA.. Valverde and Hawkins…Brocail…to Infield..you have Blum and Miggy– 199 hits and 2 all star appearances… we’ll have to make tough decisions because of economic environment. but at end of the day it’s a try to put best team on field and we’ll make every effort to make those decisions work to our advantage.
L2Sports: Can you compete with a lower payroll ?
Wade: We’re going to have to find a way to do that. We have a great market and fans. We have to do it the right way. Some of it will take time because of condition of farm system but there’s no reason to think if we come back next year with healthy Oswalt and Berkman and Lee are playing to the form they’ve done almost entire careers. then we have a chance to be back in this thing.
L2Sports: in rotation with Roy, Wandy and Bud.. what’s left?
Wade: Opportunity is out there. list of FA is a small list.. Randy Wolf who was here year ago, would of been great to retain him last year. there’s 2 or 3 guys there. realistically, we’ll have to be aggressive to have those conversations. I don’t think we can fall back into mode of signing guys that we “hope” are healthy, probably better off as you mentioned- a healthy Oswalt, Wandy and Bud Norris..and Moehler..–if you look at what’s he did in 2008 to the end..ERA was in low 4’s…this year until he went to DL was low 4’s.. We have option we can exercise and get him back here. There may be a trade out there that brings us a young arm. If we can predict now that Roy is going to be fine and with Wandy and Norris behind him, a lot of teams would be envious of our situation to have guys like that at the top to set the stage for us.
L2Sports: Thoughts on kids- Manzella, Johnson and Castro and chances for 2010
Wade: We’re not going to base decisions on September, Manzella got 4 ab’s.. Chris Johnson struggled, you don’t get fooled by what you see in September plus or minus. We know skill sets of all players. Edwin Maysonett did for us. Fulchino, Arias before he got hurt. There’s a young element that can contribute sooner rather than later. Castro- would be great if he’s ready for opening day we’ll probably plan that he’s not and be surprised if he is. There are guys knocking on the door that will get opportunities when they get to spring training to show they are ready to perform at this level right away.
L2Sports: Why didn’t the prospects get more of a look in September with team out of the race?
Wade: I think it’s impt as organization when you have Blum/Tejada that have gone out banged up.. they went out every day, you don’t push them off to the side. We have interest in Blum and Miggy about coming back, if we shoved them off to get kids a few at bats it sends the wrong message and doesn’t pay proper respect.
Wade: We’re not going to make decisions on young guys based on Sept. It was good for them to soak in atmosphere and understanding what environment is all about. We’ll make right decision on those guys moving forward.
L2Sports: Is this organization preaching patience to fans?
Wade: I’m one of the most impatient people in the world. Hard to preach it to myself. We’re going to try , when i got this job, go on parallel paths. try to be championship caliber at big league level. Get good and stay good. Scouting development has to prevail in process. Will there be rough spots? sure there will be. As we get away from ‘09 and focus on 2010, we’ll work like crazy to get this club straightened out to get off to better start early in season and put pressure on . If we can get on to a good start, the momentum will build, put the pedal to metal and see what happens.
