Price: Quotes from Winter Meetings

[RedsBrick]

Some very interesting quotes from Price at the winter meetings in a piece by C.Trent.

He addresses many of the things Reds fans have been verbalizing for a couple of years but never seemed to be discussed by the previous manager. Seems to be a window in how he'll approach his post and where he'll focus.

Quotes:

you can’t deny the fact that this is an organization I think the cup is definitely half full in this situation. And as we’ve gotten to the point where we’ve turned the corner from just expecting to make the playoffs. We’re expected to do a lot more.”


You know, I think the two teams that were in the World Series kind of gave everybody a lesson what it looks like to be great. And that is to appreciate the ballgame every inning, appreciate every time you have to add on to it. That there’s a certain effort and grind to the makeup of your ballclub.

I love our team. They’re a great team. I think they need to find a little bit more of that grind

Talking to the guys on the team after I got this job, there was definitely a strong understanding of opportunity missed there in 2013 and in 2012. And it was somewhat of a shocker to fall out of the playoff race in 2012 and not come back even more hungry to do damage in 2013. So that was disappointing.”

“But I think we all talked about, there’s parts of our game that we just need to get better, base running situation, offense, appreciating the opportunities is something that seems to resonate with all of our guys. I think everyone has special responsibility in it.”

[westofyou]

Yeah Dusty never covered any of that

[RedsBrick]

He obviously didn't cover it very effectively otherwise there wouldn't be quotes from the new manager, Bryan Price.

[oneupper]

Price needs to use the word "we".

[westofyou]

Price needs to use the word "we".

Yeah that helps.

Otherwise it's boilerplate news conference 101 in my view,

[redsmetz]

He obviously didn't cover it very effectively otherwise there wouldn't be quotes from the new manager, Bryan Price.

The sun comes up everyday. There will always be new managers. Very few managers leave on their own accord.

[RedsManRick]

Just as it is for the players, it is for the managers. At the end of the day, it's about execution. Baseball just isn't that complex. Price's #1 job is to make sure that each player is ready to be at his best 162 times (and hopefully more) next year.

What else is he going to say other than that the guys need to be better at every aspect of the game?

I will say, I read his quotes about Votto and it just left me confused:

"I think it can be very difficult to work hard to get an understanding of the strike zone and be able to manage it like Joey does, and then ask him to go outside that strike zone to be productive with runners in scoring position," Price said. "I think what we hope is that he's able to take advantage of more of those cripple counts, those times he's in a good count and maybe not be quite as selective in that situation, still trying to hit strikes, but maybe not there's sometimes where he got deeper into the at bat, but may have had some pitches to hit.

In the end, he really did have a phenomenal year, and I think he's conscientious, that one of his responsibilities will be to drive in runs, and we've got to present him with those opportunities, and I think we'll see some differences between 2013 and 2014."

Point 1: It's very hard to change the way you approach the strike zone situationally.
Point 2: We hope Votto does more damage in favorable counts... even if that means being less selective

I hope that he's saying, essentially, that Votto doesn't need to change his approach, just execute better in favorable counts. He finished plate appearances ahead in count or even in the count at the highest rate in his career in 2013, so it's not like his selectivity was causing him to fall behind. Thought I could see an argument where Votto was actually ahead more often than optimal, further encouraging pitchers to pitch around him and thus giving him fewer drivable pitches to hit, driving his SLG down.

In any event, while we can debate (and most certainly have) whether or not Votto's skills declined last year or whether it was just randomness, we can all agree that we hope he can put up a ~175 wRC+ like he did in the last two even numbered years and that the RBI will follow the increased power output. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Price is thinking along those same lines.

[traderumor]

He obviously didn't cover it very effectively otherwise there wouldn't be quotes from the new manager, Bryan Price.

Thirsty horses may still not want to take an extra step down to the water for fear they might slip.

[redsmetz]

I think this is a transcript of the general interview Price gave because some of the quotes are in this thread. Unfortunately whoever transcribed it, couldn't pick up some of the audio (and wrote Jocketty's name as Johnson once), so it says "inaudible" in a few places.

http://www.asapsports.com/show_interview.php?id=94938