StanSpeak, 117th In A Series

Wow! It's a busy week of Stan-Translating as the man who says the most without saying a thing has another interview with a non-pesky journalist. I was a bit worried when I fed this thing into the StanSpeak Translator this morning; it started to smoke and hum. I think all the BS is gumming up the works. We'll press on anyway. That's what we do for you, our dear reader. (Wait, there's more BS!)

On the state of the franchise:
We understood walking into the team that there were problems in the area of player development thanks to Omar Minaya's incompetence and Bud Selig's greed (not that that's a bad thing). You know my philosophy and the philosophy of our ownership is to build through strong development and to make gobs of money. That was job No. 1 and No. 2 and we set our attention to that. And How! I tell people that there were two surprises my first year: First, the rathole stadium that we were in was deeper than I realized before we got here. But the second surprising thing has been that I could not have predicted we'd have made this much progress this quickly, especially if I'm the one who gets to decide the status of progress. All of a sudden we are just overloaded with pitching prospects, even if they're all future #4s. I'm very proud of the scouting staff we have in place, both amateur and professional. They've done a great job finding good players that will eventually play for the minimum salary. Ownership has stepped up and signed the players we identified, which, frankly, shocked me. That's where it all begins. And because of that progress, I think our future is extraordinarily bright. I really do. I feel great about it. Besides, did you really think that I'd say that we suck and we're always going to suck?

On the decision to retain Bowden and hire Acta:
I'm real comfortable with both of those decisions. I have to be. I have to tell you that when I came here, I had an open mind that was already made up, but I really thought I was probably going to wind up changing Bowden's personality and keeping Frank Robinson until the end of the '06 season. That was my mind-set. In time, after looking, learning and observing and being told to back off by my boss, I wound up changing my mind on both scores. I'm very comfortable with both decisions. I have to be. They were very tough because I'm sick of managing Bodes.

On Bowden:
When I got here I saw the "plan" Jim had in place, and went about changing it immediately. How his vision was very much in sync with how I wanted to build it once I told him 'my way or the highway'. His work ethic was impressive. His analytical skills were impressive. I said to some of my friends (like 29 other GMs) who are frankly detractors of Jim, that what I needed here was someone to get me out of this ditch and be resourceful (read: cheap). He really is cheap. Look at the pieces he's put together cheaply. But don't look at Hanrahan too much. He'll burn your retinas. The non-deals last summer, the cheap free agents we picked up cheaply last winter, the way we went about it (cheaply).

On the frustrations of building a team:
I'm impatient like everybody else, but I have to be realistic about where we are. I tell people that this isn't the NBA, where if you draft Shaquille [O'Neal] you can go to the finals or sign John Koncak to a giant contract and shovel the final scoop of dirt on your franchise's future. You can't build a baseball team like that, especially that giant contract part. You can't flip the switch...And unfortunately the right thing takes some time. But the payoff [note to self: careful with the double meaning of words] is very well worth it.

On the financial side of playing at RFK:
It's been OK. We obviously cut back our expenses because we knew it would be a tough year financially at RFK, even though National TV revenue and payments from MASN are roughly enough to cover our player payroll even before we sold one ticket.

On whether there are hidden costs at the new stadium:
No question. That's always a battle. But that's not different than any other construction project, so that's why we're suing the city for several million dollars of improvements. There are things you find along the way that you want to add. And you do, if you get the city to pay for them. It's too bad that we came into the picture so late because we might have designed some things differently and bilked even more money out of the taxpayers who are building this beautiful place for us. I, for one, could really use a bigger office. The design was done when we got here, so there wasn't much structurally we could change. But where we could we've done that. And it's gong to take tens of millions of extra dollars. The Lerner family, in limited cases, is going to be doing that. They're going to step up to the improvements in anything we need in the ballpark, because it really was a travesty that our luxury boxes didn't have first-class toilets. We can't ask our Senators to piss in public. You saw what happened last time a Senator used a public restroom.

On the prospects of a payroll increase next year:
Obviously, we're going to spend more next year, because arbitration and contract extensions built in are going to increase the payroll by 20 million alone. and right now I don't know exactly how much that's going to be, although I have a solid estimate. We're going to be held to whatever promises we made, so that's why I never say anything publicly. I'd rather let rumor and innuendo fester, then when we do even a minor thing, I can say "AHA!" and point out that we've exceeded terribly low expectations that I never actually set in the first place. It's going to cost more money, but we're (me and Uncle Teddy) going to have more money next year. That's going to ramp up. I don't know how quickly exactly, but it's going to be ramping up. We can't pretend, though, that our pipeline is ready to produce up here. It isn't yet. We are stocked with prospects at the lower levels of the Minors. We're so stocked, in fact, we can barely fit any more prospects into our lower levels. We might as well close down.

On whether the team will ever have a $110 million payroll like the Dodgers or Mets:
Someday, like after a good half-century of 10% salary inflation. We'll be right up there in the $100-110 million range, easy.

On whether they receive Revenue-Sharing payments (ie: welfare money from teams that give a rat's ass about growing their market and drawing fans):
Oh yeah, at RFK, absolutely. Praise the Lord! Could that change next year? I don't know, but it is possible, though I hope not. That's free money, baby! First of all, we don't know what our revenue will be, but given how terrible our ticket sales were this year..., but revenue sharing is dependent on the other teams, too. It's impossible for me to predict. But, yes, it's absolutely possible that we can be a revenue-sharing payer next year, so at a certain point, we'll have to restrain ourselves in encouraging fans to come.