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here or watch it at the Minnesota Twins' Facebook page here.Molitor on adding more coaches:
"It's been a good process. It's obviously important to me to try to assemble that the best way we can in terms of the right personality, the right knowledge, making sure we have all the areas covered that we need to to run a staff thoroughly.
Through the interview process and getting James [Rowson] on board was I thought a really good hire for us and we're kind of getting down to where we're finalizing it. And it's kind of like your player rosters, you try to get good people but then you've got to make it fit as far as making sure everything you want to have covered is covered."
On adding a "quality control coach" to the staff:
"I don't know how someone came up with that term to describe that. The way I've looked at it and what I've tried to feel around from people in the game and certainly those two guys is that you add someone with very good crossover ability who can, you know, supply a variety of services to try to help.
You have your infield guy, your base runner guy but if there is someone with skills to help formulate a game plan in terms of how you want to pitch people, maybe how we want to implement shifts on the defensive side, you know, communication between the majors and the minor leagues throughout the year, there are a lot of things that that could potentially include."
On Miguel Sano's offseason:
"I haven't talked to him directly. I've been monitoring more what he's been up to through other people in our system, including our training staff. You know, we hear good reports about his focus and you guys heard what he had to say at the end of the year about coming back and things that he wants to do both in terms of being physically prepared as well as trying to undo some of the things that he found were a little bit humbling this year in his second time around. Not to say that there weren't positives.
When he first came up two years ago the impact was tremendous. Then not atypical from some of our guys who come through the second time around, there were adjustments made and at times he seemed to be figuring things out and other times a little bit of regression. That's just part of the growth of young players. Still consider him a very high-impact guy on our team and coming in, not having the problem of having to be concerned about playing right field. I have a fairly high level of confidence about his defensive third base of what I think it can turn into. There is still going to be some growing pains there as he settles in and we gotta see how he will respond to potentially playing that position a high number of games. Just a guy you want to try to find a way to keep on the field in some way."
On Sano's playing time at third base:
"I don't want to get too much in a box there."
On how good Byron Buxton can be:
"I don't know how to answer that in terms of -- what you see creates the potential in your mind as far as where his talent might take him. I was somewhat jokingly at the end of the year saying I might have misgauged him a little bit in terms of what he could do because I was focused on bunting and putting the ball in play and cutting the swing down and strike outs and then he comes up and hits eight or nine home runs in September."
On improving the pitching:
"I think that's part of the studying going on. Talking about guys with spin rate and launch angles and figuring out how to pitch better and smarter.
I don't think what I did and what my coaches do -- I don't think we're going to try to work any harder, we might try to work a little smarter. And if we can figure out how to do that with better resources and application, that's what we're going to do."
Molitor also shared his thoughts on the moves in the American League Central, the increase use of analytics as an organization, retaining pitching coach Neil Allen and a variety of other subjects that are well worth your time to read.
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