David Stearns

We'll keep in touch with both the trade market and the free agent market.

And in terms of what exactly is next, I don't know, but we'll keep working at it.

No, no, honestly, it wasn't.

I think I and we as an organization knew what the response was going to be when we made some of the decisions we made early in the offseason.

We completely understand it.

I understand it.

Those are tough decisions.

And everything we did is in the effort to create a consistent championship caliber organization.

Everything we do going forward is in the effort of creating a consistent championship caliber organization.

um and i and we also understand that some of those moves are going to be very difficult to digest especially in the near term for a fan base so i was not surprised and we as an organization were not surprised by some of the noise earlier in the offseason next question is from tim britain hey david uh you've talked about adding freddie as a to the top half of your rotation but there's kind of top half starters and there's number one starters wondering in your mind is is freddie a kind of prototypical number one starter for you now

I think we have multiple starters in our rotation who at various points in their career have pitched as number one starters.

Certainly Freddie qualifies as that.

We saw Nolan flash potential as a number one starter last year.

We have seen Shawn Minaya pitch as an ace.

Before I got here, Kodai Senga pitched as an ace.

So I think we have multiple pitchers in our rotation right now that have pitched as an ace, and I would certainly put Freddie in that category.

Next question is from Jake Mintz.

Yeah, so I think first we look at what our defense looks like up the middle, and we really like what our defense looks like up the middle right now.

I think we're clearly better.

of positions up the middle.