Len & Bob's baseball blog

Jim Hendry spent some time with us before the game today and took the time to answer some questions about this very frustrating season.

How do you and Dusty approach this last month of the season, balancing the desire to win games and at least get back to .500 with getting a good look at a lot of different players?
I think we will have a good balance of the two. I think our young guys are certainly capable of helping us get to .500. It's not like they're kids that come up and can't contribute, as saw yesterday. We also have decisions to make on people that may or may not be back with us, so we need to continue to look at them too. I think Dusty will achieve a fair balance of the guys that have been with us all year and the kids we saw do so well yesterday.

Are you getting a running start on what you might do in the offseason?
Yes, we're looking at next year hard. We've had to take a different approach than in the past few years to our scouting. Usually, we would be out advancing teams with our scouts trying to get ready for the postseason. This year, we've got those same scouts out seeing potential free agents for next year or possible guys that we might want to be able to trade for. It's a different September, so we're trying to get a month's head start. We're trying to turn a negative situation of not being in the hunt into a positive of trying to get an extra month's head start toward the offseason.

Ronny Cedeno has played well and also looks like he might be able to play second base?
Chris Speier has been spending some time with him at second; they were out there today during batting practice. He has played some second base in winter ball before, so we're very confident in Ronny's ability and feel that he can definitely be a factor for us next year at either second or short.

Is it too early to anticipate how busy you will be in the offseason free agent market or with trades?I think what we'd like to do is probably get into a fair amount of activity in both if possible. You certainly can't predict what kind of trade you are going to be able to make. You can get involved in the right kind of free agent deals and we've been active there the last couple of winters. It's a matter of taking the last month here and trying to decide which in-house guys and young kids and whether they are ready to stay and play, which veteran free agents we want to re-sign, and then try to hit the ground running once the season is over.