That news, combined with Rocco's great work ethic and dedication to his rehabilitation, gave us the confidence to make this deal.

Just as we did with ticket prices for the regular season, we examined our spring training pricing and refined it to create a compelling pricing schedule for our spring training season-ticket holders.

Our twin priorities are reconstituting the baseball department and getting new decision makers in there. Coming up with our own philosophy, which is going to be a blend of a lot of different philosophies on building a winning team, one that's going to be successful [not just] next year, but for years and years to come. And how we deploy our assets to make sure that happens.

He and Carl Crawford represent two premier building blocks of the organization.

In the five months between Stuart Sternberg taking over until opening day, we want a complete transformation of the perception of the team to be progressive and family friendly. We want to build a tradition of winning.

There are lots of names that are being thrown out there. Some of the younger, more quantitative-focus guys, obviously. There are people that have communicated [their interest] directly and also through the press that may have more experience, and more traditional general managers. We're going to look at all of them and see which ones make sense to bring in here.

Whether it's a GM position or not, there are lots of different holes to fill. If the right person pops up, we're going to jump on them.

We don't want to restrict them.