The General Managers meetings continued today, and I once again had an opportunity to speak to several of them. You’ll hear from some of the GMs in detail over the coming week, beginning with Seattle’s Jerry Dipoto tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll follow up on yesterday’s five snapshots with five more:

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Al Avila, Tigers: “There’s the addition of our new analytics department that we’re in the process of creating. That will help us make some decisions in a different manner. It’s not going to be huge, like 20 people, or anything like that. Right now, it will probably be three guys in the office, and a couple of consultants outside of the office, with the addition of some interns.”

Mike Chernoff, Indians: “It’s by no means a given that we’ll trade a starter. It’s a strength of our club, so we get asked about it a lot. Teams see the depth there, and we’re in a fortunate position to have that depth. But we want to build around it. We’re not looking to move major league pieces.

“Because we’re a small market club, we have to be creative and opportunistic in how we think about trades, and how we think about balancing out our team. So we’re always open to anything, but we’re not coming in here looking to move a pitcher.”

Rick Hahn, White Sox: “As for what mechanisms we use to evaluate our defensive performance, it’s all factored in there. Fundamentally, you go back to what your eyes are showing you. At the same time, we’re very well aware of what the objective data is showing, whether it’s from a Defensive Runs Saved standpoint, or a conversion-of-balls-in-play-into-outs standpoint. We also look at the more advanced, and the recent StatCast data. All of those arrows are pointing in the same direction; they’re all giving the same consistent message: Our defense was not at the level we needed it to be.”

Dave Stewart, Diamondbacks: “I don’t think anybody has a blueprint. I’ve been a part of some good staffs, but to say you have a blueprint for build a pitching staff, I don’t think there’s such a thing.

“Right now, we have a nice young pitching staff, and ideally you’d like to complement those guys with similar guys. At the same point, when you’re young and you don’t really have leadership, sometimes you want to look for a guy that’s a little more of a veteran. You want somebody who can put his hand print, and his foot print, on these guys to show them how to get the job done.”

Dick Williams, Reds: “I’ll just say that I’m really impressed by his understanding of his game. A lot has been made of how much Joey (Votto) understands advanced statistics. But I don’t think people should forget how much time he spends working on his baseball. Apart from the theories, he’s as diligent as anyone I know when it comes to finding flaws, and fixing them mechanically.”