MLB WINTER MEETINGS

December 5, 2023

Stephen Vogt

Cleveland Guardians

Press Conference

Q. As you talked to managers you've known or people in the game, what's some advice that stuck out that they have given you so far?

STEPHEN VOGT: Yeah, I mean, the number one thing is be yourself. Take time to breathe. You're going to have time to do things. I think that was one of the best pieces of advice. I think as I've gotten into this it's been a lot of stuff thrown at me from all different directions, you feel like you've got a million things to get done and some of the best advice I got was, hey, you'll get it done. You don't need to do everything in one day.

I've really taken that to heart and obviously been able to delegate a lot to the other coaches. They have been a huge support to me. Yeah, so I haven't felt too overwhelmed because of those advices.

Q. Have you seen some of the -- like Craig or Scott or those people here yet? And just if you have, what have those been like?

STEPHEN VOGT: I haven't seen Scott or Craig yet. I've spoken with them on the phone each a couple times. I got to run into Brian Snitker last night and just shared a moment with him and was able to chat with him and Derek Shelton who was my hitting coach with the Tampa Bay Rays.

So just some other people that have -- A.J. Hinch, Aaron Boone, they have all reached out expressing their congratulations and we are here if you ever need anything. The amount of support that I've felt over the last month has just been really I'm in awe with it, yeah.

Q. You said you've had a whole bunch thrown at you over the last two weeks. How would you describe what it's been like since the moment you found out to now?

STEPHEN VOGT: Yeah, the best way I would describe it is I got thrown into the deep end of the pool with my hands tied behind my back and then one cinder block and I'm kicking the cinder blocks off and I've got one arm out so I'm able to get to the surface now.

It's just been a lot. But all good. I'm realizing how big and how many resources the Cleveland Guardians have in order to help me with this onboarding process. The way that Chris and the group have really laid it out, it's getting me on board enough every day to where I'm handling a lot, but I've never felt overwhelmed, I've never felt like I've had too much on my plate.

Q. Have you seen what José Ramírez has been doing in the Dominican Republic last two, three weeks maybe?

STEPHEN VOGT: I just think it's so awesome for him to get to play in front of his hometown crowd. I know how much pride he has in where he's from and what Dominican League baseball means to him. I spoke with him before he went to play and he just expressed how excited he was to get to play in front of that crowd and those people. I just couldn't be more happy for him. It's just such a cool thing that he's doing it.

Q. As a manager and Cleveland as an organization, what is your philosophy on a guy with such a high profile that you're so invested in playing winter ball two weeks, three weeks, whatever it might be?

STEPHEN VOGT: I think it's a case-by-case basis, right? Jose's earned that opportunity. If he wants to do that, we trust that he's going to go and he's going to play the way he plays and he's going to be ready. He's never going to do something when he's not ready to do it. So for somebody of his stature and to what he means to us here in Cleveland, if he wants to go play in front of his hometown, who am I to say no, you can't do that. He's more than earned that right.

I can't wait to hear him tell me about his experience doing it, and I couldn't be more happy for him and his family.

Q. On that line, you've played winter ball. How much did that help in your career and you think it's going to help you now for your managerial career?

STEPHEN VOGT: Nothing prepared me more for playing in the Big Leagues than going and playing winter ball in Venezuela. It's Game 7 every night. When you get a hit, they love you; when you get out, they want you to go home, and they let you know. I had firecrackers thrown at me, I had beer bottles, water bottles, everything thrown at me. It's the most intense baseball I've ever played besides the Major Leagues.

I think it's going to help me a lot in this role. We have a young Latin team. A lot of our young guys are Latin. Being able to relate, seeing where some of them grew up, experiencing that, I also played in Colombia and got to experience those beautiful countries.

Yeah, I think those experiences those two years I've drawn back on as a player and now as a coach and manager a lot.

Q. Why is Craig Albernaz going to be a good bench coach for you?

STEPHEN VOGT: He's one of the smartest baseball people on this planet. I've known him for over 13, 14 years. We were teammates competing for the same position as players, competing for the same position as coaches, and we've supported each other and had each other's backs. We're not afraid to tell each other the truth. We're not afraid to challenge each other and make each other better.

Again, he's experienced everything you can experience in this game up to this point: been a Minor League manager, Minor League field coordinator, he's been a Major League coach, been a game planner. He's done everything you can do leading up to this point. And he's a hundred percent ready to be a great bench coach, and I couldn't be more proud to have him standing next to me in every single game.

Q. (Indiscernible)?

STEPHEN VOGT: Kai's going to bring a lot to the table for us. Kai, obviously, what a great story Kai Correa's coaching career is and how hard he worked to get to this point. Having four years of bench coach experience and then transitioning to the field coordinator, he's going to be such a great resource for our infield coach, outfield coach, base running coach.

He's going to be a great resource for Craig and myself in game, before and after games. I couldn't be more excited to have Kai on board, and I really think with him it really rounds out all of our staff and that support for the rest of the staff.

Q. Have you had a chance to talk with Bo Naylor?

STEPHEN VOGT: I have. I connected with Bo, yeah.

Q. Just being a catcher, what have you seen from his rookie season last year, and what are your thoughts on him moving forward?

STEPHEN VOGT: Bo's a talented, talented player. He's young, and it's exciting to see where he could get to. All I expressed to him is I said, look, you've already had the opportunity to work with Sandy Alomar Jr., and you're going to continue to do that. And there's no better person to mentor him than Sandy, as well as Craig Albernaz and myself, having three catchers on the staff to help support Bo in his first full season.

The first full season as a catcher is a different beast. He got his feet wet, he got his experience. And like I said, the talent is there; now it's putting the pieces together to become an elite catcher. And he's going to have some great resources around him to do that.

Q. When you're reaching out to these players, I know you've said like it's their off-season, you don't want to bug them too much. So what tact do you take to make sure -- is it the same message to everybody, something different? How do you make sure you're both reaching out so they know you're a resource for them but also not being overbearing when they don't even really know you yet?

STEPHEN VOGT: It's a fine line, right. I do, I honor the off-season a lot. No one wants to hear from their manager in the off-season that often. That time with your family, that time away from the field, the time away from the game is really, really important for people to be able to turn off.

So when I reach out I just ask questions. I'm trying to get to know them on a little bit of a surface level, maybe a little deeper with some. But also picking their brains. What's worked for you guys? What's been going really well here? What do we need to continue to do? What are a couple things you would like to see done a little bit differently?

I really want to hear from them because it's their clubhouse it's their team, and I'll never forget that. So really trying to gather information from all the players on what it is they want to see and where we think -- where they think we can improve because if they feel like there's an area that needs improvement, then it's our job as coaches to dive into that and see where we can improve.

Q. Why do you want to do this job?

STEPHEN VOGT: I love baseball. This game has given my family and me everything. It's been my first love on the planet Earth besides my family my whole life. I know I'm a leader. I know I can get the best out of the people around me.

I don't know everything. I've never pretended to know everything. I want a lot of smart people around me to help. I'm really good at leading people, and I want to help a group of guys go out there and win a World Series. I feel like I've got a good opportunity to do that here in Cleveland and that's why I want to do this.

Q. (Indiscernible)?

STEPHEN VOGT: Yeah, I mean, it just was kind of by circumstance, I was there for the GM meetings, the day that they announced the hiring. And when I reached out to him, I said, Hey, do you want to connect via phone? He said, I'm in Arizona. And I said, Do you want to grab lunch?

It happened organically. It was a really good lunch, fun to get to know Shane and not have to face him anymore, really just get a chance to know him and hear from him how he feels things are going in Cleveland and just get his opinion and pick his brain on a lot of things. Really enjoyed getting to know Shane better.

Q. He's already been in discussion in trade, obviously a complex contract situation. Just the general tenor of your conversations with him in terms of his future?

STEPHEN VOGT: Yeah, we focus on right here, right now. Until we hear something otherwise, Shane's here. It's one of those things that I've been through as a player, been through as a coach. It's never fun when you see your name floating, but you know what, Shane's got a really good perspective, and he's here. He wants to be a Guardian, and that's what excites me. Right now he's our guy.

Q. This is an offensively challenged team. How are you going to improve your run production and power production through the season?

STEPHEN VOGT: We got a lot of guys working hard right now in the wintertime addressing those issues or those needs I should say. We're talking a lot internally with the hitting group and getting together with how we can message how we want to try and drive the ball better, what pitches are we looking for to do damage on and things like that.

The thing that we got to keep perspective on too is we have a very young team, and power doesn't usually come, power comes with experience. So for some of our younger guys it's learning, hey, this is when you take a chance, this is when you go for it.

How do we teach that, message that as group? I think for us we're really diving into some of those things internally with our groups and hoping to get that messaging across. I've had some conversations with players about these things already, and guys are working really hard, and we're getting really good feedback from our group in Arizona with guys that are training there and then our different feedback from around the world of guys hitting.

Guys are addressing it. We're going to do some things a little differently, we're going to do some things maybe -- but a lot of it is going to be the messaging that we choose.

Q. Seems like you had four hitting coaches.

STEPHEN VOGT: We have three hitting coaches, and then we brought on Josh Tubbs to be a hitting analyst. He's going to be able to bring a lot of the analytics and a lot of the advanced scouting. He's going to handle a lot of that stuff so that Val, Vic and Espo can be in the cage with our hitters, and then they will finish off the advance with the scouting report for how we're going to go beat the starter that night.

So kind of just bringing another mind, another set of eyes to the hitting group that's going to really enhance our game plan going into every game.

Q. You're coming from an organization that's done a pretty good job in developing new pitching. You're coming to an organization that's really done a good job of that. Are there any commonalities between those two teams?

STEPHEN VOGT: They have got great people doing the pitching. Our Minor League group in Seattle was phenomenal. Major League group. Then here you talk about Carl Willis, can't say enough about what Carl's done in this game and continues to do. What Joel Mangrum has done leading that Minor League group.

Just getting to know the people and the system here, they preach pitching, they preach attacking the zone, they preach your best stuff in the zone. They are very, very similar, Seattle and Cleveland, with their pitching process.

I'm excited. Got a ton of good arms coming, and it's going to be fun to watch.

Q. You obviously played for some of the managers that are wandering around here, and you're going to be competing against them. Anybody given you any particular good advice from that former manager group? Are you picking their brains still?

STEPHEN VOGT: Yeah, I'm me. I'm me. I'll always going to ask questions, I'm always going to pick people's brains. Everybody I've talked to has just been super supportive. I've either played for or worked with eight of the other managers now and/or nine, wow, so I'm very connected with all of them.

And they have been nothing but great to me, and all of them have said anytime you need anything, please reach out; except for the three to twelve games we play against each other, we hope we kick your butt. And I said, well, no, we do.

And so it's been fun. It's been fun to see them. It's still weird thinking that I'm up here now. It doesn't feel that way yet. It will come Opening Day I'm sure.

Q. How has your experience as a catcher helped you connect with the players from all different positions?

STEPHEN VOGT: It's everything. I've been a position player. I know what they're thinking when they're struggling or when they're going well. I've dealt with pitchers my whole career, worked with them and understanding what the differences between being a starter, reliever. The fact that if a starter has a bad start, he's got to sit on it for four days and he's got to come back out and do it again.

So being a catcher has allowed me to have those experiences as well as a lot of exposure to the manager. And I had some phenomenal managers that let me in probably a little deeper than most and showed me some things.

And so all of those experiences are going to help me tremendously, and I can't thank all of my coaches and managers enough for showing me those things as a player because it helped get me here today.

Q. Going back to Jose. As a player I'm sure you had your own opinion of who he was. But now that you're in this position and you see the reputation that he has and the age that he is and still wanting to go play over the winter, what does that sort of show you about him or what more do you learn about him when you see these things?

STEPHEN VOGT: It confirmed everything. It comes down to the way he walks on the field. That walk tells you everything you need to know about him, is that he's never going to stop working. He's never going to stop fighting. He's never satisfied. He's going to continue to want to be the best version of himself, and he's going to make improvements over and over and over.

When your best player and your leader acts that way, you can't help but jump on board if you're another player in that clubhouse and want to do the same things that Jose's doing on a regular basis.

I can't wait to get to know him better and watch him play every day. I've loved watching him play, hated watching him play, because he kills us, but I can't wait to be on the same side as him and see the way he leads our group by example.

Q. Curious on your philosophy with starting pitching, like this is what he does third time through the order, this is what opponents do, oh, tonight he looks great. How do you balance what you're seeing versus the information coming into the game?

STEPHEN VOGT: You balance it. It's exactly that. It's getting together with our group, talking ahead of time of how many pitches we feel like he has tonight and then you use your eyes.

There's nights where, yeah, maybe there's a predetermined if we're pulling him at this point because of a pitch count or because of another factor. But at the end of the day, when a pitcher's rolling, a pitcher's rolling. And you got to know the balance of that.

That comes with just watching the game and understanding the flow of the game. Is it a back-and-forth game, is it a high-scoring game, low-scoring game, all of those factors get puzzled into it.

There's not one philosophy. I don't think anybody has one philosophy. You can't blindly follow the numbers, and you can't blindly follow your eyes. You have to be able to take all of the information, make an educated decision, and then trust what you're seeing out there on field every night.

Q. The front office, we were talking to Cherny and Chris yesterday, and they said that they like the relationship with you, sometimes you'll push back on issues that they suggest. When do you push back with them?

STEPHEN VOGT: Man, we haven't gotten too deep into it yet. One month in. There's just some things that are baseball. Our group is very baseball minded as well. It's not -- I always say there's not -- there's no number out there that has a 1 in front decimal. There's nothing that is 100 percent in this game. So there's always going to be a disagreement. 90 percent of the time, whatever the analytics are suggesting and the baseball decision, 90 percent of the time those are going to align. It's the 10 percent that we have got to make a decision.

Sometimes you're going to go with the number, sometimes you're going to go with what your baseball instinct is telling you. Those are when we're going to have those back-and-forths.

But when I went through this interview process and was hired, I was told that I'm not going to just give in. If I have an opinion that's different, I want to push back on it. Then that creates dialogue and that helps us come up with a better idea of where we can meet up somewhere and decide that, yeah, let's go ahead and do this.

Q. You mentioned Carl Willis earlier. The subsequent questions have been about third time through the order and decision-making. Just what was the dynamic as far as how much you're actually going to lean on Carl with his experience and knowing that staff when it comes to these decisions?

STEPHEN VOGT: I mean, as much as I can without him falling over. Obviously with Carl's experience, with knowing what we're doing, I mean, he's going to be heavily involved with making -- ultimately it's my decision, and I'm going to own it and I'm going to wear it, whether it's good, bad, indifferent. But Carl's going to be a huge support system of mine. He's forgotten more about pitching in baseball than I've seen, and I'm going to lean very heavily on him.

And, again, we're going to have a lot of conversations leading into the game, and then we're going to go out there and we're going to watch the game and see what's going on. We'll be talking constantly throughout the game.

Q. Do you foresee moving Giménez to shortstop, or do you think you've got a shortstop on the roster and Giménez will play second?

STEPHEN VOGT: First of all, let's talk about Giménez just winning the Platinum Glove at second base and what he brings to our team at second base. We feel really good about our young group of shortstops, we really do. Between Rocchio and Arias getting the bulk of the reps last year, we feel really good about those two, but we also have Tena, we also have Freeman. We've got people that can play shortstop.

Giménez, he's a phenomenal second baseman, and we feel really good about our young group of shortstops.

And to that extent I'll add on like Rougie Odor has a great relationship with these kids. And he's a phenomenal coach and a phenomenal teacher, and I could not be more excited that Rougie Odor is going to be on our staff and what he's going to bring for these young shortstops. It's going to be great.

Q. Center field, how do you see that shaking out?

STEPHEN VOGT: We're going to have to see when we get to camp, right. Myles is working hard right now. We'd love to see him in center field. We also have some other options.

So we're going to see what happens when we get to Spring Training. And I'm excited to see, have a little competition during camp, and we'll see where we go from there.

Q. What do you think the most important part of your role is that we can't see or can't evaluate with decision-making? What goes on behind the scenes?

STEPHEN VOGT: Building relationships with the 75 people that are in our clubhouse every day. When everybody feels valued, when everybody feels heard, when everybody feels like they're a part of this, it's dangerous. And I have the capacity to do that, and that's my job is to bring those 75 people together every day.

I'm going to lean a lot on my staff to help me do that, but everything we do as an organization, everything we do as a staff, everything we do as a support staff is to provide our 26 players everything they need to go out and play. It is about the 26 players every single night. It's about them, their career, coming together to win baseball games for us.

Q. You played for a lot of different managers. Was there one style you like the best?

STEPHEN VOGT: I'm kind of a hybrid of all of 'em. Bob Melvin, obviously, spent five years with him. I'm a little more energetic and a little more emotional than Bob. I envy his stoicism at times. I can't do that.

But, honestly, it's a hybrid of all of 'em. I've taken something from all of my managers, starting with Matt Quatraro in short season and all the way through working for Scott Servais last year and about 12 people in between.

I played for some phenomenal people and worked with some phenomenal people and tried to take what they do really well and make it my own, and I feel like I'm kind of a hybrid of all of that, with my personality and my energy. That's kind of what you're going to see.