Dombrowski Addresses Some Offseason Concerns

President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski spoke yesterday about what he hopes to accomplish this winter in setting the roster for the 2016 Red Sox.

Re the starters:

I would say that in our situation, when you have [Clay] Buchholz back and feeling good and then if you go from there, our depth in starting pitching is pretty good. I don't think the back end of our rotation is going to be the difficult part. We have [Rick] Porcello, [Wade] Miley, [Joe] Kelly. We saw [Henry] Owens, he pitched well. [Eduardo] Rodriguez can take that step forward at any point. I don't think it's the depth as much as much as you're looking for that one guy that maybe can be your horse that you can get.

Re Koji Uehara:

I didn't see [Uehara] for myself, as you know. His track record has been that he can handle the closing situation very well. People have told me he can fit different roles but also feel comfortable that he can close games at this point in his career. Right now he's our closer ... [Junichi] Tazawa is much more comfortable pitching the eighth inning instead of the ninth inning -- as you know he mixed and matched -- and Robbie Ross did a good job for us. But to say we're going to put that on his back completely going into next year, I would hope we could find somebody else in that regard.

Re the bullpen:

Ideally, you want an arm out there that can be a power arm that can get a strikeout at a key time. And Koji is a different type of guy. Tazawa can get that done for you, but he's not going to get that done for you in the ninth inning on a consistent basis, so he's not going to be that guy for us. ... I would like to add a power arm at some point.

Re Hanley Ramirez at first base:

We're committed to trying, to making the effort, and I believe Hanley is committed to making the effort to play first base. I will say that one thing that's nice is we do have some protection in Travis Shaw if we're in a spot. ... Will it work? Time will tell.