Mark Shapiro Trade Quotations

He was everything we had hoped to see. The things you don't know when you make a trade ? the mental approach, whether he will be a good teammate, were the most encouraging things, in addition to his physical tools.

We probably would not have done that if not for the other trade, though we like Jason quite a bit. But we would not have taken Arthur off the club if we couldn't add another pitcher to work in an eighth-inning role.

When you trade for a guy, you don't know his mental approach and the kind of teammate he is. That was probably the most encouraging thing, in addition to his physical tools. He fits in well with our team and our clubhouse.

At no point this winter did we shop Coco. But once word leaked out (about the potential trade with Boston), we got over a dozen calls from other teams about Coco. We got offered some very attractive prospects for Coco, and some of the deals were tempting to make. But this was the only one we wanted.

In Andy we are acquiring a right-handed power hitter who is also a good defensive third baseman. It is difficult to acquire a player of Andy's caliber and skill set via trade or free agency and third base is a position of need in our organization.

The Colon trade was a decisive move, and every move after that was clearly in the direction of, rebuild with a foot on the accelerator, ... That's what it had been until maybe August last year. Everything since then has been, 'Let's see what we can do to try to finish off building the team within the constraints of the market.'

The Colon trade was the start of everything, ... It started the change. That was the defining trade.

It's an undesirable side effect of a good trade.