Kirk Gibson won the NL Manager of the Year award by
getting a group of players to seemingly play above their
capabilities.

Maybe not surprisingly, he’d like to see the team remain
mostly unchanged when Spring Training begins in a few
months.

“Philosophically, what we tried to do, I think we believe
that we want to have mixture of young with some veteran
guidance there,” the skipper told Arizona Sports 620’s
Burns and Gambo. “I think the most important part of our
team this year, beyond the obvious pitching and stuff like
the bullpen, is our depth, and we really believe that a
lot of our depth comes from within the organization.”

Gibson pointed to the ascension of pitchers Josh
Collmenter and Bryan Shaw as proof, and said first baseman
Paul Goldschmidt “was very good.”

Gibson said the plan is to give more of the organization’s
youth a chance to learn and impress in the spring, and
then be primed to help the big league club at some point
during the season.

“Those guys are within the organization, we’ve got some
good ones coming,” Gibson said. “And it’s our job to
develop them and prepare them to help us towards our
goal.”

However, the excitement and reliance on youth does not
mean some of last year’s veterans will be cast aside.

For instance, Gibson said he’s not planning on going into
the season without lefty Joe Saunders in the pitching
rotation.

“Joe threw 212 innings for us, that’s pretty hard to
replace,” Gibson said.

Then again, while Gibson would like to see his team return
intact, the important thing is getting better, improving
to the point where the team is a World Series contender.

“[Kevin Towers] is the general manager, he’s at the
meetings right now,” Gibson said about the idea of the
team making some big moves. “We haven’t talked in a couple
days. We’ll do whatever it takes to get better; whatever
gives us a chance to win a world championship.

“We’ll try to continue to make good decisions and win next
year and beyond.”

Follow @theAdamGreen