Elias on rebuild process: "This is what it looks like"

SAN DIEGO - Mike Elias isn't tuning out fans who vent over a 108-loss season and two trades of popular players that followed. Who demand reasons why they should buy tickets next season and support a team that is moving backward at a pace that could park it in the International League if the brakes aren't applied.

He listens and he understands. He just can't let it influence how he conducts business.

Which brings us to his first media session yesterday afternoon at the Manchester Grand Hyatt and the latest opportunity to explain what he's doing, how the club got to this point and how he never wants to repeat the process.

Asked about the reactions to dealing Jonathan Villar and Dylan Bundy and how they might compare to his experiences in Houston - though, again, he wasn't the man in charge - Elias said the following:

"I think people understand it. We are in a situation and I'm in a situation entering the organization at the end of 2018 where we come into the organization, the major league team has been effectively broken apart at that point, hit a wall after a really nice competitive run, a competitive window that had been extended - probably overextended, arguably. The organization did everything they could to keep that window open. There were a lot of resources, both financially and in terms of draft picks and so forth, and trades that were applied toward that window, and the window is shut.

"You look at the construction of the major league roster at the end of '18, the farm system, the talent base, the infrastructure in the organization, specifically internationally, and a little bit of the front office and analytics platforms, and there was a lot to do. There was nothing we could have done strategically to flip a switch and get us to where we need to go and where we want to be and where we want to remain.

"One pathway to doing this, and in my estimation the only one and the quickest one, is to go about this process of fortifying our minor league pipeline, improving our internal capabilities, investing in the infrastructure of the organization. And this is what it looks like."

It wasn't promised to be pretty. No one should be stunned by its appearance.

"There's going to be a couple years where we take steps back to take steps forward, where we say goodbye to guys like Bundy and Villar who have helped the team and would help the team in the short term, but we bring in young players who are going to be here longer," Elias said.

"We possibly redeploy that playing time and that money toward other players and we make moves and ultimately improve the outlook for our future. But it's not a process that people go into lightly and that's why you don't see teams that like to rebuild. Because it's not fun for the fans, it's not fun for the front office, it's not fun for ownership. But that's where we were at, and this is the path out of it and we're going to do it as best we can and as quickly as we can."

* Former Boston Globe baseball writer Nick Cafardo was elected the 2020 winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award in balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. He will be enshrined posthumously into the writer's wing of the Hall of Fame in July.

Cafardo passed away on Feb. 21 while covering the Red Sox at their spring training complex in Fort Myers, Fla. He was scheduled to be off that day, but showed up at the ballpark and died outside the team's clubhouse. He was 62.

Cafardo is the first posthumous winner of the award since his Boston Globe colleague, Larry Whiteside, in 2008.

This morning's announcement brought a prolonged standing ovation from BBWAA members. Included in the audience was Nick's son, Ben Cafardo, of ESPN.