Ben Cherington spoke for nearly 30 minutes this morning about the trade deadline, how his staff plans to address the Major League Baseball Draft, Konnor Griffin's first professional season and much more.

Here's a full transcript of today's press conference:

Q: With the Major League Baseball Draft approaching, I know the overlying goal of taking the best player available has remained steadfast in your time here. How has the process of getting to that destination evolved?

Cherington: Yeah, I'm excited about it. I mean, I think it's just that. Every year is an opportunity to really refine it a little bit further. Look at what's worked in the past, where we can improve. Are there gaps? And I have real high confidence in the group that we have to do that. They have been hard at work now for quite a while and for the most part, in Pittsburgh at this point. Most of amateur baseball is done, so pretty much hunkered down upstairs and we'll get started formally, in terms of the draft room, that first week in July. It's an exciting time, as you said. It's a huge opportunity for us and we really believe that we're continuing to improve our process and that'll lead to good things next month.

Q: The consensus with this draft class seems to be that there is a lot of really good college arms. Considering your organization's success in development and flipping these guys for major-league talent, do you think that puts you guys in an advantageous spot?

Cherington: I think we really just want to look for the best player. We're confident in our ability to draft and develop pitching, certainly. If that's the way it falls and it's a pitcher, we'll be excited about that. But, we have to create more offense too, we know that, as an organization. It's going to come down to best player. It'll be up to us and I'm very confident that we're going to be able to create a really good onboarding and development plan for whoever it is and get them off to a good track in their pro career. It's exciting, but we need to get better, so best talent available.

Q: Last year, you kind of bucked the trend, where a lot of people projected college bats, you went with a prep player and Konnor (Griffin) is looking pretty good, it's looking like a smart move. But, how much, given where you are right now and how much you need offense, do you feel pressure to, not necessarily that you are not drafting the best player, but you're drafting for positional need as opposed to pitching and going with the best positional player? How much pressure is on that because you need to add that to the organization?

Cherington: We do feel pressure to create more offense. We have to do that to deliver what we need to deliver to our fans, which is our focus. Part of that is creating more offense. No question about that. I don't believe that doing that, especially in a place like Pittsburgh, is ever going to be about one thing, one decision, one free agent, one draft pick. It's never going to be about that. It's going to be about 100 things and we need to create more offense. So, what I want to avoid in the draft is making our decision any harder because of that. Let's just find the best player and with that, we know we need to create more offense over time.

Q: With wanting to create more offense, how much would you weigh a guy who could be quick to the big leagues and make an impact here, sooner rather than later?

Cherington: I mean, one of the things I'm really excited about in how our draft process has evolved, and I really feel that keeps getting better over time, is that question is sort of baked into the process. So, I don't feel like now we're really having to think about the decision between, maybe upside and risk of being further away versus closer and safer. I think it's all part of the process and the process itself is, I believe, doing a good job of capturing all of that. Capturing both the upside and the risk of every player and it's getting them in an order. We're going to be disciplined and honor that order when we're done with it on July 6 and just take the best player available.

DKPS: If it's not through the draft, do you think you can address that offensive need by other means, such as the trade deadline?

Cherington: We have to keep addressing it in every way possible. It is the draft, it's just not a single decision in the draft. But, it's certainly the draft, it's international, it's trades, it's hitting development, it's the environment we have in the major leagues, it's roster construction, it's how do we build a roster that fits PNC. It's all of those things and inside each of those categories, there are 100 things. So, we just have to do that. I know how much awareness we have to solve that problem, and really have had. This is something, organizationally, for at least two years now, it's been very clear that to win, to deliver more to our fans, we've got to create offense. We have a really high level of awareness on that, to solve that problem and an incredible amount of work on focus going into solving that. All that hasn't bubbled up at the major-league level, obviously. So, we have to, first of all, be accountable for that and just stay at it. I don't think it's one thing, I think it's going to be hundreds of things. Ultimately, leading to more runs on the field and more wins.

Q: You mentioned that's all baked into the process. With how quickly guys have accelerated from being drafted to getting to the majors, how much has that changed the pre-draft process or your thinking about 'Hey, we have to draft guys and we can't wait four to five years for them to develop. We need them to make a more immediate impact.' How much has that impacted the way you go about everything now?

Cherington: I certainly don't want to, and I don't think any team would assume that just because a single player came into an organization and moved quick, those rules are going to apply perfectly to the next one. So we want to be careful just to keep it about the player and what's best for the player. What's the best path that makes sense for the player? Not everyone is going to move fast and there are lots of good players in the major leagues that didn't move fast. I do think that, particularly at the top of the draft, even for high school players, the access that players have to really good development resources, even before they get into pro ball, continues to be better than ever. Certainly, that is the case for the high-level college programs. But, even for high school players, the resources are out there. You don't have to wait to get into pro ball to take advantage of those resources. So I do think, certainly at the top of the draft, we are seeing players come into pro ball better equipped than ever, really. It doesn't mean it's easy. There's still failure involved with the pro game, but players are pretty much ready to go.

Q: Ben, as you evaluate your pitching and the organizational depth, are you confident that if the offense were able to catch up, that your organization would be in position to take the next step, either as a winning organization or a playoff caliber organization? Is the pitching depth in a spot now where that would be the case?

Cherington: I believe so, but I think only in assuming that we do our jobs to keep optimizing that pitching depth. I don't think we just sit passively and assume that the talent itself is going to be enough. We need to keep the pedal down to challenge guys to keep getting better and find the next step with guys. We should be an organization where that can be a real strength. I think we have the talent where it's a relative strength. I think we're doing pretty well, but we're not satisfied either. I think the answer to your question is yes, assuming we continue to challenge it and find ways to push guys to the next level.

Q: Relatively speaking, would you consider that you have a surplus, relative to the league?

Cherington: I actually hadn't thought about it, relative to the league. I think, relative to position players, still, probably, internally. Maybe that's starting to even out a little bit. But, I don't feel like we're going to be jammed up or anything. We've got room for all the pitching we have and pitching has a way of sorting itself out as it relates to who's on the roster at any given time, there's injuries, there's attrition, etc. I think we're at a solid foundation there, but we have to keep challenging it. I really believe that there are pitchers in the organization, both at the major-league level and the minor-league level, that are capable of more and it's our job to help them find that.

Q: Is anything going on with Bubba Chandler? He's hit a bit of a bump in the road relative to his success.

Cherington: Personally, I think it's just that. It's just a bump in the road. He had such a dominant two months and it's hard to sustain that every single outing. He's also in Triple-A and, like everyone else in Triple-A, they want to be in the big leagues. We're helping him manage that. As I've said before, we believe it would be a good outcome for Bubba and for the Pirates if he is pitching in PNC this year. We still want that to be the outcome and believe that he'll put himself in a position to make that happen.

Q: What's going on, because we're not watching it every day?

Cherington: The execution and command hasn't been quite what it was. The quality of pitches is still there, the velo is still there. He's healthy. He's just not dominating the strike zone as much as he was early and not dominating counts quite as much to put himself in the best position. It's just led to some messier outings and he's learning from that. He's focusing on it. He's super accountable. So he knows what he has to do to put himself in back in a good spot.

Q: On the note of bumps in the road, Oneil (Cruz) is really struggling right now. What do you think is behind that and do you think it's anything mentally related? Or do you think it's just figuring this thing out with his mechanics?

Cherington: Without being inside him, I don't think I'd want to speculate on the psychological part of it. It's a hard game, so that can always be a possibility for any player who's going through something. We're not seeing any differences in the underlying skills, the bat speed and how hard he hits the ball. All that stuff is still there. He's healthy. He's been going through a rut. It's happened before and he's come out of it and I expect he will again. He's doing the work and we know that he's capable of more. He knows he's capable of more. There was a stretch there during the season where he was clearly the best player on the field a lot of nights, for a stretch. Now he's going through it and we just have to get him back to it.

Q: When you say you know he's capable of more, why do you feel like he hasn't been that "more" more frequently?

Cherington: I think every player is a human being first and they are all coming into it in their own way. He's got these incredible gifts. He's still developing and learning that consistency skill, that 'How do I be the best version of myself every night?' When I say that, I want to be clear, and I really feel strongly about this, it's not about work ethic or whether he wants to be good, or care level, or anything like that. It's just a skill that players have to develop like any other skill. To be great at the major-league level, to be an everyday player and to be great, that's a skill. He's still developing it. I think we're seeing progress. If you think about year-over-year progress, we're seeing that. We're still seeing times inside of season where it can ebb and flow a little bit. That's where he is. But we're confident he's going to come out of it. He wants to be good.

DKPS: You had mentioned earlier about taking advantage of PNC Park and the dimensions. Is it a pull-side power that you're thinking about draft-wise and even accumulating more hitting talent as we go on over the next year or two?

Cherington: I don't have a particular example or idea, I just think that there was certainly a point in the process we were in, that we were trying to accumulate as much talent as we can and develop that talent. Those things, by themselves, are hard things to do. We have to keep getting better at that. But at some period of time, we weren't thinking as much or maybe not prioritizing as much, 'What is the specific combination of players that fits this ballpark the best?' We're now in a period where we want to be delivering more wins and it's not the only thing that's going to do that. I think it's just one thing that we need to think clearly about. So, the obvious part of that is, left-handed hitters are going to generally benefit from playing here more than right-handed hitters and we are a little more right-handed than we are left-handed. So that's a simple part of it. You're always going to have some right-handed hitters, so we need to think about what style of right-handed hitter is going to thrive here? What style of left-handed hitter is going to thrive here? But the simplest part is probably to just try and get a little more balance and a little bit more left-handed over time.

DKPS: Is that like with Spencer Horwitz coming here, he's more of a gap hitter with power to the alleys. Is that something you start to talk to players about to take advantage of?

Cherington: On Horwitz, he felt like he was the type of left-handed hitter that could thrive here because it's not elite power, he's not a 40 home-run guy, but he's got enough to get out of here at PNC. He's also got a track record of using the whole field, so he gets hits everywhere. We feel like that kind of hitter can thrive here. Generally speaking, right-handed hitters, unless you are Andrew McCutchen in your prime or something, right-handed hitters that thrive here tend to find their hits everywhere. If you're hitting 380-foot fly balls to left field, this is not a park that's going to forgive you. It's not as forgiving a place to do that. You have to find your hits in different ways. There's a fine line, though. There are certain things about a hitter's identity that you don't want to mess with too much. By no means am I suggesting this is the only part of solving our offensive issue. There's a lot more to it than that. But I think it's one aspect of it.

Q: What has Konnor Griffin done to be this successful so early in his career?

Cherington: His approach to his day, really from his first day as a Pirate, seems to be advanced for what you'd expect for someone his age. There's physical ability there. To some degree, there's some part of his physical ability that maybe even was underappreciated as an amateur because, in some ways, you don't really have a chance to fully test it as an amateur. For example, if you read industry stuff, there were some questions about the bat as an amateur. Well, the way I interpreted that was he's from a small town in Mississippi, so of course, there's going to be questions. No one really knows when you are facing that competition, that's the question. Once he's in pro ball, now we can start measuring things more accurately and we now know the swing is pretty good and he's got bat speed and he's making contact. It quickly starts to answer that question. Then the shortstop play is the other one. Admittedly, there's uncertainty, even for the Pirates when we drafted him. Where's he going to play down the road? Is it going to be short? Center? Somewhere else? I think a lot of that, again, is that there is not enough sample to really know the answer to the question until he gets into pro ball. Now he's been able to play short quite a bit and he's passed those tests pretty well. So we have a lot more conviction that he can do. So I think it's a combination of those things. His approach to the day is pretty advanced from the get-go go and then some of the skills were probably there, but he needed the program to test it out and he's been passing those tests.

Q: Ideally, would you like him to remain at shortstop?

Cherington: Yeah. I think that's clearly our focus right now. He's continued to dabble in center. It's partly to keep it in his back pocket and partly because it's sort of fun for him to do it. It creates a challenge inside his game. But the priority is shortstop at this point.

We believe he can play shortstop short- and long-term. We have not put any timeline on when it can happen here. He'll tell us that answer over time.

Q: What about the position at large after 2025?

Cherington: (Isiah Kiner-Falefa) is a free agent, so that question is going to come back. We haven't gotten far enough to think about 2026 just yet.

DKPS: With the questions surrounding Griffin's bat, what gave you so much confidence that it would translate?

Cherington: A combination of things. One is that our scouts really had a lot of conviction. For a high school player, that’s really important. We did see that he had some of the highest contact rate in the amateur summer circuit the year before his junior year. His contact rate relative to his peers was towards the top. So he was at least showing he can make contact against some of the best high school pitching he can face. We can measure bat speed, and we saw good bat speed. And then we now also have ways to measure the bat path using the same tools we would use to assess a professional player. We can apply that to an amateur player using high-speed video. We had some good insight that his bat path would be successful. So, mostly those things. Scout input, contact in the summer, and good bat path made us feel good about taking a bet on him. You still don’t know with a high school player, no matter who it is. You just don’t know until they’re in pro ball.

Q: Ben, the trade deadline is still four and a half weeks away, but there are a lot of rumors out there about the Pirates and who would be available. One, how much do you stay in touch with players to keep them abreast of what is going on? Two, is there anybody to deem untouchable at the major-league level or within the organization?

Cherington: I do the best I can to stay in touch with the players that might be in that speculation. I’ve started a little bit of that, and will do more of that in the coming weeks. I want the door to be open if guys want to talk more -- or less. Sometimes I have players tell me not to worry about it, and I get it. They just say if a trade happens, come find me, basically. The players are different in what they want, so you try to do that. To the broader question, I’ve said before that I think the group of players that we have here in this clubhouse and this organization are capable of playing better baseball. We’re capable of winning more games with this group. We’re also not delivering what we need to our fans, clearly. You can go all the way back to last August and we haven’t won enough games, not nearly enough. We have to be honest about that and we have to find solutions to that. We want to deliver more to our fans as fast as we possibly can. These next five weeks will bring opportunities that we can use to our advantage, and we have to be ready for that. I think what that means more than anything is to go into this open-minded. We’re not delivering enough. We need to deliver more. That means we need to be open-minded about what comes to us in the next five weeks.

Q: Does that change the approach in what you're expecting in return? Do they have to be closer to the major-league level?

Cherington: I think you can think about it like that, but you can also acquire an A-ball prospect and trade that prospect. You can use the talents in your organization at different points. So I don’t think that if we happen to make a trade where the return is a younger player, I wouldn’t read anything into that in terms of how motivated we are to win games faster. The focus will be that we need to win games as fast as we can. Whatever the returns are, our focus will be to win more games as fast as we can.”

Q: Given the amount of pitching depth you have both here and in the minors, will you look to utilize that to address the offense?

Cherington: I expect we’ll keep getting asked about it. I think we want to be careful about it, because you have pitching depth until you don’t. It’s hard to get it back. You’re then in a really tough spot. Because everybody needs it and it’s harder to come back in the other direction. I think we want to be opportunistic. We need to win more games. There’s more than one way to do that, but scoring more runs is probably going to be the simpler part of that. We’re not anxious to trade pitching. To do it, we just need to be open-minded.”

Q: You talk about needing to generate more offense, but you have a couple of key hitters here, Bryan Reynolds, Henry Davis, Jared Triolo, basically the team as a whole, that maybe the expected stats that the public data paints a prettier picture than the actual stats. How much does that factor into when you are roster-building or just assessing what you have here moving forward?

Cherington: Nobody wants me to talk about bad luck or lack of luck. People are tired of that. I get it. We do believe we have some hitters in that category. Absolutely, it’s an input. You think about those players and what we believe we can expect from guys going forward and how we do build a better offense, it’s an important input. We believe in what that data is telling us, and it’s part of making the bet over time that we should be different over time if that data is telling us that.

Q: Do you put stock into the quality of an at-bat over an expected stat? Which do you lean more on?

Cherington: I think it’s a little bit of both, really. We can learn pretty quickly about players who don’t have a lot on the back of their baseball card nowadays, just because there’s so much information. Within 100 plate appearances, you can learn a lot at the major league level – not perfectly, but you can learn a lot. Of course, if someone has a track record on the back of their baseball card and they’re still showing the underlying skills and they’re still at an age where they can continue to be good for a while, then obviously that’s the type of player that we’d make a bet on.

Q: Ben, when you are talking with other teams and starting to assess offers, is there any sort of aversion to trading players within the division? Or are you strictly looking at the best offer for the Pirates?

Cherington: Generally speaking, no. There may be specific cases where that, in a tiebreaker situation, you might prefer not to do that. Generally, we try to avoid that because we just need to get better. We don’t want to add too many things to the plate that are going to make it harder to find the best opportunity. Generally, my feeling about that is that it shouldn’t matter. Every team’s taking some risk in a trade both ways, so if it happens to be within division, well then the other team is taking a risk, too, and you’re doing it together. There will be some specific cases over time where there will be some preference not to do it but as a general rule, I would not want to worry about that too much.

Q: At this time last year, I remember you talking about how the market was kind of hard to get a read on, just because of where you guys were positioned and so many other teams. You didn't know who was buying and who was selling for the most part. Do you feel like this year, you are able to get a better read on what the market might look like come July?

Cherington: “Yeah, but I think the math is against us right now. When we get calls from teams, it seems like there’s more of an assumption on their part and why they’re calling. So maybe that’s the answer. We’ve certainly started all those calls. Teams are talking to each other by now, but there are definitely a lot of teams that are still in that feeling-out process. So I don’t have a perfect picture across the league of exactly where everyone is. But we’ve started the phone calls."

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