I agree this is encouraging. I appreciated this additional quote:
“I don’t think there have been enough clearly defined goals,” he said. “I think we’ve been slow to appreciate that spring training means something different for every player. There are players who are there to (just) prepare for the season and they know what that looks like; there are players there to get experience in spring training and get exposure to the major league staff; and there are players in-between who are there to compete for roster spots.
“But every players serves to get better in spring training, and for so long, it’s been, ‘Oh, we’re going to work on defense.’ Or ‘What are you looking to get better at?’ ‘Pitching’ Or “Hitting.’ Well, that’s not good enough. We have technology, we have data that allows us to pinpoint precisely how we need to get better on defense or how we can get better as a pitcher or as a hitter.
“So creating really well-defined goals and development plans around every player and ensuring that we’ve got our hitting, pitching, baserunning and defense coaches aligned with those plans, but also our medical staff, our strength and conditioning staff, our analytics staff, all speaking the same language so that we can ensure that every contribution is additive and not either diluting or worse yet, confusing.”