Tribe GM Chris Antonetti discusses his expectations for Matt LaPorta on 'PD Sports Insider'

As the battle at first-base is wide open, Chris Antonetti talked about what the Casey Kotchman signing does to Matt LaPorta, who will have to impress the front office if he wants to make the Opening Day roster. Watch video

With spring training around the corner, Cleveland Indians GM Chris Antonetti was a guest on The 'PD Sports Insider' Monday to discuss the many topics surrounding his team going into this season.

With the battle at first-base wide open, Antonetti talked about what the Casey Kotchman signing does to Matt LaPorta. With other players in camp like Shelley Duncan and Russ Canzler, who could compete for the job, LaPorta will have to impress the front office if he wants to make the Opening Day roster.

Antonetti discussed reaching out to LaPorta when they signed Kotchman, his expectations for and the effort the Indians have made to improve LaPorta's swing.

"I did reach out to Matt before we announced Casey's signing. I talked to not only to Matt, but his representative, Scott Boras to talk through the rational of the decision. And then also what it means for Matt.

And I think most importantly the message I communicated to Matt is that we as an organization continue to believe in him. We still think he has a chance to be a very good major league player. But our focus is to trying to win this year. And trying do everything we can to do that.

And he's going to have to come to camp to compete for a spot. If that doesn't happen, he may to continue to develop in Triple-A. Most importantly, we continue to committed as an organization to him and to his develop.

To that, our Major League hitting coach went down earlier this off-season when we still had some uncertainly about our first-base situation. Visited with Matt for four days, spent some time with him one-on-one, working on his swing and fundamentals and hopefully putting him in a better position coming into spring training."

Related video: 30 minutes with Chris Antonetti on PD Sports Insider

Source: http://www.cleveland.com/tribe/index.ssf/2012/02/tribe_gm_discusses_his_expectations_for_matt_laporta_pd_sports_insider.html

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