Theo Epstein

You reach a point where you're trying to survive. You're just trying to put the ball in play. You're not yourself. You're searching for your identity as a hitter on a nightly basis. That's just really hard. And it is not atypical at all for players to need to change their environment in order to rediscover who they are.

I tend to solicit opinions from all those around me. I like to hear opinions and the rationale behind it from everybody in the room. Perhaps it's the result of going to law school and using the Socratic method.

It's a human phenomenon that there has to be a reason for everything. There almost never is.

Scouting and player development is the key to year-in and year-out success, not the occasional lucky hit. There are no definitive answers in this game, no shortcuts. When you think you've got it all figured out, you can get humbled very quickly.

You just make the right baseball decision. You don't necessarily worry about somebody's feelings or anything like that. You make the right baseball decision for the team first and then for the player's development as importantly.

Even over time, with a stable coaching staff and one manager who is fantastic and been in place for a long time, you can't ever defer and stay out of the clubhouse because you don't want to get in the way.

If multiple starting pitchers underperform at the same time, it's always going to leave you in a stretch where it's hard to play better than .500 baseball.

We knew the 2017-18 offseason would be one of our most challenging. We've known that for a long time.

No one is immune to needing to sit or needing to go down at the right time, and you want to give guys a chance.

I like to have some privacy, especially where my family is concerned, so when I'm recognized, I'll usually say something like 'I get that all the time' or 'Theo Epstein? Who's that?'

The Cubs, we built one of best farm systems - I think for a while there, it was the best farm system in baseball. And that was great. It got a lot of attention. But we didn't want the credit for the farm system. What we wanted was to see if we could do the tricky part, which was turn a lauded farm system into a World Series champion.

If you reach a point where your entire farm system is in the big leagues, you've traded a couple guys for players who are now in the big leagues, you know what you do? You start over in your farm system, and you keep developing the talented players you have.