He pretty clearly explained his view - the position player prospects are pretty good, the pitching is far less certain. And as ESPN's prospects guy (Kiley McDaniel) noted - after Mayer and Casas, most of the top prospects in the org last season had tough seasons.
Basically - if one or two of these pitchers with a wide range of outcomes raises their likelihood to be a big league starter, things will really start looking up.
If Sale stayed healthy this would all look so much better - that said, the Sale extension that Dombrowski and ownership signed was a ticking time bomb ex ante.