What I'm trying to convince them is, you're not trying to beat the Yankees or the Red Sox or the Blue Jays, you're trying to beat the game of baseball through execution. When you play the game properly, it really should not matter what name is on the front or back of the shirt. And when you can reduce it to that mentally, I think you have a better chance of repeating the proper things over and over again. |
What I'm trying to do and what I'd like to do is ease it on in there. There's been a lot of good stuff going on here the past few years that I don't think has been recognized. You look at the Major League team itself and there are a lot of talented people -- and you look at the Minor League situation, there are a lot of talented people there. You put all this together and there's a lot of good stuff going on here. What we want to do is be able to augment what's been going on. |
What is conventional wisdom? Who created conventional wisdom in the first place? It's just something we've been doing for a long period of time, and while the game is the same, the game has changed in other ways. If you have enough information, you might be able to take some chance based on the information. |
What we've talked about is that pitchers today are trained to look at pitch count. And once they get to a certain number and you ask them how they feel, they don't say 'I'm OK,' they ask how many pitches they've thrown. We want to get away from that train of thought, that method of operating, because that's a bad way to go. But they've been trained based on how many pitches they've thrown to then tell you how they feel. We want to take that away. |
When he goes out to the mound, the pitchers truly listen. If he comes in the dugout and has something to say, everybody stops. I like that. I'm seeing Toby gaining confidence, like a quarterback. I like what I'm seeing. It leads to more leadership qualities. |
When I first got here, the first thing I said was that we have to build relationships. That's how you turn negatives into positives. |
When I was with the Angels, this guy used to beat us up every time. So I've only seen him when he's good. |
When it gets down to the dirty end. We'll sit down and make our best guesses at that point. |
When it happens for you, you're very happy. When it happens against you, you're not quite so happy. |
When they don't get good swings on a pitch, you really gotta stay with him right there. He just kept throwing strikes and mixing his pitches well. He went after them aggressively. It's just good for morale to see that one guy can turn things around in nine innings basically. |
When they get hit, they roll properly. If they get tagged, they're not going to get hurt. When you do slide into this, you have a pretty good chance of stopping. When the technique is good, you can stop a pretty good-size guy. |
When Travis Lee first signed, I remember what a big deal it was. His defense is among the best. It might be the best. |
When we have our organizational meetings, we don't just talk about numbers, we talk about agenda. About each player, we ask, what is his agenda? Is it himself, or the team? |
When you have a big lead and are losing it, when that starts to occur, everything turns to slow time. |
When you have a good pop-up hitter, that's kind of nice. Believe me, catchers want to be comfortable making that play. It's embarrassing for a catcher when you don't make that. They like the realistic spin and [Ramos] does it well. |