That's a big confidence boost for him and for us. |
That's a credit to Brian. After a major injury like that, he really busted his tail over the winter. He was putting six hours a day into rehab. I can't say enough about the effort he made for us. |
That's another stamp that says how much he competes. I really feel good when Rodrigo is out there in situations like that. He doesn't give in. |
That's kinda like what we've been talking about with Daniel. If they have to sit on one pitch, they'll hit it eventually. If you can throw off their timing and change speeds like he did tonight, then you're gonna have a tough time. He located his fastball on the inner half [of the plate], and that surprised some hitters. |
That's something that he's going to have to make a decision on if he wants to do. I told him we could get around that for a day, if we could DH him and then take him out of the game. He said, 'No.' He wants to play. |
That's the kind of game we look for Daniel to have all the time. He has so much talent. His stuff is so good you want someone like that to [be in] the rotation next year. |
That's the kind of game we look for Daniel to have all the time. He was outstanding. Fantastic. |
The doctor saw it, thought it looked good. |
The good sign here is that there are people in scoring position and we're getting them on a little bit more. The next step is getting them in. |
The guys have really showed me something. They're making the guy work. That's part of the thing we talked about, going through the lineup. We have some professional hitters up there that you're going to have to get out. They're not going to get themselves out as much as [we] have in the past. |
The guys were coming back and saying how much the ball was sinking. We were almost to the point of checking him. |
The homer was the last thing I thought would happen. |
The kid just goes out and plays. He's on a mission, it seems like. He went out the first three times up and took strikes, close pitches. It didn't bother him a lick. I don't think Nick puts any pressure on himself, that I've seen. He might if he struggles up here a little bit, but I've yet to see that. |
The last several starts have been good. He's been striking out a lot of people and going deep into the game. |
The main thing will be that he gets his health back together, and it looks like he has. If he does that and stays like that, he's not going to surprise anybody if he goes well. We looked for that all along. As it turned out, he had to do it somewhere else. |