The trainers pretty much think it's more of a baseball issue now, and not so much the injury. We feel comfortable that he's not going to get hurt. It's more of a mental hurdle he needs to get over. ... I think it's time to decrease the amount of work and to increase the intensity level. |
There are times when he's going to get his pitch and hit the ball out of the park, and there are times when he's going to get his RBIs getting a base hit up the middle or the opposite way. He's definitely showed me that he's matured as a hitter. |
There are two things. One, you know that you've got a guy that knows what the heck he's doing, and the second is that any manager wants somebody he can trust. If you can't trust your best friend, who can you? |
There's always concern with everything you do. It is what it is now, and you have to go with it. You can't just sit there on the fence when there's no fence to be found. He's our guy, and that's the way it's going to be. Hopefully that will be the answer. |
There's no discounting how tough our division is. I look at it as a positive, in a way. Maybe, as a division, we'll get a little closer to each other so that anything can happen in the course of a race. If we hang around early, we can build some confidence up and create some problems in there. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if we created some havoc. |
They come out and play, no question about it. I haven't had to say a whole lot to them. They've been getting into it. That happens when you get good starting pitching. |
They really showed me some character tonight. I know when they came into the dugout and it was 7-3, they were still chirping about coming back. Miguel Tejada was saying, 'Let's go, we can get them. |
They were obviously big runs for us. |
Things started falling apart. Then shortly after I got this, anything and everything went south. |
This gives us credibility in our starting rotation. We needed a veteran presence. |
This gives us credibility in our starting rotation. We needed a veteran presence. We don't need him to carry this staff; we just want him to pitch well. It's a great addition. |
This is a new spring. A new year. Dwelling on the past is a negative, and we would like to deal with positives. |
This late in the spring you kind of understand a drop in intensity, but there's no excuse for that right now. We need to go and shore up our areas of play. If we lose the game, we lose the game. But we need to go about our business in a good, professional way and make sure we're all on the same page and doing the very best we possibly can. |
To be fair to him, the season will dictate that. |
To our credit, we laid off some pitches. They all had heard the hype, too. There was nothing really said about it, but you could tell in the dugout that they were going to take the game seriously. |