You are going to have two outstanding starters every game. |
You can do anything you want with him. You can hit-and-run with him, bunt. We push the game with him quite a bit. |
You can't have an outstanding bullpen without an outstanding closer, unless one of those guys in your legitimate bullpen becomes a closer. You build it around your closer. |
You can't lose them the way we lost them. When you score one or two against a pitching staff that's last in the league. It's a mystery. |
You do the best you can. You can't script these games. Yesterday was there were two outs, so he didn't have to run the bases. It was the seventh inning -- there could have been a better opportunity in the ninth, but you don't know. |
You fear for the worst and hope for the best, and we got the best. He was on the club, and he's still on the club. |
You got to wait 24, 48, 72 hours before you see how quickly some of the soreness gets out of there, ... Right now, we don't know when he'll throw off the mound. If we can win another game, get into the next round, [we don't know] when he'd be able to start. |
You have to fight (the players) from feeling like, 'Hey, whatever happens, happens,' ... Somehow, some way, you have to find a way to make them understand that you have to take care of both the personal and the professional. There's nothing disrespectful about paying respect to the player but also paying respect to your profession. |
You have to play the game. We can't walk him in that spot. |
You have to recognize that you have a chance to have a special place in baseball history, so you're going about it for more than just the moment or the money or the stats or the attention. I think that will be the key for some of these really terrific young pitchers. You have to be really good, and at some point you have to dedicate yourself to your place in baseball history. |
You have to think of the loss of a guy and what that means to his teammates and family, ... Your season hasn't even started yet, and you're dealing with this (tragedy). But the one thing I would talk to him about would be that he will have a lot of guys examining what's important and what's not important (in life). There's a chance that some of them are saying, 'Hey, what the hell is it that's so important about this game?' |
You hoped it would be complicated. We're going to have some decisions to make, which is good. |
You look at it and we've got 11 wins. We've got some guys hitting at or under .200. We need to get those guys going. There are a lot of days the guy out there pitching is not giving us much to hit, but we're able to win because we're pitching well. You just take whatever it is. Right now, a few hitters are sluggish. The games still count. You've got to find a way. |
You look at the other competition and they're all doing the same thing. What's Hancock given up? Benes has given up three (unearned) runs or whatever. I just think (Nelson) had been improving, but we just decided to go in another direction. |
You look for ways to change the pace in spring training, so with this . . . instead of having to force it, Mother Nature just took care of it. |