He plays good defense and has a strong arm, too. |
He said he's got another mouth to feed. He was on a salary drive, |
He settled in and had good rhythm. He used all his pitches. |
He shows good plate awareness, goes the other way, doesn't try to do too much. With two strikes, he would shorten up a little bit and try to put the ball in play the other way -- a lot of things you don't see in an 18-year-old kid. I think he goes down to the Minor League camp with a lot more confidence, not that he didn't have any, but to know already that he can hit here, I'm sure will serve him very well. |
He smoked a couple of balls (Monday) night. That's what we expect out of him. He hits a lot of doubles and drives a lot of balls to the gap. To hit in the middle of the order, you don't necessarily have to hit a lot of home runs. You just need to be able to drive in runs, and he has that capacity. |
He stayed up the middle with a couple, which is good to see, ... Sometimes he gets a little too pull happy, with the added power he has. |
He still has a lot of velocity in his bat. He still scares you. You know where he is. |
He swung the bat very well. No problems throwing at all. [He] didn't feel a thing. We're really encouraged by how his day went. Just to get him out there on the field and in a group makes everybody feel that much better. |
He threw a lot of fastballs early -- it was both sides of the plate -- and he was pitching with confidence. We didn't have too many good swings, and he pitched great. We got behind and didn't take many good swings at all. |
He threw all right in long toss, everything was good. And then the last couple throws when he shortened it up again, he felt it. |
He threw fastballs to both sides of the plate, and he was pitching with confidence. |
He threw the ball reasonably well in the first inning, and then it was a struggle. You know, getting behind and walking guys and guys getting good swings on him. I'm kind of at a loss, really. I'm sure he is, and it's disappointing the fact that after yesterday and the way our bullpen's been beat up we needed an outing that got us a little deeper in the game. |
He tracks the ball. He doesn't panic. He doesn't get out on his front foot. He lets the ball travel. |
He wants to get it out of the way. It's a huge deal. Just look at the names on that list. |
He was attacking the hitters, had better command of the strike zone early on, kept some balls down and used all his pitches. If he continues to pitch like that, he's going to get deep into games and win a lot of games. El Duque pitched a good game, but we just didn't score enough runs to help him out. |