The whole thing is staying healthy. He had some injuries a couple of years ago but is becoming a guy you can pretty well count on. You can't ask for too much more than what he's doing. |
There are a couple of areas we need to get better at. It's not always the coaches' fault, but sometimes you have to make changes. |
There are not a lot of great catchers out there. You look at the free-agent list and there's really nobody out there. |
There were a couple times that we talked about it. We were just going to let him go out (to the minors) for two or three weeks to get some consecutive at-bats, then we were going to bring him back. It wasn't a matter of sending him out and leaving him down. We didn't want to lose the progress that we made. |
There were one or two times we were prepared to send him out but we backed off. Ned had confidence in him and it paid off in the end. |
There's a lot of people who weren't sure what we were getting. I think the scouts that recommended him obviously felt that he was a good pitcher that could probably fit in the four or five slot in the rotation. |
There's a lot of pride involved. I think that's why Ben feels he'd like to play. |
They can keep him in their system. They don't have to offer him back. |
They carried their momentum and enthusiasm throughout the year. They never hit much of a slump. People ask about our club, and I say we're still going to have winning streaks and losing streaks that could happen at any time. The ideal thing is to just be consistent. They had good enough pitching where they never had long losing streaks. |
They earned their right to be here. |
They have a lot of information they can bring. It's good to just get an outside opinion on things. |
They wanted to pick the kid up instead of booing him. The fans have been thriving for that kind of young talent to be here. They haven't had it for a while. |
They're supposed to come here March 5. I told them we'd explore it. That doesn't mean it will happen but we said we'd look at it. |
This is kind of a land of opportunity. We give guys chances here that they can't get anywhere else. |
This was not a difficult decision for us to make. |