[Kansas City: RHPs Denny Bautista, who is on the disabled list with a sore shoulder, and Runelvys Hernandez, who is suspended for 10 games, pitched a simulated game. Hernandez completes his suspension Saturday and will start that day at Cleveland.] We're trying to figure out what we're going to do next with Bautista, ... I still don't think he's going to pitch for us this year, although he wants to. |
A lot of it depends on where Mike is at. We've got to get Mike in our lineup every day. That's important to us -- even if he doesn't get any hits, just from a credibility standpoint, it adds so much. |
A lot of negative thoughts go through your mind when you start off like he did, without getting any run support and your record isn't what you want it to be, |
a team of hungry young guys who ... literally kicked the crap out of us. |
And our other guys were just as good or maybe even a little bit better. |
Any time you're in a situation like J.P. is you want every outing to be a good one. I hope to think we're smarter than to put everything on one outing. That's obviously going to be a consideration because we've got to make a decision, but he's had some other outings that have been pretty good. |
Because of the history and Ambres got hit earlier, ... I guess Mike (home plate umpire Mike Everitt) felt like Zack sent a message. |
Before that (the sixth inning), we had a lot of opportunities. We just couldn't get anything across. Actually we couldn't get anybody to third with less than two outs. It seemed like we were always hitting with runners on first and second. To score runs, you have to get opportunities with runners on third and less than two outs. We haven't been able to do that much. |
Both of them looked like they threw free and easy. Now we're trying to figure out what we're going to do with Bautista -- whether we're going to send him to the Instructional League or whether we're going to have another simulated game for him before the Instructional League. |
Burgos has done pretty good, but this has our bullpen out of synch -- it puts everybody in different roles, whatever those are. |
But he will go to Spring Training as a starter. |
Denny has never pitched out of the bullpen. We weren't sure what we were going to get out of the bullpen from Denny. We have a pretty good idea of what we're going to get from Woody. That probably was the deciding factor. |
Depending on what year it is, with the young players we have coming up in the organization, I would guess there's going to be a few of our guys in that game. |
Dr. Yocum cleared him to pitch, |
Everybody was sure we would do it, but I knew better. There was no way we would lose 100 games two years in a row! 63-99 looks real good right now! |