They all got themselves in real good baseball shape coming in. That's what you like to see the most. |
They do walk around a little lighter. They have experience under their belt and a degree of confidence. But they have to build on the success. You can talk about a lot of things, but the bottom line is we won 67 games, and that is not very many. |
They drew a tough bull today, as they say in the rodeo. |
They got their work in and built up their pitch count, which is all we wanted. |
They have a lot to prove. I look forward to the opportunity to go play games. They believe they can beat anybody. |
They know Fuentes is closing. They have their reasons for what they do. |
They scored one more run than us. There's not much more you can say. |
They scored one more run than us. There's really nothing else to say. |
They were all just fired up and letting it fly last year, which is what you expect out of young kids. Now they're a little bit more focused and not in such a hurry. |
They're in a tough position. After the warning, they have to make judgment calls. |
Things have gone his way, but the thing I will continue to hold onto is where was it for the two months it wasn't there? |
Things we have talked about for three months, he has been able to put into play. He has had a challenging season. We've found out about his toughness. We've seen his competitiveness. He has become more coachable. |
This guy has a very workable package and a passion to play the game. I was open-ended with him today because of his competitiveness and he made a statement to finish it off and throw a complete game with 118 pitches. |
This is a big pick-me-up. Some guys showed up big-time. We just kept hanging around after an early lead got away. Obviously it was a pretty explosive ninth inning, and some guys that needed to get involved got involved. It's a good confidence-builder all around the house for us. |
This is as solid as we've been on a closer going into the season as we have been in a long time. He's the exclamation point. He's in a good place now. |