He's certainly a professional hitter that takes good at-bats. He's been on a lot of winning teams. We have good reports on him. |
He's got a little bit of a reputation, but I think the fact that he hasn't played in 10 days and his whole career has been in limbo - I think he would even tell you he was a little humbled by this. Sometimes that has a way of humbling you, when you're out there and you don't have a home and you're wondering where your career is going. |
He's not quite there yet. There's no hidden agenda, none of that. ... He's got a little tightness and he'd rather give it a couple more days. I don't have any problem with that. The last thing I want to do is put him in there three days early and he has a setback and is out for two months. |
He's somebody that some of us up here are pretty familiar with. He gives us a lot of versatility. He's a good athlete. |
He's very close. He's the best judge of that. The last thing I want to do is have him go out three days too early and have a setback and miss two months. |
His strength is defense, but he has some power. He's well-respected among pitching staffs as a guy who can catch and throw and handle a staff and call the game. |
Hopefully there's one more (contract) at least beyond this one. We'll just have to see how it plays out. For the short term here, he's got a little security and we have a little cost certainty. |
I can't worry about that. This trade makes us a better team now. |
I guess we're the underdogs. |
I haven't seen him play first that much. He's making nice progress over there. He's a good athlete. |
I know physically, he probably wouldn't tell you this, but his knee was bothering him last year. He's added 10 to 15 pounds in his lower half this year, and his legs are a lot stronger. |
I liked what I heard, very much so. We have similar backgrounds from the standpoint of, it took him many years to become a manager and it took me many years to become a general manager. So we're the kind of guys that people would look at as, we've paid our dues, so to speak. |
I might make a couple of early trips (with the Reds), and then in September. But I think from April through August I'll probably go to the minor leagues. |
I really enjoyed the meeting with Tim. I got up to speed a lot on what's going on on the development side, and I was impressed with a lot of what I heard. |
I really wanted to take a gamble on a guy like this, with his athletic ability and being a defense-oriented middle infielder who I think can help us this year and in the future. He's still a young guy. |