Joe Girardi Pitch Quotations

We're going to see how he does out of the bullpen. It's just kind of a different role, some flexibility for us. He has pitched very well in camp and we believe we can pitch him anywhere.

There are times when you have to learn to pitch with the lead. To me learning how to pitch with the lead is harder than learning how to pitch when you're behind. That's what we need to learn how to do.

He taught me to be a better receiver, a more comfortable receiver. He taught me how to throw better. I changed my whole throwing once I met him. We talked in depth about handling pitchers, pitch selection. Any phase of the game he was involved in making me better.

Those are little hurdles you have to get over. Sometimes you have to learn to pitch with a lead, even if it's a slight lead.

Until Jake establishes himself a little bit they might pitch around him more.

You don't want to really hurt someone's development. We'll have to make that decision if we think it's beneficial for maybe one of the young starters to pitch out of the bullpen.

A big part of my job is making sure these guys understand they belong in the big leagues and they can do it. That's going to be my message, that just because you're young doesn't mean you can't play. I expect you to do it just like you did in Double-A and Triple-A. It's the next step up, but if you make your pitch it's a good pitch.

It's a huge compliment to him. As he goes on, he will learn how to hit in those situations. When some of our younger hitters get better, they will stop walking Miguel so much and have to pitch to him a little.

They are looking for a pitch to drive, and I'm not going to take it away from them. We have some guys who aren't capable of working the count yet.

Their young shortstop has power. And we didn't pitch him the way we're supposed to.

Closers seem to be all over the place now. For a while the trend was to go with hard throwers, but if you have that one pitch that's a dominant pitch that can get people out, it's usually where you see the closers come from.