Clint Hurdle Position Quotations

I do believe we are in this position by showing patience and providing opportunities during the season. I don't want to take away from any momentum the team has gained.

After the line of games he put together going into this start, I had my mind made up when I got to the ballpark that if he gave us good effort through six innings, that's going to be plenty. Leave his confidence at a high and turn it over to the people who have gotten us in position to build some of the momentum we've been building.

We had almost every position player play anywhere from the low 60s to 100 innings in the field (in spring training). We're not probably going to ask him to do that much, but it's going to need to be a little bit more than him just getting 25 at-bats and being ready to go.

The (improvement) starts with the bullpen. That is a pretty good group for us, one of the better groups we have had. And at catcher we have depth there where before it was a fragile position for us.

You hate to keep tweaking things with him. You want to get in a position where he can just move forward. We know the raw skills he has. We have to turn those into game-day skills.

We've put ourselves in position to surprise people. We went through a learning process last year, and I think you saw in the second half of the season that our young players started to believe they could compete. We started to grow as a franchise.

He came in and helped Band-Aid things together and put himself in a good position for what might happen later on down the road. He built his confidence up. He pitched a lot better than he did last spring. He hit his spots, threw all his pitches for strikes and got the ball down.

He's healthy, which is saying a lot. Physically and mentally, he's in a better position than he has been in for a long time.