Clint Hurdle Season Quotations

The regular season is another world, but this is the only vehicle we have for him to put what he has worked on in play. It beats the heck out of spinning his wheels and punching out.

He made nice strides this spring. He just needs to keep making the strides that he made. There was a point in time last season where we were having trouble throwing the ball around the infield. Now he threw the ball accurately, his release times were quick and efficient. I think he swung the bat efficiently. He's using his off-gap again from both sides. He had a good spring.

(Helton) has set the bar very high. If he goes out and does what he is capable of doing it will be an outstanding season both offensively and defensively.

I think his back got better but also his approach got better. He went into the season with a lot of different challenges. No. 1, he got called out for maybe possible steroid use, which was a big bunch of horse manure thrown out there.

Winning a season series is something we didn't talk about much after the first half. You look at the numbers and see where you are and think maybe we can steal a game or two from them. . . . Obviously, we've been able to do a little more than that.

Every year at this time of the season you tip your hat to them. If you ever get people saying that about your organization you are in good shape.

We had a season to get to know each other. We know how he works. He knows how we run our operation. We want to make sure he's committed to our organization and our plan and to do that, we would rather be face to face to make sure we understand each other. . . . He has always been kind of singled out and we want to try and have him be one of 25 and fit in to that approach.

This team has gone about their business as good as any team I've played on or been around. That's the way they've gone about it since they showed up. There was just a lot of anxiety and inexperience for the first three months of the season last year. We cut a lot of teeth.

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.

There's no doubt in my mind that he's gong to get better, and that's what I told Matt earlier in the season when we had a sit-down. I said, 'You're not just hitting fourth anymore. You're our cleanup hitter.' Two months later, I told him, 'What you are doing now is providing protection in the lineup.' That's a big statement for a second-year player.

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.

There were games early in the season where we crumbled like a house of cards in situations like that. These guys are willing to pick one another up and that is a big improvement with this team.

That's a nice come-from-behind victory on the road for us. There's no kidding anybody. This is what we saw in the second half of the season and it's what we hope we can build on.

If he stays the course with it, obviously he'd be thrown into the mix. But again, time will tell. Let him play. Let him finish the season the way he's been the last two weeks. Then we'll have a topic of discussion.

The confidence that comes from getting on any type of run gives you that confidence once you initiate that run again. We've got to pitch well, we've got to play solid defense and we've got to get timely hitting and execute, which is what we did for the last three months last season - with a lot of guys people didn't know against a lot of teams with some pretty big names.