Clint Hurdle Work Quotations

We've all put a lot of work in this project. The organization has put a lot of work in. He's put a lot of work in. Coach (Davey) Collins has put a lot of work in. When you put that much work in you want to benefit from it when it clicks.

We're going to give him a little more time to work his way out of it. He's an important part of the lineup without Todd. . . . He's not trying to pull everything. He's conscious of going to the right side. When he gets hot, he can do major damage.

We've seen him in a lot of different uniforms. You hope things work out for him.

Maybe we can give him some things to work on over the winter that will make him a little more fundamentally sound on offense.

One of the areas (Freeman) has had to target and work hard to improve on are (pitches) tight on him and things spinning away from him. Obviously we'd like to get him on base and see if we can get him in motion a little bit.

I don't care who you are, if you get called out publicly, it affects your focus and concentration. You can say it doesn't and you can try your hardest not to let it seep into your work or what you do. But that's something out of his control that also got thrown onto his plate that he needed to deal with.

I had a script but didn't need it. There's no chance for this to work unless his head and heart are in the right place, and they are. He's not a 23-year-old kid pushing the older guy out of the rotation, and he realizes that.

I think the jury is still out on his bat. We'll work more with him and maybe see if there's a little more there. We're not talking about hitting home runs. We want him to be more consistent with the barrel. He's shown some improvement.

I think we've talked about it all -- his humility, his work ethic. He has a unique passion for the game. He leads by example. In the groups that he's been in, that's been talked about.

That was the result of a lot of work the last three weeks, in which (Francis) analyzed what had been happening.

We are a work in progress. These guys had a lot of baggage laid on them last year. We weren't that good last year. There were a lot of young players cutting their teeth, but they also are players who came up together (through the farm system) and had success together. And they want to have more success together.

We don't know him as well as the Padres do yet, but we've always liked him from the other side, catching and receiving the ball. Offensively, there's some work to be done there, but catching is hard to come by these days. Everybody's looking for it right now. We like the depth we have.

We've only won 62 games this year. We've still got a lot of work ahead of us.

This will be a very exciting day for him. He's put in as much hard work into becoming a starting opening-day player as anybody that we've ever had. He's had 11 years in the minor leagues and to get this nod at this time in his career has to be very gratifying.

You have to like what you see. His humility. His work ethic. His passion for the game. . . . The beauty of a young player is when they force your hand.

They got their work in and built up their pitch count, which is all we wanted.

It's been a little rock in our shoe. We'll work it out. We ran the bases outstanding all spring. For whatever reason we've made some mistakes on the bases. We'll get it tightened up. We've got the athletes to do it.

I want him to do some more work on some of the things we talked about coming up from Triple-A. He worked this afternoon with Davey on reads and breaks in the outfield. There were some things we wanted to check on and try, and tighten up for him before we went ahead and got him involved. He'll get in over the weekend.

Nothing provides an opportunity for growth more than adversity. They can handle it one of two ways: they can deal with it, become better from it, work through it. They can feel sorry for themselves and make a bad situation worse. So, it's all part of growing up and I expect them to handle it very professionally.

I'm going to give him some time to work out of it.

I'm happy for him. We've all put a lot of work into this project. He's put a lot of work in. The organization has put a lot of work in. Coach Collins has put a lot of work in. If a guy's going to pop, you sure would like for him to pop on your watch, in your organization.

His humility, his work ethic and he has a unique passion for the game. And he's going to be what, 21 next month? So, he just needs to play, and we'll see how it works out. The beauty of any young player that can play is when they force your hand.

But to get out of there with three runs, he did OK. He got some things accomplished but he's got work in front of him.