Hal McRae Quotations

Make them pitch into his strike zone. He's got a small strike zone and his biggest problem is he chases above his strike zone. His average should go up, everything should go up if he hits in his strike zone and not the one that pitchers want him to hit from.

Right now, Albert's chasing the game. He's got to let it come to him a little more. It will if he lets it. When you chase the game, you don't catch up to it very often.

Nobody could hit like that. Plus, the league is not going to let you hit that way. You might get a few hits, but you're not really going to hit that way.

If the guys around him are swinging the bat well, he's naturally going to get better pitches to hit. Now he's been overanxious because they're not coming after him. We don't have enough guys around him swinging the bat really well.

He's getting a lot of base hits to the opposite field, which is a positive. He stopped hitting the lazy fly balls to right field. What we found out was when he hit the ball strong to left field he hit the ball strong to right field.

He knew he had to go back out there. But he couldn't go back out there and swing at everything. He had to be patient.

I think it's his drive. He wants to achieve a lot. He has some goals that he doesn't talk about.

Jimmy's been off and on, and we know how capable he is. He either bats before or after Albert. It's going to be important that we hit around Albert so he gets pitched to, so he feels he can take his base on balls and another guy will do it. It's going to be important for (Edmonds) to have a good week.

We're not hitting on all cylinders like we were last year. But if I'm not mistaken, there were periods last year when we struggled also. I still feel we're going to be OK. I just want it to happen now, not later.

You're trying to be ready for everything, and you're not ready for anything. We'd like for them to be ready for the one pitch, the fastball. That's where you start. We go from there. ... All timing comes off the fastball. You've got to be a fastball hitter first.

It was taboo to strike out a lot. Now there's so much emphasis on the home run, guys can make good money even if they swing and miss a lot.

It's tough. The key for me is him keeping his head back. I saw that as the cause of his inconsistency. ... Hopefully he'll get into form before the year's out.

It's fun to win and you play to win. Amazingly, when I went to spring training, the thought was to win it all. The thought has always been to win it all. So far, we've continued to win. We've won all year. But there was no thought of playing .500 or being competitive. The only thought was winning it all. It's fun.

On-base percentage is No. 1. If you strike out a hundred times, but you also walk a hundred times, you're a pretty good hitter -- like Bobby Abreu. Yeah, he'll strike out. But his on-base percentage is always over .400, which is what you want.

In a nutshell, offensively we're struggling. The nuts and bolts of what's going on - that's it. We're struggling.

If somebody else tried to do what Jimmy does, they'd leave here in a straightjacket. He's different. What works for him probably wouldn't work for somebody else. He's so gifted, and that's probably made what he's going through worse.

He's not in screaming distance of what he was. It's just a matter of him committing to doing it. It's not difficult to (fix). It's nothing new. It's just something he's gotten away from.