James Hendry (born July 27, 1955) is an American baseball coach and executive. He is a special assistant for New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, and is a former general manager of the Chicago Cubs. (wikipedia)
We're certainly glad to have it done. Our stance is always to try to work with the representative, John Boggs, to a conclusion of fairness to avoid the process if we can. This was something we wanted to do, and hopefully Mark will have a great 2006.
We're certainly at the point where we're not going to take any chances. He's had a zero complaint camp. When he said he had a little snag today, there's no sense of him coming out on Thursday.
We had a bad year and I should've done a better job myself.
I'm sure once people see he is being tendered a contract -- after a lot of people thought he wasn't going to be tendered -- we'll see an increase of interest for Corey.
A lot of guys older than him have turned their careers around. The talent is still there, the work ethic is good and it was a situation where coming back here and taking a chance, for his sake or ours, to get out of the gate better wasn't worth the risk.
You can pitch him the whole inning instead of just getting the lefties out.
If he chooses to stay in Atlanta, obviously nobody could fault him for that. I just told him what we're trying to do, what my plan may be for the next month, be open and honest.
If he can pitch pain-free and this ongoing discomfort he's had after a certain amount of pitches, if that can be rectified, then you are going to have the same guy you are seeing for one inning for seven or eight. That's really everybody's priority.
If he is not going to have a chance to be a full-time player, he is not going to be able to correct the things that led him to have a bad year last year. It was not a good fit for him to be a bench player here at this point, after what happened last year.
We'll make a decision (Thursday night) on who we want to add to the roster tomorrow in an in-house move.