Von Hayes Quotations

He was throwing free and easy, he wasn't struggling with getting his velocity up and basically pitched with a lot of confidence.

He made two nice plays the first day he played in San Antonio. He's the real deal. I wasn't sure about his arm strength because of the soreness but the arm strength looks great. I'm looking forward to him playing a full year with us.

He was struggling right of out of spring training with coming back for the third year in Double-A. When he got off to the slow start I think he was just questioning his passion for the game. His main decision was he wanted to spend more time with his family and move on to a different livelihood. We have to deal with it and wish him well.

He walked into my office yesterday after San Antonio's game and said his passion is elsewhere, so he decided to retire. We wish him well.

Lloyd's been battling himself the last few days. He came into the office a few days ago just talking, trying to get him to think in simple terms ... not try to do too much. Pick somebody out in the infield and try to hit it as hard as you can at that person. He made a great adjustment (Friday) and did a great job for us.

It doesn't seem like we have anybody right now who will come in and take control of the game. They're struggling with their command and other teams are taking advantage of it. San Antonio was coming in with a nine-game losing streak and you know they weren't going to go away easily. But you still have to make pitches.

That was huge. It's been no secret that they've been pitching around some of the guys in the middle of our order. Those are the guys at the bottom of the order they're going to try and make beat them. (Friday) that's exactly what they did. They went out and got the big hits for us.

We need to work through it and get back on course. I definitely feel like we're an above-average team, but the way we've played the last two nights we're very mediocre. These guys should look in the mirror and see themselves as not a first place team.

We didn't drive in a run. One was a balk and the other was an error. We missed so many opportunities to break the game open. We failed to execute a bunt and there's just all the little things that keep you from winning games.

We left a ton of runners on base. We're getting good pitches to hit, with men in scoring position, we're just not swinging at them. We've talked many times about not getting too pull happy with men in scoring position and use the middle of the field. Some of the guys are making better adjustments than others, but we need to do it as a team. Just keep working on it is all we can do.

With Suzuki, we should have quicker games because we don't have to hold the runners on as much as we used to. Kurt's going to give us something behind the plate that we didn't see last year. That's not taking anything away from the people we've had but times don't lie. His times throwing to second base are consistently around 1.9 to 1.92 (seconds).

Everything looked normal for him, his fastball velocity, everything was good. He just lacked location. He had trouble getting the ball on the inner half. He's the type of pitcher that has to establish inside to those right-handers and he was having trouble with it. He just wasn't sharp. That's kind of expected when you miss a week or two of competition.

I've never seen Jed play the outfield before and he's gotten some nice outs. That's good to see from a kid who's naturally a catcher.

It's going to be a good year. I'm comfortable with the guys we have and some of the guys that are below us in case we get into trouble injury-wise or guys get sent out of here. There's no reason why we shouldn't be equally as competitive as we were last year.

It's amazing. Here I thought guys were going to be really tired. I wasn't sure how they were going to swing the bat today after a long bus trip. We got in about 4:30 in the morning (Saturday) night. We didn't take any batting practice. We just took a little infield, went out there and played. It's incredible the way they swung the bat.

Their pitchers made an adjustment and our hitters didn't. The name of this game is to adjust when the opposition adjusts. We just didn't get it done.

I like what I saw. He came in with 100 RBIs, and you expect a little bit of a letdown at the next level, but Danny didn't miss a beat. He came out swinging the bat and he helped us win the championship. He was very composed, very impressive. He's got a lot of heart and a very bright future.

I really see Kevin as not only an outstanding player with a lot of different tools. Kevin has leadership qualities. He's a hard-nosed player, the type of player a lot of guys can look up to. That's what I look for him this year is to go out, play hard and be a leader.

He's pretty much solid in those situations. Tonight you've got to turn the page and know that next time he comes out he's going to get the job done.

He's made some adjustments. He hadn't played in a while and he missed all of last year basically. He's a good hitter, we know that. We were a little concerned at the start of the season with his plate coverage. We talked about it a little bit, saw it a little bit in spring training. But sometimes you have to let guys find out for themselves.

The kid definitely threw a great game. He's got good stuff. He got four pitches over. He worked very quickly. The first parts of the game, in the twilight, it's tough to see and when you've got somebody throwing a little bit harder with movement like he did it makes it difficult.