Dave Duncan Quotes

"It was pretty nice to have both my boys on the field at the same time."

"All of those guys competed equally. Any of them wouldn't have been a bad choice. From start to finish, Hancock was the most consistent throwing strikes."

"Unfortunately, the toughest competition comes the last two weeks of spring, and I'm not sure where we're going to be (with the starters). It would be nice to be able to see them all in the toughest competition of spring. Will we be able to? I'm not sure yet."

"You get into competition, the juices start flowing."

"You see some things you like, and you see some things you don't like. You don't make decisions early in the spring. You've got the chance to get some things together before you start evaluating."

"As I told Flores, if we were playing a different team, we may have gone a different direction."

"There's an aura that surrounds certain guys, whether it's truth or fiction I don't know, but it's the way they're perceived by the opposition,"

"His approach was better and his execution was better. I thought his stuff was good. I kept seeing those radar gun readings and I don't think they were accurate."

"We'll keep them ready to pitch and look for opportunities to get them experience. I'd rather see them come out of the bullpen than not pitch at all."

"All the pitches they got hurt on were belt high. I don't like it, but I understand it. Next time out, we hope to be seeing guys take another step forward, making more quality pitches, get them in that mode."

"He hasn't needed it. But he's going to need something like that at the major league level. It's hard to pitch at the top of the strike zone."

"I don't trust my memory,"

"Mulder really deserved this game today, because he's probably had the opportunity, or been in position, to win four or five games that we let get away from us after he's been out of the game. It's nice for him to get a special win, and I know this is special for him."

"It has a lot to do with mental strength. He prepares as good as you can prepare. He doesn't let anything distract him, whether it's a bad call by an umpire, a call that he thinks is bad, an error, or whatever else might go on. He stays focused on what he wants to do and doesn't let anything distract him from that purpose."

"Getting them all the amount of work necessary is important as long as the three of them are still competing for the job. We're going to try our best to give them equal opportunity. We'll figure out a way to do it."

"I think he's more conscious of trying to pitch to the weakness of the hitter rather than just going after everybody the same way. That's pretty much what he did when he first came over."

"He pitched more like he did when he was pitching more aggressively: taking advantage of his strengths, staying away from getting in trouble with his weaknesses,"

"He was struggling with his delivery and his control. His pitches weren't sharp. But I told him it's a great sign because you're going to have 10, 12, 15 games during the season when it just isn't working. A lot of guys give in to that. But he didn't. He kept battling."

"He had a good set of eyes to watch guys in the bullpen. His biggest strength was always his consistency. He could throw a ball for a strike pretty much anytime he wanted to."

"It could be a good pitch for him if he can gain control of it to the point where he doesn't make mistakes that are hit. If his mistakes are down, OK. If he makes mistakes up ... I don't think he wants to walk off the field after getting beat on a changeup. But he can find places to use it."