Dave Duncan Quotes

"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's shown that he has the ability to pitch at the major league level. Opportunities come in different ways. When you get them you have to take advantage of them. If he makes our ball club he'll probably appear in the middle of the game as a situational type left-hander."

"He's going to get every benefit of the doubt."

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

"He had a good, solid year. I'm happy the organization recognized it. It will be a good experience for him to spend some time here and see what it's all about. This is one of the steps that is part of the process of establishing yourself as a player."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It's not just winning games. It's the way he's pitched. He's been pretty dominant. I've seen guys win a lot of games before. But with the exception of Vida Blue in 1971, I've never seen a guy that has controlled the game, game after game after game, like he has."

"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."

"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,"

"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."

"It's hard to identify who's No. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Because at different times, each one of those guys gets on a roll. And at that particular time, he's the No. 1 guy for us. ... Every one of them has had their periods of time when they threw as good as anybody."