Ben Cherington Hard Quotations

That's up to Theo and Tito. It's hard for me to say after only seeing him in one outing. Obviously he has ability and there's a reason why he's here. There's a reason why he had the kind of success in college. There's a reason we made the level of commitment that we made to him. He's going to be a good major-league pitcher. When that happens, I honestly don't know.

We believe physically he is doing pretty well. He had his knee cleaned out after the season and he's been in Phoenix rehabbing and working out. We've been in touch with him. The mental part is harder to answer. Obviously, he struggled last year. It's important to remember that he struggled at another point of his career and bounced back and had a string of success and had dominant years as a closer after he struggled. He's done that before and we're optimistic he can do it again.

Personally, it's been a distraction. It's been an interesting couple months. We've been short staffed, we've all been wearing a lot of different hats and there's a lot of gray area that we've never had in the past. Of course it's hard to focus on our farm system through that.