Clint Hurdle Break Quotations

His command was excellent. He was hitting his spots where the catcher set up and stayed down for the most part, except when he wanted to go up. When he went up, there was tilt on his breaking ball.

His breaking ball was on the plate today. The game against San Diego, he kept missing with it. His command was much better today.

He thinks he's found something, a little something to keep his head centered and still on the plate. He made better pitches. His fastball command improved as a the spring went on, his breaking ball sharpened up. He feels confident going into the season.

The bigger issue is the first-pitch fastballs they are squaring up. He might have to start pitching backwards (by starting batters with breaking pitches) and doing some things different off the mound.

That is never going to happen again. (Sullivan) got outside himself. He was thinking about breaking up a double play. That's priority 'z' in that situation.

I want him to do some more work on some of the things we talked about coming up from Triple-A. He worked this afternoon with Davey on reads and breaks in the outfield. There were some things we wanted to check on and try, and tighten up for him before we went ahead and got him involved. He'll get in over the weekend.

Nobody here has taken him and put him in a chair and tried to get him wound up so tight that he can't perform by breaking down his mechanics, ... We've kept things as simple as possible for a young left-handed pitcher to go out there and perform. I really believe that, at this point and time in the season, this is one of the more challenging things that's happened to him in his career. This'll be a good barometer of who and what he is.

I think by far and away he was way ahead of the pack at the time he went down. But the numbers he has now, they still spell out pretty good in the big scheme of things if you want to dissect numbers and break them down. Everybody else had an opportunity of three months to really put some distance between themselves and him and elevate themselves, but it didn't happen.