Jim Tracy Hitting Quotations

If he's hitting in 2-0 and 3-1 counts, the ball is going to be put in play -- probably hard. You just hope it's hit at somebody.

When half of the team is the pitching staff, there are some intangible things that are important. We can sit here and talk about hitting all we want. But that won't help the other part that is vitally necessary to the success of the Major League team, and that's the interaction that takes place between two guys 60 feet, six inches away from one another. That's just as important as anybody's batting average.

Think about the ... significance of ... how many at-bats he takes this year with men on base because the guy (Casey) hitting in front of him is going to be on base. There's going to be a number of times that he's going to come up to the plate with people on base and have the opportunity to either extend the inning, put a game away or extend leads. All those possibilities will be there.

But if you start hitting people in the head, you got to be very careful.

Go ahead and take that gun. What was important was the life of the pitch when it's entering the hitting area. That was as good as I've seen him.

In a perfect scenario, you'd have Joe hitting sixth. But if it's not perfect, I could see him hitting fifth, somehow behind Casey and Jason Bay. This is a guy who knows how to keep the offense moving, hit to all fields.

I don't think Curt Schilling was out there to hurt people. Period. When you start hitting people in the head, you need to be very careful with that.

I've never seen Curt Schilling go out and start a game with the intention of hurting people. But if you start hitting people in the head... you need to be very careful of that.