Ron Gardenhire Sit Quotations

He's not only a powerful hitter, he's a quality person. We know what he can do, and if we need him this season we won't hesitate to call him up.

That's our Achilles' heel all year long. We've got one of the best pitching staffs in baseball and offensively, we just can't support them. That's why we're in the position we're in in our league, our division and this Wild Card race.

He was apologetic and that's all that I cared about. He understood that you have to handle situations a little better, and that's part of the growing up process too. I'm happy with it. I feel better about the whole situation. That's really all that matters.

Last year, we missed too many opportunities. What hurt us more than anything last year was situational hitting, so if we can hit a ground ball to second in some of those situations to get a run in, we're going to be better off for it. That's what we are looking for, a little better situational hitting.

Sit him out any longer and you're going to have to send him out on a rehab. We need to get him in the lineup and let him play.

Torii's been very close to Puck. He was in no state to go out for a ballgame. I told him to sit back, take it easy and we'll take care of that game.

He likes to play and he'll play through anything, so when he has to sit out, you know he's hurting. That's a little scary. I'm just hoping it's not a lingering thing.

We've got one position player left from my first year of managing here. One.

It was a big situation like this, these guys coming into town, a big Friday night and he withstood everything. That was fun to see.

That wasn't even part of the plan. Kyle was not going anywhere unless we had the right offer for somebody to get an everyday position player in here, or a DH.

He told me they didn't play him at all in a position in Spring Training, and then they get to the season and half way through they start him in the outfield. We just need to get him out there so he can see balls off bats and try to get him acclimated.

I'm not sitting around thinking about it as much as I used to. I used to booby trap everything. You start worrying about that stuff coming back at you. I'm a little calmer because there are different people here.

You can't be a good hitter off the bench unless you get some at-bats. You can't just sit there and get one at-bat a week or one at-bat every three days. He's been on a lot of different avenues in the big leagues and done a lot of different jobs with a lot of different teams, and he knows how to handle himself.

He needs to go down and get everyday at-bats rather than sit up here on the bench. He's missed a year-plus of baseball. We brought him up here and kept him up awhile to see where he's at. He's doing pretty good after being out a year of baseball.

We want to bring him along slowly. He can be a pretty dominating pitcher out of the bullpen the way we've seen him throw in spring training. And we could put him in situations where he can go out and not have too much pressure on him.

You want to be able to put him in the game. You need to have those days where you can get him four at-bats here and four at-bats there to keep him sharp for late-inning situations and big pinch-hit situations.

Our hearts and our prayers are all with Puck. We know its a tough situation out there.

I'm going to start him, too. I'm going to try to get him at-bats. You can't be a good hitter off the bench unless you get at-bats and get a good feel for it. You can't just sit there and get one at-bat a week or every three days.

Our bullpen looks like they need to be in those situations a little more, and hopefully we'll get them in there.

We did the best we could today and the game was whatever -- it was a game. Our hearts and prayers are all with Puck and his family and we're all waiting like everyone else is to see how everything turns out. We're hoping for the best and we know it's a tough situation going on out there.

Jason needs to get consistent, everyday at-bats instead of sitting on the bench here with us. We brought him up here from spring training to see where he's at, and we're happy with his progress.

At least there's a positive in that he's not going to have any sort of major reconstruction done on the tendon or anything torn up in there. It's good bad news.

You know it's fun to see some things happening a little bit. It hasn't been great, we know it's not going to be a perfect situation or scenario because our expectations were one place and we didn't reach them. But you always have to look for positives. You're playing every night and that's what we've been trying to do.

We're going through enough in our situation here with Puck and the whole package, and then this comes back out and starts punching baseball in the head. It's not much fun to see again. I thought we were past that era.

We all put things in perspective here. That pretty much takes away from anything you do at the ballpark. Our hearts and our prayers are all with Puck. We know it's a tough situation out there.

When we get men into scoring position or on base, it's like we go into defensive mode instead of offensive mode. I don't know how to get guys out of it.

We're getting down to a few numbers where we can work it a little easier and not try to get everyone in. We want to start stretching out our players and take a good look at some of these guys that are battling each other and battling for positions on this team.