He's gone so quickly through the system because of his maturity level. He's talented, and he made adjustments. I think he's still under the radar. He has tremendous drive, he loves to condition and he'd try things out. He was willing to take risks. At the Triple-A level, when hitters starting catching up to his fastball, he started using a change and a split. He's had adversity, and he keeps bouncing back. Setbacks only fuel his desire to get better.
Quotes about triple-a (16 Quotes)
It was rough, ... I shot 80, 82, but had a lot of great experiences. I would say it was like a baseball player that was playing A-league ball and all of a sudden got called up to the big leagues without playing Double-A and Triple-A ball.
If his ability is what we think it is, the opportunity will be here, sooner rather than later. Realistically, you can't put a timetable, because he's missed nearly two years of productive development time. He's got to perform at Triple-A over a stretch of time, and his actions over that stretch will show us when he has to be in Philadelphia.
Because of the time he's missed, we wanted to accelerate him, and felt the best way to do that was to put him against more experienced Triple-A hitters. We've never had a question about ability or command it's just been health.
We feel he still can benefit from innings at the Triple-A level. Whether that's 10 starts or 15 starts, it's not a predetermined number. We were fortunate last year in that a sixth starter was only needed in the big leagues on a few occasions. At some point, provided the opportunity arises and the need is there, I think Jeremy Sowers will be ready.
We're only one of a few states that have maintained our Triple-A bond rating from the major rating agencies.
I bet if you asked McCarthy about pitching in the bullpen, developing, getting his feet wet and learning a new tool to make himself an asset to the organization and to benefit himself, or whether he wants to go to Triple-A and pitch, you know the answer.
Right now I think it's too early to say if any of the young trio are even out of the mix here. And my thought is if they had to go down to Triple-A or wherever we're going to send these guys, if they come up here, I'd rather them go into the rotation. If they've earned it and they've showed an ability to dominate a level, excel past the level they're at, then they've earned the right to come up here and get into the starting rotation.
He's got a little ways to go yet, but he's in Triple-A ball and he does well handling the pitching staff. He's got a good, strong arm. He's just got to get used to playing every day now and being consistent. No matter what happens, we're not afraid to bring him up because we know he can catch.
Hopefully we can follow the path of these guys to Triple-A and the pros. I think that's the dream for all of us. We work pretty hard, so we'd like to think playing well against them has something to do with our hard work and the direction of our baseball careers.
He has a chance to be a very good everyday player. He has great makeup and great plate discipline. He'll probably start this year at Triple-A. He's in the mix, ability-wise, with Dodgers prospects Andy LaRoche, Russell Martin, Chad Billingsley, Matt Kemp and Joel Guzman. His upside should be very good.
What he can ultimately be is an everyday guy. He can benefit more as an everyday guy in Triple-A, but he could contribute at the big-league level during the year.
We kind of had him, coming out of Spring Training, ahead of the group that's starting at Triple-A now. Experience-wise, they're all pretty similar. We know he's going to come up and throw strikes. You expect him to because he's always done that. It's his opportunity.
It's very difficult to have both a big dividend and a growth company and maintain a triple-A rating, ... That is important to the fundamentals of our business. We're a growth company and we need the capital for our growth.
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.
I don't know how to put this into words. In 16 years of working in Triple-A baseball, Mario was right at the top. There was just something about him.