Bob Melvin Quotes (221 Quotes)

The consensus was that you don't have to take it easy on this guy, just let him go out and play. Now there's a pecking order as to where he plays in a game . . . but everybody that's spent some time with him and knows him says this guy can handle just about anything.

He's the kind of guy that has a very resilient arm. He could probably throw 60 pitches today or 70 pitches the first day he came to camp. Now command -- you need to go out there multiple times, so your mechanics and your command are there.

We just wanted to make sure he went in and got some ice. He's fine. He's off on Friday anyway, so I don't see any problems for the next game. He's been making a habit of fouling balls of his foot this spring. That one was barking on him a little bit.

It's going to be fun for us. We'll look at any number of different lineups and we'll try some different combinations. From a managing standpoint, we have a chance to do a lot more things than we did last year.

Tony really worked to draw a walk, and that really broke his heart.

One thing I don't particularly want to do with him again is move him around a whole lot. It was just by necessity that we had to do something differently. A young guy like that, you want to lock him into a position.

He threw fastballs to both sides of the plate, and he was pitching with confidence.

I saw it hit whatever and bounce up in the air, and Klesko obviously thought it was a home run. But they said maybe it hit behind the pad on concrete. So they should do something about that.

It was obviously a really difficult day to pitch. Cold conditions, the wind was blowing, tough to get a good grip on the ball.

You'd think he was a 2-handicap golfer the way he keeps golfing those balls over the right-field fence, ... It certainly was a situation where we could use a big hit like that. We had some opportunities - probably more than they did - but it only takes one big hit.

I thought that was really going to be an emotional play in the game for us.

Royce has been unbelievable as of late. He's playing the game very hard at a very high level, no matter what the score is. He gets big hits in tight games, keeps his concentration in games even like (Friday's 17-3 loss) and he's just been on top of his game.

He's been swinging the bat really well, so Alex is not in there today. But I've got to find a way to get Alex in there sometime in the next few days.

It was a lot of fun. Not only did they bring their team, they brought their crowd. It's good to see everyone all fired up about it. We got a taste of what the WBC is going to be.

We were kidding him a little bit when he was taking batting practice today -- there was a little extra sock in his bat. He was hitting some balls pretty good and a little farther than he normally does, and he said he's got another mouth to feed, so he's on a salary drive here.

Unbelievable. We saw that same performance several times last year, but for a guy who hasn't pitched in I don't know how many days to be as mechanically sound as he was, was pretty impressive.

Everybody that's been to this place knows it as the BOB. We won a World Series here, but almost every ballpark at some time or another changes now.

He was in the mid-70s today. We should get him into the 90s and ready to go. He will get one more start.

In his last couple of years here, he really matured as a pitcher. The success he had in that 01' World Series game was huge. It catapulted him to bigger and better things.

It was an incredibly hard decision. I absolutely do not have a bad thing to say about either of those guys. It's just that you are constantly tweaking to try and go in a different direction.

Anything's possible. But just looking at what we saw last year, maybe he needs more seasoning. Believe me. This is a guy that we feel like is going to be here for a long time once he's here to stay.

But Kelly, being a veteran, you know he's going to give you a good defensive performance and add to the offense that, at times, we've been missing. He's given us a spark that way.

He's not getting the pitches we thought he would. He threw one-third of an inning last time. He was going to be a starter that second round, which would get him to the pitch counts that we're comfortable with. It hasn't happened, other than the first time, so far.

In a year when we've shuffled quite a few things in the bullpen, this guy's really emerging as a guy going into next year you look at to pitch deep innings. He's a very high-energy guy out there, likes to be out there and has that look in him that he's going to get you out.

We look to those guys to give us more than one inning.

Early on it looked like everyone was swinging the bat and hitting the ball hard and then later on, defense and pitching came into play.

It just got our of hand there. Royce makes a nice play, and if it comes out of his glove it's 3-3 and we're off the field. After that it just snowballed.

His whole career is he'll walk some guys, but he makes the big pitch to get out of the inning.

I'm kind of getting used to it. It's not the greatest feeling in the world. But something we've shown is that even though we get down big early, we have the propensity to come back.

I'm in favor of this thing. I think the World Baseball Classic is a great thing. But I also have to have consideration of my players, and this is a guy that is healthy this year. We had a little bit of a plan, and now it was backed off, so you can blame this one on me.

Randy seems to have come in here with a different attitude this year. He's thrown the ball well both times he's been out there and today was as good as I've seen him throw.

We've talked about it since last year. Hopefully at some point in time it evens out. We'd like to think it will.

It was a tough conversation to have with Casey.

He smoked a couple of balls (Monday) night. That's what we expect out of him. He hits a lot of doubles and drives a lot of balls to the gap. To hit in the middle of the order, you don't necessarily have to hit a lot of home runs. You just need to be able to drive in runs, and he has that capacity.

Boy I tell you, (Tracy) has been our guy of late. He came up big again tonight.

If I can give El Duque another day I'm going to give him another day. I think a lot of times guys benefit from it especially late in the year.

Two days after the season was over, he was in the cages. He worked all winter on a consistent approach, whereas last year, at times, he tried to tinker too much and do too many things. We're going to try and get him in there against left-handers, because he's had more success against them.

You want to get into the bullpen. We're watching the pitch count go up, hits are at a premium and we're not even seeing too many balls up. We're trying to get him out of the game, and we do, and we had an opportunity right there.

This game here tonight is just as important as the game tomorrow against San Diego. We need to win games, we need to win a lot of games between here and the end.

His presence on the mound looks different. He just looks much more assured of himself out there. One, he's probably in a role that's much better suited for him and, two, he's had some success. That breeds confidence.

If Vargas goes out and does what he did in the middle of last season, and Halsey goes out and shows you what he did late-April through June, you're going to have a tough battle.

I think he's done a nice job everywhere. He's had to prepare everywhere and it's a different look and a different bounce. He could play any of those positions every day.

Everybody talked about, when we brought Russ in here, he will get out of his own jams but you have to be patient with him and he did today,

He was bad. I didn't think we had any chance today with him. We were waiting to see how he felt today. Once we conferred with the doctors, we thought we better go another day.

They should get better and better. When you get off to the start they've had, especially with the young guys, their confidence grows. The expectations get higher and higher. They've got a good thing going over there.

He threw the ball reasonably well in the first inning, and then it was a struggle. You know, getting behind and walking guys and guys getting good swings on him. I'm kind of at a loss, really. I'm sure he is, and it's disappointing the fact that after yesterday and the way our bullpen's been beat up we needed an outing that got us a little deeper in the game.

He settled in and had good rhythm. He used all his pitches.

He didn't have his command today.

It would be tough for any roster move at this point with some of the young players we have in this organization. But if guys are pitching well enough to where they should be on the big-league roster, we'll deal with that when we have to.

Certainly he's a force. Whether or not he's in the lineup, he'll make you think about what you're going to do. ... I think emotionally it could be a big lift for them.