Jim Tracy Quotes (411 Quotes)

Offensively, whenever we creep back into the game. It's followed up by more runs by the other side of the field.

I'm not the least bit shy about suggesting things to my players that make a lot of sense. I don't think it's overstepping my bounds to talk to guys about thinking about that big gold trophy that they give out at the end of the year. It's OK to win some of those. They look really nice on a mantelpiece.

When you take good at-bats, you put pressure on the other side of the field -- especially when it's not just one a night. If you get four at-bats, you have four good at-bats.

Each time we creep back into the game, it's followed up by additional runs from the other side of the field. When you're trying to get back into a game three or four times a day, that's tough to do.

I don't expect perfection. Just keep us in the game, keep us around. You can't use the bullpen at that rampant of a pace.

I thought he did well. I particularly liked how he gave up a run in the first inning but made an adjustment and pitched really well in the next inning.

Our golden opportunity was in the seventh inning. We had the bases loaded, we had one out, we had a 3-1 count and we just didn't get it done.

They put constant pressure on the other team, ... It's a very difficult style of baseball to compete against.

The biggest thing is to get him back completely functional versus seeing parts of him, parts of him there. With what I was hearing medically Friday and Saturday, it didn't make any sense to try to push it.

He's an excellent baseball player, that's what he has shown me. He's very intriguing to me.

We have three good catchers. Our attitude is we're looking forward to seeing what they can do.

He can go get a ball and make it look easy and effortless. I want to see how versatile a player he is, but he will have a home at third base for some time.

We were talking about four different people as possibilities for one spot in the rotation. It makes that situation that much more intriguing in my opinion.

Having been there myself a year ago, seeing some of these champagne parties is pretty painful, ... To the point where I don't want to watch.

He was aggressive and went after hitters from the get-go. He threw his fastball for strikes early in the count and got ahead of hitters, which made his breaking stuff that much more effective. It was a completely different guy today.

Duckworth has kind of pitched his way into this picture, no question.

When Ian Snell gets consistent command, his stuff is more than good enough for the major-league level. I'll take pitching like that anytime.

When he was down on the ground, he was having shooting pain that was really bothering him, but beyond that I don't know.

It's frustrating from the standpoint that we have a very competent offense that has proven if you keep this group hanging around, some good things will happen. A loss like this is unfortunate, considering the way this offense is playing.

We did everything we could do to get ourselves back in it. Once again, we were a base hit from tying it and a ball in the gap from going ahead.

I think it'll put a few more rear ends in the seats. The fact Washington is still very much in it will add to the intrigue. Obviously people go out to see him, no doubt about that.

It just makes sense, ... The way he runs and his ability to steal a base if he gets on base it sets the stage for a Robles at-bat.

One of the toughest things in the world to try to stave off is when you walk somebody, especially the leadoff man in the bottom of the ninth, and that's exactly what happened, ... It's tough. It's unfortunate. More times than not, it's going to come back to haunt you, and it did.

He really understands that he needs command and the ability to throw strikes when he pitches in the latter innings of games. I'm very pleased with the progress he has made in that area this spring.

He's going to get the ball in the ninth inning. We'll see how it goes. We've got a guy who is a complete novice in that environment. But what I see is a player that an opportunity has been created for him and he's seizing the opportunity.

Not all of our starters are 22 years old, but we do have four of them that are 24 or less. We have to allow a little bit of time to allow these guys to have the opportunity to stabilize themselves.

The wise thing to do would be to have him available to pinch hit on Friday and give it one more day.

I know the state law already says that, but I just want to clarify it. We want to study it and make sure that the law is strong enough to keep that from happening.

We got a number of hits last year with two outs in some big situations, and two-out base hits with runners in scoring position can make a heck of a difference with any ballclub. We just haven't even, in my opinion, gotten our fair share of those. We haven't been able to come up with big hits consistently.

You've got to give Victor Santos credit. For me, that's as well as he pitched since he put on this uniform.

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 don't know whose fault that was. But you can't make a mistake like that against this club.

Tonight was, in my opinion, dramatically better than what we saw in Florida. In Florida, he battled, but his fastball command was erratic. Tonight, it was crisp, it was good to both sides of the plate. It's a big step forward for him.

They got a hit when they needed it and we did very little offensively for the majority of the night.

I'm certainly not the least bit shy or afraid of having young people out there competing,

I didn't see a dead arm. I saw some pitches with a lot of life and a lot of movement. The problem was that Oliver didn't do that consistently. Until he gets a consistent arm slot, he's going to continue to struggle to throw strikes.

Statistically, in his case, that's what's very important, get to first base. I don't care how you get there -- walk, get on by an error, get hit by a pitch, hit a ground ball in the hole at shortstop. With the speed that he possesses, just don't have me sitting there, for a lengthy period of time and watch him hit fly balls in front of the warning track in right center, or a weak fly ball to shallow left center field. He's not doing himself or this club any good. And he understands it.

With the exception of a couple of hitters, he's ahead of everybody. I can think of two pitches he threw that didn't go precisely where he wanted them to go. That's pretty special.

One-and-7 obviously isn't the way you want to start. But the (Dodgers) team I managed last year started 12-2 and we won 71 games. So it's not a large enough sample size of games. It doesn't mean this is the kind of team we're going to be for the next six months.

That's an aggressive play, ... but as I said to him, when you're trailing in that situation and you would have had first and third with no outs, you have to be 100 percent sure that you make it.

He could hardly lay still. That's how much pain he was in.

When you're throwing pitches at 2-0 and 3-1 counts to quality Major League hitters, your chances to succeed are minimal. All you can hope for is that when the ball gets hit hard, it gets hit at somebody, and that's not the way you want to play.

I thought our pitching was actually pretty good. I thought Victor Santos had a good day's work. He got the ball up a little bit and didn't pitch ahead in the count as much as you'd like to see, but he did all right.

I won't say where they are going to start. But he is the type of guy we are looking for to hopefully place in between two left-handers that have somewhat similar stuff and not give opposing clubs an opportunity to see the same type of stuff on consecutive days.

It's not out of the realm of possibility, ... It's not something we've never seen before (in major league history), where a club loses four or five in a row and you win four or five in a row.

The language in there, I think, is fairly telling as far as his opinion of what occurred there, and how it occurred, and what action we should or should not have taken,

We talked an awful lot in Spring Training about unselfishness and the fact that we're interested, as members of this ball club, to do whatever it is that's necessary to win a Major League baseball game. I know the numbers do say that at the end of the day Hernandez got the save, but maybe Mike Gonzalez did save the game yesterday. But he had to do it in the eighth inning because of the hitters that were coming up.

As long as he keeps his focus and continues to realize there is no real opportunity to be satisfied and he maintains that hunger, ... he could wind up being a real good pitcher in the Major Leagues.

I'd like to hope so. But for that to happen, we've got to continue to come out with the intensity we've shown so far. And I believe we will.

He's part of that organizational depth chart and you like to see a younger guy like that go out and perform well against major-league competition. His outing was very encouraging and it was obvious he was more comfortable this time.