Larry Rothschild Quotes (74 Quotes)

When I was with Dave Dombrowski, Tigers GM and Jim before, we won a World Series. Obviously, I had a relationship with both of them and it made it tough. In the end, my obligation here was more important.

They won't throw quite as heavy next time, because both of them had a pretty heavy workout today.

He's throwing fine. It's just building up strength and stamina and his pitches and tiring him out without going overboard with it, and we'll keep progressing from what we did today.

He helped so much with the young guys. He was just easy to talk to and would give you a straight answer and follow up on everything you would ever ask of him. It was a great situation with him here.

It's getting better as time goes on, and we'll see in the next couple days where he is. I'll probably sit down with him today and figure out the first day we can play catch again.

He threw off the mound toward the end, really just to get him up on the hill and get used to the slope again and get his balance and things like that right.

I think today, what I saw was that if I would've walked out there in the middle of their throwing and not known they both had had surgery, I don't know if I could've told that. That's a good sign. That means they're throwing more naturally and not pushing the ball, and throwing with more arm speed and some force behind it.

The only plan is to keep his arm in shape, because he's gone a long way to get it to where it is and we don't want to go backwards. In the middle of a rehab, it's important to keep throwing and keep the looseness in there.

I don't have a plan yet for games, but he could pitch by the fourth or fifth one in March.

He finished up pretty strong. Everything's where we thought it would be. We'll pick it up the next time and keep building on it.

Greg has had a strong spring. His command is obvious. When he's got his command, he's tough. He's more consistent with it than most.

Wood is probably throwing harder than I thought he would be at this time. With him, it's more keeping him throttled back enough to stay within a good delivery than anything else.

Any time you have gone through surgery, once you get back on the mound the first time, it's a little different feeling. Yeah, it was a pretty step.

A little more trying to keep his hand away from his head when he loads the ball up on his delivery to the plate. When you look at Mark the first couple years here, you look at the way he released the ball at the end of his delivery and it was pretty easy. You didn't see a lot of effort.

Right now, we'll see how he recovers Tuesday and the next day. Then I'll decide what we'll do after that. Before he's going to face hitters, I want to cut down the recovery time in-between and make sure he can do a little more in-between and then work it up to hitters.

We're just now building up his strength and stamina. I don't use timetables. It's impossible.

It's a lot of travel for him. He's our Opening Day pitcher so there has to be some consideration there. The first time in the World Baseball Classic is not a problem. He'll get in a game and pitch on March 7. The second time, if he's not starting and getting extended a little bit, then there are some concerns.

I'll look at scheduling him out to the second time around in the rotation and get him on his terms to set him up to open the second game of the regular season.

The two months that I'm in Spring Training is tough. The family obligation weighed heavily. We spent a lot of time talking about that. The truth of the matter is during spring, I'm at the ballpark the majority of days for 12, 15 hours. I wouldn't get a whole lot of time with them.

He's not at the height of his career but there's still a lot of good games for him to pitch. We talked at the end of the year about certain things he could do to return to what he's done in the past.

There was contact, obviously. It was tough to turn down, honestly. But I felt an obligation to finish what we started.

I think once he's off the mound a few times and faces some hitters and doesn't have setbacks, we'll have a better timetable. In my mind, I figured we weren't going to start the season with him. I've thought that all winter.

He's a young guy. It's like Billy Martin said -- if you tell him 10 times, tell him 11. Hopefully, that's the one that catches. He's gotten better and better at a lot of things. Obviously, there's room for improvement in concentration and not getting distracted by things. That's something we'll keep striving for. A lot of pitchers face that. Hopefully, we'll get through that.

It would be nice to have them here because the first couple weeks of games we spend a lot of time going over how we approach things. We have meetings every day, and they won't be here for them. But we'll manage and adjust. We have no choice.

I thought, overall, the angle he threw with the stuff he had was better on Thursday than the first two times. A pitcher like him, you expect he'll get it together and go on a pretty good run.

He never came to us. He hasn't said anything. I told him what the plans were. His take on everything is you play every game to win it. I think you're trying to win when he's pitching. Those two goals are in unity with each other.

He threw about 12 pitches off the mound and a bunch off flat ground. It's pretty amazing to watch.

The injury, the line drive to the elbow, was pretty significant. He came back from it a lot quicker than anybody thought he would. While he's doing that, he's facing hitters who are in shape and he's trying to get back on the beam.

I'm going to wait and see what we're dealing with first and try to figure out what we have to do and go from there. Everybody knows what he means to the team. We'll have to wait and see.

Cubs general manager Jim Hendry has been great to me and I felt like this was the right thing to do, ... Jim and the Cubs have treated me well since I've been there. I trust him.

He's doing fine, and his recovery time between throwing sessions is being cut down.

He probably threw a little more than we first intended. We'll see how he reacts on Tuesday to the throwing. I'll go by what the doctors say at this point in time. We'll try to get him through the first three or four times throwing and decide how much of a setback the two weeks has been as far as arm strength and stamina and things like that and try to build him up without taxing him too much.

From the time he started throwing the ball all the way through the mound, you could see there was more quickness to his arm and he looked more comfortable throwing the ball.

We've been working on some of the things mechanically and, obviously, I'll pay attention to what the doctors say and try to build arm strength the best we can without getting him hurt. It's kind of a freak injury for a pitcher. You never know where it comes from. We've been trying to stress mechanics even back to when he started his throwing program before this came up. We'll keep stressing it.

His velocity and location are so good, ... he's one of those guys where you can know what's coming and you still won't hit it.

We'll know more when he's not just throwing batting practice the next time out.

I don't want him to go out there without having completely built up the arm strength to where he should be. I want him in an environment where we can build him up without any kind of risk. We've gotten a lot further along with that in a short period of time. I think he's on schedule to do everything we need him to do and not have any problems. That's the way I'm assuming it's going to go, and we'll keep progressing.

That's been part of it, ... but he's still pitched very well. You look at what he's done and what he's been through and I think there have been some pretty good positives there. Getting through this year healthy would be a huge benefit.

You'd like to see him get three or four starts down here. You have to remember after he hardly pitched last spring he only missed one start until hit by the line drive. Maybe he's just not a spring-training guy. It'll ease everybody's mind once he gets into action.

He threw some breaking balls today -- we're really concentrating more on building arm strength. We'll spin the ball some, but I don't really worry about the breaking ball as much as some other pitches until the arm strength gets built up. Those things will come back.

We'll watch him the next few days and do a side and make sure he's OK. He may be back up in a few days.

He looked good. As we do more throwing, it takes a little longer to get loose just because we have been trying to tire his arm out a little bit to build it up without having any problems. That may be a routine he has to keep for a while.

Obviously, I think at some point an organization has to look at the importance of stability. I don't think Cubs have ever really spent time doing that. There's always been a big turnover in personalities.

He's gotten better. He's more aware of it and the impact it has, especially being under the microscope at this level. I don't want him to lose the energy, just channel it enough that the concentration stays on getting hitters out and winning games and that's the end of it.

Right now, I'm looking at it like it's an anomaly. The high pitch count in the first innings have happened this year more than in the past. I think there are a few things that can be adjusted to try to prevent it. We'll work at that.

We won't let him go days without throwing. It's important for him not to lose ground. I don't like guys in the middle of an arm rehab not be able to throw if they're healthy, because I think it can set him back. We'll make sure to exercise the arm while he strengthens the knee. If it all goes well, he should be long tossing and continuing the program fairly quickly.

I took the job four years ago with winning in mind, and we haven't accomplished that.

He threw close to 50 pitches in two separate sessions and made some progress. Hopefully pretty soon we get some hitters in live batting practice and go from there.

It's been impressive to where they are up to now. They're throwing the ball with pretty good force behind it. It's not so much what they can do today, but can they feel like they can do it again tomorrow That's the basis we pretty much use to go forward.

It was a very tough decision. Probably for about five or six days I went back and forth a lot, talking to people. With Dave Dombrowski and Jim, we won a World Series and I had a relationship with both of them. That made it tough, but in the end my obligation was more important.