Clint Hurdle Hitting Quotations

Because they're capable of doing it. And obviously I think the other team would be the first one to tell you, they're not pitching like they can or like they need to. They're probably leaving balls up over the plate. We're getting some balls to hit, and we're hitting them.

Hitting a Major League baseball. I wasn't that good at either one. I think I've got the marriage thing nailed down now and that took me three tries. I know I can't hit the fastball anymore.

I think the jury is still out on his bat. We'll work more with him and maybe see if there's a little more there. We're not talking about hitting home runs. We want him to be more consistent with the barrel. He's shown some improvement.

We stuck him in there when we ran out of other options last year. He settled into that role real well. He's not just a guy hitting behind (Todd) Helton anymore. He's a legitimate fourth-place hitter.

There's no doubt in my mind that he's gong to get better, and that's what I told Matt earlier in the season when we had a sit-down. I said, 'You're not just hitting fourth anymore. You're our cleanup hitter.' Two months later, I told him, 'What you are doing now is providing protection in the lineup.' That's a big statement for a second-year player.

Initially we stuck him in there because we had run out of options. He is a big kid who has some power and we thought maybe we can find a guy to pick up some run support when they didn't want to pitch to Helton. Obviously he took that opportunity and ran with it. He is a legitimate fourth bat in the lineup. He is not just hitting behind Helton any more.

He's exhibited major-league power in the minor leagues and we've seen some flashes of it at this level. He's working hard in (batting practice) and he's working hard in the cage and hitting the ball hard where it's pitched.

The confidence that comes from getting on any type of run gives you that confidence once you initiate that run again. We've got to pitch well, we've got to play solid defense and we've got to get timely hitting and execute, which is what we did for the last three months last season - with a lot of guys people didn't know against a lot of teams with some pretty big names.

It's a special spring for him. He's gaining the respect of his teammates. He's gaining the respect of players he's playing against. But the bottom line it's still spring training. So, there's the dose of reality ... that there's going to be an opening day for him and he's going to be hitting .000 and he's going to have no homers. But we do like what we're seeing.

His command was excellent. He was hitting his spots where the catcher set up and stayed down for the most part, except when he wanted to go up. When he went up, there was tilt on his breaking ball.