Jim Hendry Year Quotations

He has physically never looked better to me. He's probably 10, 15 pounds lighter than last year and is just in great shape. He's done as much precautionary preparation work as anyone could. He has already been throwing and gotten ahead of where he usually would be at this time.

Some of the things written about Dusty and him wanting to leave the Cubs a year ago were completely unfounded. I think people had him in two or three different places he certainly never had any interest in going.

It didn't work the way we all would have liked for Holly this year. But it was never out of lack of effort by him. He gave us a heck of a first 40 percent last year and never got back on the field after the injury.

We are thrilled to have Tim join the organization. To add him to our staff at this time of his year with his track record is a real plus. He is considered in our industry to be one of the finer amateur scouts and his track record for the Blue Jays speaks for itself.

We've always had a lot of respect for him. He pitched so well against us for Houston. He went out there last year with some discomfort and gutted out his starts in Boston. He's a winning-type guy. He's a winning pitcher who, when he's out there, he wins you games.

I've never had any doubt that Dusty wanted to be here. All those things that were going around last year - he felt bad about it. He talked to me on two or three occasions and never expressed anything to me but that he wanted to be here.

The Sox were the best team in baseball and they deserved to win -- I'm happy for them. But whether the Sox won the World Series or not, we won 79 games last year and that's not acceptable.

Almost every club has a job up for grabs. We're coming off the kind of year where we certainly don't want to act like we have every piece of the puzzle in place when you get here. You have to have some battles, and they're healthy. That's the way it is.

We had a bad year and I should've done a better job myself.

If he is not going to have a chance to be a full-time player, he is not going to be able to correct the things that led him to have a bad year last year. It was not a good fit for him to be a bench player here at this point, after what happened last year.