Jim Tracy Opportunity Quotations

His record wasn't all that impressive, but I've seen this guy do very well at times. And I think the opportunity to acquire somebody in the Rule 5 draft ... it's not all that often you get somebody whose resume from the previous year shows 141 innings.

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.

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.

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.

That was his game to determine. It was his baseball game at that point. You have to give him the opportunity to finish it.

We're looking for 35 or 38 or 39, and this is an opportunity to find out who are those guys beyond the 25.

Duke did a fine job. It was a quality start and he gave an opportunity for the club to win. I don't know how much more you can ask.

Is he a candidate to have an opportunity to make the club? I don't know the answer to that. We'll take it a day at a time and see how he progresses from a health standpoint. If he comes along quicker, that obviously creates more options for us.

Think about the ... significance of ... how many at-bats he takes this year with men on base because the guy (Casey) hitting in front of him is going to be on base. There's going to be a number of times that he's going to come up to the plate with people on base and have the opportunity to either extend the inning, put a game away or extend leads. All those possibilities will be there.

When you face a pitcher the caliber of Chris Carpenter, you only get one opportunity like that.

We had something going on in the fifth, it looked like we had a chance to get back in the game, but they cut the inning off. We took some good at-bats off him, we created some opportunity for ourselves ... but from watching him, he's got a crisp fastball and his breaking ball also is very sharp.

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.

The best way to approach a player with his type of ability and talent is to feel like you've developed a type of environment to allow his development to continue on its natural course. With what we have done this winter, we have put this young man in a position to where his natural progression as a Major League Baseball player has a genuine opportunity to take place without heaping any unexpected expectations on him.

Any time you face a pitcher the caliber of Chris Carpenter, you get one opportunity against him. He started quick and it took us until the seventh to get our opportunity to crack through.

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.

It's an opportunity to get some more innings for some younger guys.

I don't need to say anything more. I think that both sides are moving on from something like that. You don't use things like that as an opportunity to create a rift between two clubs.