Jim Tracy Pitching Quotations

Pitching and defense has been the name of the game in baseball forever. I don't care what level you're playing at. My philosophy since I started managing has been that, before you can look at any other phases, you've got to feel fairly comfortable that you've got some people who can pitch and you've got to be able to catch the ball. If you can't do either one, your chances of being very good are slim.

I think it's very safe to say that Ryan is not a finished product defensively. I also feel that, when you look at a major-league baseball team that has 25 active members and half of that is your pitching staff, it's pretty imperative that that stuff back there behind the plate gets taken care of.

We'll adjust as we see fit. But Mike won't necessarily be pitching the ninth.

When half of the team is the pitching staff, there are some intangible things that are important. We can sit here and talk about hitting all we want. But that won't help the other part that is vitally necessary to the success of the Major League team, and that's the interaction that takes place between two guys 60 feet, six inches away from one another. That's just as important as anybody's batting average.

To me, he's one of the game's best pitching coaches in the National or American leagues. He has not only the ability to teach the physical aspects of the game, but also the ability to communicate with his pitchers.

Both have very similar stuff, stuff that can beat you down on any given day. But you don't want guys with very similar stuff pitching on back-to-back days.

No question there's a lot of pitching here. And we're keeping an open mind to everything we see.

That's his game to determine at that point. You take him out of the game like that there, you bring in the bullpen and a mistake is made, a ball gets hit in the gap, and he's the pitcher of record in the losing decision, and he got to watch it on the other side of the dugout. I don't handle pitching that way.

His (left) elbow is lower than it should be and he's not pitching like he's coming off a slope. At times, his arm was where it was supposed to be ... but his inconsistency with his arm slot is what leads him to throwing pitches that no major-league hitter would swing at.

This is a guy that as we go along you're going to find him pitching a lot of very meaningful games, games of major significance. That's who he is. That's who he's going to become. That's going to be a very easy thing for him to do because he's a person who's not the least bit shy about wanting that type of responsibility.

That's the difference between Oliver Perez on Opening Day and Oliver Perez in Cincinnati. He was pitching uphill.

You can't help but be pleased by what you saw out there. As a matter of fact, it's too bad that we didn't have additional pitching that could stay out there longer. That's how much fun I was having.

We got a solid pitching performance. Unfortunately, we got two hits.