Kevin McClatchy Players Quotations

There are certain players who I think haven't progressed, and we need those players to grow. Put on top of that that we have a slew of young players coming into this thing, and I think Dave just wanted to make the decision to get the best person we can to help these guys continue to develop and evolve. Some can make the argument we didn't do that this year.

When you look at building on Jason Bay and Jack Wilson, those are two pretty good players to start with as far as character. That's a nice aspect of it. But the key is performance and strengthening ourselves up the middle.

A lot of people are excited about Jim Tracy and the players we have picked up. The All-Star game is a bonus.

I'm not going to lie to you. There were some times -- and I think everybody knows when that was because we had to move some players -- that I don't think our plan was working. We were locked into bad contracts and ... it was time for significant changes. Things are working much better now because I think we're working our plan better. Quite frankly, we've got better people in place to execute the plan, too.

There was concern there. I'm disappointed in some of the lack of improvement. Dave wanted to make sure we had the right manager in place so these players could continue to improve.

It was important to give Dave the tools he needed to go out and get these players. He's done a great job of getting some veteran players to go with our younger core.