Walt Jocketty Quotations

If we had won that game, ... the whole Series might have been different.

Sidney has made it very clear to us that he is committed to turning both his life and his career around. He's a tremendous talent who has made mistakes, but he's been making huge strides in trying to return himself to a much better quality of life.

I would think it's a good fit, ... but that's not something for me to decide. He started his career there, and he's obviously one of the top managers in the game that's not employed as a manager. Jim is going to manage somewhere in 2006. Definitely.

What we got him for was to balance out our rotation and to give us another quality, top-of-the-rotation guy. Pitching is what wins championships. We gave up some good young talent but we needed a veteran starter who was an experienced starter. Who was a top-of-the-rotation guy. Who was used to pitching in big games like this.

We can go forward like last night and play a nice clean game and hopefully, all this stuff is behind us,

That first game in Boston was a pivotal point. We got down early, came back and tied it and ended up losing. I think that really knocked a lot out of us.

Spivey is someone we have expressed interest in for the past two or three seasons. He will be a strong candidate in what we envision to be a quality competition for playing time at second base.

Our guys, I think, feel there's still more they want to accomplish,

I think Sidney is a perfect example of the type of pitcher that we feel Dave Duncan can help get better and bring him to the next level.

I think the idea is to go to spring training and have a competition and see. What it does provide is some insurance if we feel Anthony is not ready.

I think we need to sit back and reflect on this year and see where we want to go. But Reggie's a free agent ... So outfield would obviously be an area we'll have to address. We've got a couple free agent pitchers, so we have to look at that, too.

I think you need to turn the roster over. I think turning a percentage of your roster over every year is healthy.

I think we're all looking for the stud guy, the big specimen.

We just didn't feel that was appropriate or something we wanted to do. Reggie did a great job for us for two years but we thought it was time to kind of turn the page.

We ran into a very good team. They were on a roll. I think we eventually just ran out of gas. The head of steam we had going into it, we just were never able to regain it.

We are glad to have Braden back in our system, and he's glad to be back. He will be a quality setup pitcher in our bullpen and be able to close for us on days when Jason is not available.

We like his all-around makeup. He hits for power, runs very well and plays a solid outfield. His addition helps us in getting a little younger in the outfield, yet he's still a player who has significant playing time and production at the major league level.

There hasn't been that much said about it because Tony, the coaches and the players have made it look so easy.

We're not looking for someone considered an extra outfielder. We're looking for someone like we found last season in Larry Walker.

Believe me, we took a strong effort at Burnett and that was going to be a very significant financial obligation. It got beyond the point where we thought it made baseball sense and business sense to go for it, so we backed off.

Everybody deserves a second chance and we're here to provide that. That doesn't mean we're going to let things slide, either.

Bob likes the way we've done things in St. Louis. I told him I've worked with Mo for nine or 10 years, and he's been a big part of the operation.

After a discussion I had with his agent, I think it would be probably less than a 50 percent chance that would happen.

One correlation I see between the two tragedies is how this country continues to rise to the occasion and help out their fellow man -- whether it is financially, through donations, through time or goods or volunteering their efforts. It's unfortunate it takes these tragedies to bring that into place, but it just shows the strength of this country.

There's nothing you can really do to expedite the healing process. It takes time to heal, and it takes time to build the strength up. It's something he hasn't had before. I don't know if we've had an injury like that.

There's no advantage for the team that plays the best during the season.

There are a number of holes. But there also should be a level of trust with what we've done the last few years to give us some credit and benefit of the doubt that eventually we'll get this thing put together.

After the year we had, we didn't want to lose in the first round. It was very important to win this first round.

You'd have to ask Scott about that one.

It's allowed us to take our time in getting these guys back. We don't have to rush.

That's past history, ... He had the surgery. It's over with. All we can hope for now is a speedy recovery and just go forward.

That's past history. He had the surgery. It's over with. All we can hope for now is a speedy recovery, and just go forward.

We signed him with that purpose in mind, based on his past career. It provides more depth to our rotation, more depth to our pitching staff, and that has been the priority of our off-season plan.

It was a very numbing affect to sit and watch what was taking place, ... It's just total disbelief what happened.

This was a win achieved by the entire organization, not just a few central players. You look at the role players, all the guys from Memphis (the Cardinals' Class AAA affiliate) and what they did. Everyone came up and contributed in some manner. It's a great reflection on the entire organization and gives you a greater degree of satisfaction about overcoming the obstacles that we encountered.

How many miles to Tokyo? This is what we had hoped for. The role he has here suits him well.

I can say that they thought it was successful surgery, and we expect his rehab should be good. Now, we'll see what it's like in January, but right now everything is pretty optimistic.

The market has gone crazy, but we're not going to go crazy with it, OK? And if clubs want to spend the kind of money they're spending on the players they're spending it on, more power to them. But we hope to make better decisions.