Clint Hurdle
Clint Hurdle
Clinton Merrick Hurdleis an American former professional baseball outfielder and current manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball. Hurdle played in MLB for the Kansas City Royals, Cincinnati Reds, New York Mets, and St. Louis Cardinals, and has also managed for the Colorado Rockies...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth30 July 1957
CityBig Rapids, MI
catch leagues minor pitchers polished tougher
More often than not you're going to catch pitchers that end up in the big leagues if you're in the minor leagues, so you're going to see the stuff. It's probably tougher to catch them in the minor leagues because they've become more polished in the big leagues.
best catcher defensive national number people
I've had a number of people come up to me this spring, unsolicited, and tell me that he's the best defensive catcher in the National League.
catching depth hard liked looking receiving work
We don't know him as well as the Padres do yet, but we've always liked him from the other side, catching and receiving the ball. Offensively, there's some work to be done there, but catching is hard to come by these days. Everybody's looking for it right now. We like the depth we have.
catching far number pitches playing saw seeing
He's kind of playing behind, catching up, as far as seeing pitches. He saw a number of pitches today.
catcher good played skills
He is as good as any catcher I played with or had on my team. He has top-shelf skills defensively.
breaking catcher command except hitting spots stayed tilt
His command was excellent. He was hitting his spots where the catcher set up and stayed down for the most part, except when he wanted to go up. When he went up, there was tilt on his breaking ball.
behind catcher changed confidence dynamic good national plate skills
His confidence behind the plate is as good as any catcher in the National League. And he has the skills to match. He's changed the dynamic for us back there.
catch good played short slope throw toss yesterday
He played short catch yesterday and long toss today. We'll try to get him up on a slope and throw tomorrow, and see where we go from there. He's making good progress, though.
best catcher defensive watch
If you watch the game, you know why. He's the best defensive catcher we have had here. Defensively, he is a playmaker . . .
catcher depth fragile good group groups position starts
The (improvement) starts with the bullpen. That is a pretty good group for us, one of the better groups we have had. And at catcher we have depth there where before it was a fragile position for us.
create game moved tried
We tried to create some game situations, and he moved around pretty well.
angry asked coming complain maybe might mound realized ring seemed series surprised turned warming watch
What surprised me was when he went out to the mound with a watch on and was, like, surprised when we asked him to take it off. I thought maybe he got a World Series ring and a World Series watch, so that's why he seemed to be angry about that. There was a little glare coming off of it. We don't complain about much here, but at times when he turned his wrist, you could see a glare warming up. Obviously, it wasn't very expensive, the way he flung it into the dugout. Then I realized it might not have been a World Series watch.
acquire baggage carrying growing last players share
What's unfortunate is the baggage the new players are carrying around. Of course, we acquire our share of it last year, but we'd like to think we are growing from that.
handle maybe might next players rookies year
We might not have any rookies next year, or maybe one or two. We've had the young players we wanted to look at this year show us they can handle the challenge.