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
believe grow half last learning ourselves players position process saw season second surprise
We've put ourselves in position to surprise people. We went through a learning process last year, and I think you saw in the second half of the season that our young players started to believe they could compete. We started to grow as a franchise.
heard pitcher saw
We saw a different pitcher than what we heard about.
good mixed rhythm saw step tempo terms
It was a mixed bag. It was good enough. We saw what we wanted to see in terms of length, velocity, rhythm and tempo -- so it was another step forward.
ballgame couple early gone innings kept passion saw south
I think you saw the passion he has for competition. The way he kept after it and kept us in the ballgame - a couple early innings could have gone south on him. He didn't let it happen.
guy hard saw threw throwing
I saw a guy throwing hard but without a lot of command. It was hard to watch. We got to get him tightened up. He threw a lot of pitches.
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.
build half hope kidding nice road saw season second victory
That's a nice come-from-behind victory on the road for us. There's no kidding anybody. This is what we saw in the second half of the season and it's what we hope we can build on.
butterfly cocoon cut free help man picked reading saw thinking trying understand
I really didn't understand while I was reading it, but it told a story of a man who saw a butterfly trying to come out of a cocoon, and he picked it up and cut the cocoon away from the butterfly, thinking he was going to help free it,
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.
maybe might next rookies
We might not have any rookies next year, or maybe one or two,
beauty chance everybody finally took
We tweaked the lineup a little and everybody who got a chance jumped in and took advantage. We finally got out of that hitters' graveyard, Coors Field. That's the beauty of this game. You don't know what to expect.