He's part of that organizational depth chart and you like to see a younger guy like that go out and perform well against major-league competition. His outing was very encouraging and it was obvious he was more comfortable this time.

I thought he battled. He didn't have his breaking ball until his last two innings. That's a tough club to pitch against with basically just your fastball.

I have tremendous respect for him. As a strategist, he manages as well as you can, based on my experience against him.

You can't make a mistake against that club like we did in the fifth inning. I don't know who was calling (for the ball), but obviously you need to catch that ball.

We were pitched to death. It's the best game that's been pitched against us all year.

We did a good job of coming back against a very good ballclub.

I don't know whose fault that was. But you can't make a mistake like that against this club.

The allure, for me, was, No. 1, the stability of the front office. The other thing was looking at a group of players I'd managed against the past couple of years and realizing there's some terrific young talent here and asking myself the question 'Why can't it be better than it has been?

The last five or six games, I've been doing some things that go against the norm of what I usually do,