Quotes by Jim Hendry

It's a process of looking back over three years. There were a couple years when Will didn't pitch. And he pitched about three-quarters of the season last year.

It's a big blow, so we have to keep plugging and hope we can play better and better.

Almost every club has a job up for grabs. We're coming off the kind of year where we certainly don't want to act like we have every piece of the puzzle in place when you get here. You have to have some battles, and they're healthy. That's the way it is.

A lot of guys older than him have turned their careers around. The talent is still there, the work ethic is good and it was a situation where coming back here and taking a chance, for his sake or ours, to get out of the gate better wasn't worth the risk.

The Sox were the best team in baseball and they deserved to win -- I'm happy for them. But whether the Sox won the World Series or not, we won 79 games last year and that's not acceptable.

I've never lost an opener in my four years as GM. Of course, what does that mean?

I've never had any doubt that Dusty wanted to be here. All those things that were going around last year - he felt bad about it. He talked to me on two or three occasions and never expressed anything to me but that he wanted to be here.

Dr. Kremchek felt that from his studying the MRI, it would be nothing to stop him from being available once Spring Training opens. Why we're doing it now is to avoid a sprained ankle that would set back his rehab. We're just trying to give ourselves the maximum amount of time, no matter what it is.

Dusty will write the lineup. We still have three more weeks of camp. I feel that all three guys are capable of playing very, very well. They're just different styles of players. We'll just play it out and worry about it when the time comes.

Congratulations, I'm proud of you and really happy for you . . . just don't win any games against us,