”The only thing that got this team off to a bad start, and I saw it this winter — when you look at a team, you say, ‘OK, we might be short here, we might be short there, lack some team speed there.’ But this team, the only thing that really stuck out to me is when I started looking at guys, I was, ‘OK, where are they going to be at when they get to spring training mentally? Where are they going to be, where are they at?’
”We just had a lot of stuff going on. You’ve got guys that didn’t play a lot last year because they were hurt or whatever. You had guys coming from a small market to a big market. You’ve got guys that didn’t play every day last year. … I mean, J.P. [Juan Pierre] didn’t play every day last year, and all of a sudden he’s coming to a new league. [Carlos] Quentin was hurt all last year. [Alex] Rios finished terribly. A.J. [Pierzynski is in a] contract year. [Mark] Teahen moving from Kansas City to Chicago. … Back in spring training — you have new guys and you really don’t know them — there was just a lot of stuff mentally going on with this team.” …
Boy, the BS is flying at all directions…
