Is he not a guy going into day one who is considered a Gold Glove candidate -- and a Gold Glove candidate that can go out there and get 200 base hits if he uses the whole field and hits intelligently with the situations that are in front of him?

I won't say where they are going to start. But he is the type of guy we are looking for to hopefully place in between two left-handers that have somewhat similar stuff and not give opposing clubs an opportunity to see the same type of stuff on consecutive days.

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.

He's going to get the ball in the ninth inning. We'll see how it goes. We've got a guy who is a complete novice in that environment. But what I see is a player that an opportunity has been created for him and he's seizing the opportunity.

His record wasn't all that impressive, but I've seen this guy do very well at times. And I think the opportunity to acquire somebody in the Rule 5 draft ... it's not all that often you get somebody whose resume from the previous year shows 141 innings.

He's a guy we'd like to get our hands back on so we can start getting him busy with some of the things we have in mind -- namely, stretching him out.

He may not have seen live pitching, but he's the type of guy who wouldn't take long to resurrect his hand-eye coordination. I don't think he hit 700-and-something home runs by accident. I think you would have to be aware of him.

He had two perfect pitches to bunt. That's the guy you want up there to get the bunt down. You get the bunt down, it makes them have to make decisions. And we had a guy coming up who's a contact hitter who can drive the ball to the outfield to drive the run in.

What we're seeing right now is, in my mind, identical to what we saw last year, when it took him a few starts to get untracked, and then you see one quality start after another. His teammates recognize that's he gonna leave everything that he has on the field, and it's very easy to step up for a guy like that.

I do feel that way. And that's because I've seen some of the guys in this rotation be very good, even though I was looking at that from afar. What's more, I know that they know what they have to do.

I don't want to have those guys out there feel like you're completely jumping the gun. I want to also make it perfectly clear that we are definitely interested in results. And we're going to get to the point where we expect to see very favorable results.

This is about the time he should get started. You're not looking for this guy to be out there for two- and three-inning stints. It's completely unnecessary to do that with him.

Think about the ... significance of ... how many at-bats he takes this year with men on base because the guy (Casey) hitting in front of him is going to be on base. There's going to be a number of times that he's going to come up to the plate with people on base and have the opportunity to either extend the inning, put a game away or extend leads. All those possibilities will be there.

Every team needs people like that. It's not just what he does as a third base coach, and I happen to be believe he's very good at what he does. Having this guy as a buffer between my office and the clubhouse ... that's huge.

If this kid maintains the same type of mentality and approach that he possesses right now, it's a matter of time before you start strongly talking about the fact that he is a candidate to come here and start a Major League game. I look at this guy as being a very good starting pitcher some day.

All the guys came through big-time. We put the pieces of our puzzle together over the winter and solidified our lineup. They are the ingredients we hope will take us to the next level.

I don't like to have those guys sit too long,

I have no control over what people do. It's unfortunate for them, but we have a drug policy and you have to adhere to that. If guys want to take on that, it's on them. I'm concerned about what happens on the big-league level. We have a policy in place and everyone understands that. That's the law.

I'm not going to focus on anybody. I'm just going to rotate guys in there.

I'm not playing any string out, I'm not looking to reevaluate right now, we're playing guys I think can help us win games, and we need as many as we can,

Anytime you go deep on a pitcher in early BP like this, you've got to tip your hat to them, because those guys are way ahead of us.

Not all guys deal with injuries the same way. Some guys can play with injuries, some guys can't. I'm not saying he can't. But hamstrings are a different kind of injury. Like I've said before, hamstrings are a funny kind of injury.

It's important for me to see how guys react in certain spots, ... Not just putting them there, but how they deal with the situation. Sometimes, you can tell a lot from things like that.

For a kid getting his first taste, he's handled himself pretty well. Ideally, those are the guys that may come quick.