Notable Quotables: Mighty Miguel goes to Double-A

By jseiner24

By Jake Seiner

Interviewing for game stories can be a fun process. The thousands of players and coaches spread across the Minor Leagues supply a never-ending chain of unique perspectives on the national pastime. The game story isn’t always the best place for block quotes and expanded thoughts, so once a week, I’m hoping to come here with a look back at some of the more interesting conversations I stumble upon with Minor League players and coaches. Here’s a look back at some quotes from the past week that I hope you’ll find of interest.

New Britain manager Jeff Smith on Minnesota prospect Miguel Sano (Sano helps Rock Cats stun Aeros):

“Every year, I work with the Twins in the Instructional League for the last eight years, so I’ve seen him in three or four different stints. I also saw him in the Dominican when I was down there. One thing about Miguel I notice sometimes is he obviously has put up tremendous numbers in the FSL and he has tremendous tools, but he’s a complete baseball player. He’s a good teammate and a good person, and he gets along great with the guys. You can see the smile on his face when he plays this game.

“It’s his first Double-A stint right here, and he just turned 20. Obviously, he’s going to need a little time to adjust. One thing we’ve all been impressed with as a coaching staff is the way he takes every at-bat a little different. Whether he has a good at-bat or a bad at-bat, when he goes to the next one, the old one’s over. Every situation, he takes it as it is. You can tell he has a knack for driving in runs. With guys on base, he wants to get them home.

“He’s having good at-bats, and he has what we call line-to-line power, where he can hit it out from the left-field line to the right-field line.”

Miami prospect Andrew Heaney on his recovery from a strained lat (Heaney adjusts and excels for Jupiter):

“It’s been a little difficult getting back from the injury. It’s taking me a little longer than I thought to really hit my stride. I’ve been battling mechanical issues. I sat with [pitching coordinator Wayne Rosenthal] and we talked for a while trying to iron some things out. I’ve been working on a few mechanical things, and that definitely helped today to be more consistent with the fastball and everything really. I was able to pound the zone.

“I don’t know. It’s a wonder to me. I came to camp and I felt good. Everything felt right and smooth. Then you get hurt, you don’t throw for three weeks, you rehab then you come back and sometimes you lose your way a little bit. I kind of let some problems compound on me. Sometimes, less is more and you just need to relax. I didn’t do a great job of ironing out some mechanical issues, and then I let them snowball a little bit. I was able to look over some stuff and work with Rosie on that.

“I was just rushing a little toward the plate, cutting myself a little short. My arm wasn’t getting up in a good position to throw to the plate and I was getting a little rotational. You want to be directional toward the plate. That was the main thing.

“My arm feels good. My body feels good. Mechanically, just pitching to tempo and rhythm is huge. That’s something Rosie talked to me about. Sometimes, you speed the game up when you’re coming back from an injury, and you start thinking you have to be better than what you were before you were hurt and you try to do too much.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to have never had any kind of injury from playing baseball. It’s a learning thing. You can learn from success and you can learn from failure and you can learn from having something shut you down for a month or two months. That’s a challenge in itself.”

Kansas City prospect Sam Selman on rediscovering his mechanics (Selman blanks Salem for five innings):

“I think I just started at the start of this season. I was always pretty consistent in college and at Idaho, then the beginning of the past year, I wasn’t finishing down. I watched some video with [pitching coach Steve] Luebber, and I wasn’t finishing. I was releasing from an upright position and I was leaving pitches up in the zone. Being able to locate more down in the zone helps me get more ground balls, and that’s been the biggest thing the last couple of outings.

“For the past couple of starts, I’ve tried to more consistently finish over my front knee. That was a problem early on in the season, and I was leaving the ball up because I wasn’t finishing down through. That’s helped with my slider and my curveball. It really paid off tonight. Both pitches were really working. I was finishing down.”

St. Louis prospect Tyler Lyons on returning to Triple-A after an MLB stint (Lyons authors one-hitter in PCL return):

“I think the big thing for me was I had some good outings, some really good outings, and I had some bad outings in the big leagues. It was obvious to me what the difference was in those outings. Mostly, it was fastball command and getting ahead in counts.

“For me, coming back down, that’s the thing I want to work on. The main thing today was trying to do what I knew would help me be successful in the big leagues and that was command — using the fastball to get ahead.”

Boston prospect Henry Owens on what’s led to his 2013 success (Owens stellar before Boston’s GM):

“I’ve just stayed consistent with my approach. I’ve been doing the same thing the whole year that I’ve been doing. In Spring Training, I made a few mechanical adjustments and changed my grip on the ball. I moved my fingers up on the seams, and I was finding the strike zone that way. I had one little hiccup with the five walks against Winston-Salem the last time I faced them. Today, I just stuck with my approach. That’s pitching.

“I’m just slowing everything down a little. Last year, I tended to speed things up and drift to home plate and then I’d speed my arm up and it’d lag behind. I’m just slowing everything down.

“I’m making strides, man, but I still feel like I can make more strides and get better. I’m always trying to get better. I make goals from start to start and not so much for the season or for the second half. More just start to start.”