Jeff Hathorne

You know, kind of see where this goes, man.

Like, Nick Gonzalez is hitting right now.

I'm going to keep riding that as long as I can.

And I know that Connor Griffin is going to be my shortstop.

I know Brandon Lau is going to be at second.

We've got the first base rotation pretty much set.

But, you know, they might be competing with one another.

I don't know.

And maybe somebody goes to AAA.

No clue.

We'll see how it goes.

Because I think he was –

got to say this carefully austin i don't think he was in a great place like that and i say it carefully because i don't think that you know he was incapable of overcoming what he was going through he's clearly showing us that he was capable of over through but i think he was trying too hard he's a really good kid he's trying to make the team he talked openly with me and others about that and he's chasing pitches out of the zone he was not doing damage on the fastball those are things that led to his minor league success last year

And the Pirates sent him down.

All of a sudden, he corrected those.

He starts hitting the fastball.

He's not chasing as much.

He's getting on base.

And he's doing it because he's not trying so hard, because he's just getting back to being him.

And so I think the Pirates have been really impressed by the response that Connor Griffin has showed them in AAA.