Ned Yost, about pinch hitting for Escobar late

"Yeah, not right now. I'm not gonna do it. I don't care what anybody says. I'm not gonna do it. This is a kid that I think is gonna hit one day. I want him having as many at-bats as he can get, because there's gonna come a time when we're in line to win a championship and I want him to be able to handle himself in those situations.

Even we tied the ballgame up today, I would have been without the league's best shortstop if we came back. So we're gonna have to find ways to get him going and get him productive in those types of situations"

About previous experiences with development

"I've gone through this with players before. I went through it with JJ Hardy. JJ Hardy was hitting .170. Everybody was screaming about JJ Hardy, 'why are we not pinch hitting for him? how much longer are we gonna go with a guy that hitting .170?' next year he hit 25hrs and made the all-star team. So, I got a little bit of an idea of what i'm doing here.

I think this kid is gonna hit and yeah, it hurts right now. Do I think about pinch hitting for him every time in those situations? Yes, Yes, I'm dying to. But I know it's in our best interests right now that we don't do it. For big picture thought, yeah I wanna do it. But, this kid, I think, is gonna hit one day.

I want him in these situations. I want him in these clutch situations. I want him one time to be successful in it and then hopefully that will take some of the burden off of him and he can be successful more and more and more. But we're gonna have to have him.

Ya know, when we get good, we can't be taking the league's best shortstop out of the game in the 8th and 9th inning, to pinch hit. We just can't. We gotta have him. We have him productive in these spots. And the only way to do it is to keep running him out there."

About Escobar hitting hurting the team:

"It's gonna be a benefit to all the other guys when he becomes successful in that. So it's a give and take situation. Yeah, it's detrimental right now, to the team, a little bit. But there's no guarantee that anybody I put in there to pinch hit is gonna get a hit. I mean, there's no guarantee. Escy's hitting .200, even if I got a guy who is hitting .300, he's gonna get one more hit in ten at-bats, than Escobar is. So there's no guarantee that if I pinch hit there, we got a guy on. But it does increase our odds.

But down the road, it's gonna benefit them greatly that he's gonna be able to be productive in those situations and be able to go back out there and play his gold-glove caliber defense in the field, help us win ballgames"