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| Roman Quinn, image- Jay Floyd |
The 23-year-old was a second round draft selection of the Phils in 2011. Through six games with the IronPigs thus far, Quinn sports a .320 batting average with two doubles, three RBI and a stolen base.
Last week, prior to Lehigh Valley's season opener, I spoke with Roman about his spring, the IronPigs' roster, new coach Charlie Hayes and more. Read ahead for that interview.
-Talk about your time in the Grapefruit League this year. You got time with the big club in spring training, had some success down there (.289 avg., three doubles, a homer and six RBI in 21 games), looked exciting.
It was exciting, man. Always, being in big league camp is a great experience. And being here is going to be a great experience. I'm just looking forward to it and looking to have a lot of fun here.
-It looks like a tremendous collection of talent on this IronPigs roster. There's a lot of names that fans are very excited about. What's it like for you to be part of this club?
This group is a bunch of fun. Coming up through the system, that team chemistry together is big and it's a good feeling to have. Everybody here is like brothers. That's always a good feeling to have on a team where you never have too many issues.
-Talking about feelings there, what were the feelings like last year when you get that call after the minor league regular season is done and you get promoted to the big league roster?
Oh, man. I felt like I was on top of the world. It was a great experience, man. Dream come true and made me feel like all my hard work paid off. But the thing is to get back to the big leagues and stay and that's my goal?
-How's the family?
Really good, man. My daughter is doing great. Here mother is doing great and everything is going really good.
-Beautiful! Good to hear. I was just talking with Charlie Hayes and he was a bit of a surprise to see among the coaches here. Talk to me a bit about him. What impact has he had or what impressions do you have of him thus far?
Charlie is a funny guy and very relaxing to be around. And just to talk to him is pretty cool. He's a really good dude and was a really good player.
-You're quite young and may not remember watching him as a player, but he's got quite a nice resume on the field with a couple landmark final out catches that fans of two organizations will remember. He caught the final out on a line drive of a Phillies no-hitter by Terry Mulholland and he caught the final out, I think, of the '96 World Series for the Yankees. Do you recall any impressions of him before encountering him as a coach?
Uh, I actually have seen highlights of him on YouTube, but that's the only impressions I've got of him--
-Okay, so you had to go search him out?
I had to go search his name, man. He was a new face and the first time meeting him was this spring and I had to go research him a little bit.
-That's cool. I know some guys on the roster here expect to win each time out. Do you feel that same way?
Absolutely. We've got a bunch of competitors on this team and, especially, competing like we did last year, there's some of the same faces, and bringing it to Triple-A, man, I hope we have the same year we had last year (in Double-A when the Reading team won their division) and everybody got the same mindset of winning.
-And the mindset of taking the next step...
Most definitely. Most definitely.
