The ball is flying out of this ballpark, and ordinarily it doesn't. It's strange for here. |
The ball kept coming over the heart of the plate. It was supposed to be outside and it caught too much of the plate. He threw a lot of pitches (105) in a short period of time. |
The big blow was walking the pitcher. We walked him twice. |
The bullpen hasn't gone the way we scripted. Guys were going two innings and you can't use them the next day. They told me Aardsma was throwing the heck out of the ball in Triple-A. |
The Cardinals have a fine team, a real good team. We'll come out next year and try to get the lead or at least stay close -- and stay healthy. They're No. 1 or 2 in pitching, and that shows you how important pitching is. We get our starting pitching healthy and we'll be all right. |
The easiest time to hit is when you first get there because nobody knows you. After that, you've got to make adjustments. Once you get around the league, 'You don't like this, you don't like that. You chase this ball.' That's when it becomes interesting once people have a book on you. |
The elements were with us tonight. We thought spring was here and winter showed up again. I guess that's Chicago. |
The field's a lot faster than ours. That ball got to him a lot quicker than he expected. We'll try to get him some more time at second base, especially with the split squad coming up here. |
The final words were that our guys here will pull for them and give them some love. I asked the guys who they were rooting for, and everybody is rooting for their own country. |
The frustrating part is you still have memories of how great a player this guy is. |
The good thing is the first day off the mound, [Prior] is still taking it easy. He had good rhythm, good form. His velocity will start coming up each time he goes out there. |
The guy can pitch, but we had an opportunity to beat him today, just like we had an opportunity to beat him in St. Louis and he gets off the hook. He wasn't sharp early, he hung some breaking balls we hit hard, but we didn't find any holes. |
The guy is a stolen base man. You know he's gonna run, you just don't know when he's gonna run. So, you just got to do a better job of keeping him off the bases. |
The guy's a stolen-base man. We had him one time on that pitch out [in the third] and didn't execute properly. We know he's going to run. We just don't know when he's going to run. |
The guys are playing tough, |