He's aggressive, a tough out. He's one of the guys you don't like to see coming off the bench. No doubt about it. You know when you see him, it's a crucial spot. You've put yourself in a predicament, and here comes Mark. |
He's in Africa - Ethiopia - drilling wells for people. |
I felt fine, and that was the first time I'd gone back-to-back, which I hadn't done in the spring. |
I just fell behind and made a pitch up and over the plate. |
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's something that's not super-serious and we caught it early. But that's not good. We need him. He's a big key to our rotation and pitching staff. |
If I am the closer, I'm glad that he has the confidence in me to do that, since I haven't had a great spring. |
If you get a good lead, then when you hit your rough spot, it doesn't hurt as bad. |
It's not on my mind when I'm pitching, but I'm not going to say it feels like it never happened. As long as it's not on your mind while you're out there -- you don't want to go into your stretch wondering if it's going to hurt. |
It's part of the job. That's the way it's been for seven, eight years. [Being tired] may show up on velocity, but not on location. If I'm making my pitches and they're hitting them, it's a different story. |
Or we can work on something at home and save it to bring to school and put it up on the SMART Board. |
That doesn't mean I don't get him tomorrow, and just because he was 0-for-5 doesn't mean he's going to be 0-for-6, so I don't buy into that stuff, I guess. So it's just a different story if I make my pitch. |
The weird thing about playing all those day games after night games is, you're almost not even sore until about the fourth inning of the day game. So you tell them you feel good. Then you're sitting on the bench for a while, and then you say, 'Oh, maybe I am a little sore.' But I guess I'm a little used to it, knowing what to expect. |
We're playing decently, and we don't have all aspects of the game going together yet. When that happens, it'll be good. But it's only April. |
What a game -- we should win that game. Three runs in the ninth, and the starting pitching has been good. We just didn't get it done, and almost every pitch they hit was right down the middle. |