At this point, he's got football responsibilities. The next four weeks, I don't expect him to be around baseball much. Once he gets done, we'll have him back full time. He's shown he deserves to be on the field. |
Chase has matured a lot as a person and as a player. He got a good number of at bats early in the year and is starting to feel comfortable at the plate and is seeing the ball very well. He has learned to use all fields instead of being a one-dimensional hitter. |
He is so successful because he's such a competitor. I can't say I'm surprised he's doing this, but it's pleasant to see. |
He'll be in the lineup, probably mostly at second base. He is a person who is athletic enough who could move to third base or the outfield. I've talked with him that if it means getting the best nine on the field, we could do that. |
I really like our work ethic and the athletes we have. I'm anxious to get them on the field. I think we're very capable of being a quality team but at the same time we need to see them in action. |
I thought we played very hard the entire weekend regardless of what the score was. I would just like to see us in a situation where you win the first two games to have a little bit more of a killer instinct. Hopefully, the next time we're in this situation we can go out and set the tone and put us in a situation to win the series. |
I was happy we did some things early. It relaxes everybody to get some early hits. You get a little mental momentum. |
I was pleased with our situational hitting today. I told our players that we are good enough to take games over and take the pressure off of our pitchers and defense and we really took the game over offensively. I was pleased with the strides we made between the two games. |
I was pleased with the way Aaron performed. Looking back at his last outing he really struggled, but he took a step forward today. He got us off to a good start and got the team off on the right foot. |
I'm not discouraged from the standpoint of did we play hard or not. I'm just upset we didn't make adjustments, and baseball is a game of adjustments. If a certain player is doing certain things against you, then you should go about things a different way. |
I'm proud of how our guys fought back after last weekend to get back to .500. We moved the ball around the field and some people produced in positions they hadn't played yet. |
It's always nice to get off to a good start in conference from a mental standpoint. We got off to a good start last year and that propelled us into the season, but I don't think that any one weekend makes or breaks you in the long term. |
Minnesota is always a quality club. They have very good pitching and are solid defensively. They are similar to us, but they do have a little more experience than us. Yet, I expect us to be able to compete very well with them. |
Our bullpen was poor. We walked too many guys and the only time we pitched well was when no body was on base and there wasn't any pressure. |
Our offense had an opportunity early to set a precedent for the game. Four out of the first five innings we had opportunities to move runners and make contact to score runs, but we didn't do it. We had an opportunity to take some pressure off our defense and pitching and we did a poor job of that. |