It's a loose atmosphere here. I think that's good for a lot of the young guys here, we mix in pretty well and do our thing. It keeps us relaxed and confident. |
It's a tough place to pitch - especially tonight, the wind was blowing out to right-center. They have some big lefties in their lineup. It's almost like you know you will give up home runs here. You want to make them solo, not let a three-run homer beat you. |
It's one of those where the other pitcher is getting a lot of attention, but I'm not facing him. I'm pitching against their lineup. He doesn't have anything to do with the way I approach the game. |
It's real nice, especially coming this late in the spring. You always want to have that one good outing right before you leave Spring Training, and this is my last start down here, so it was a good time for it. |
It's tough. But you just have to slow everything down when you are out there. You take a little more time between pitches. You just try to slow the game down in your head and don't make it too quick. Make it as simple as possible. |
Oh ... it's just another game. We still have another (16 games) left. That's when the real important games will be, those last seven of the year. That's when you really need a quality start for your team. |
That, ... was a huge out. |
That's the way it goes sometimes. Maybe in the Seattle series the ball was going right to the infielders. Maybe in the next series they'll hit line drives right at people. That's the way baseball works. |
The (pitch to Rivera) was a fastball in and that's something I need to work on. |
Three inches here or there and a lot of those balls are caught. Sometimes you catch a break, sometimes you don't. Sometimes the (artificial) turf speeds balls up. I thought I made some pretty good pitches they did a good job of getting the bat on. |
Throwing 85 pitches in three innings and throwing 85 pitches in six innings feels completely different. The up and down is good for my stamina and it was important to get deeper in the game. |
To come in here and win the first game at a place like this is big, ... Hopefully it gets our confidence going and we can carry it over for the rest of the month. |
We had a lot of close games that could have went either way (during April and May). It was one of those where instead of the ball going an inch foul, it went an inch fair. |
We were 15 games under .500, and Barry always remained positive. We started bad, and he never gave up. He kept pushing us. He's 27 now, with six years in the big leagues and a Cy Young Award. We didn't want to lose a great teammate. |
We're going out and giving it all we have. It's just a matter of a couple breaks here and there. |