RE: Reds vs Braves
Braves quotes after Wednesday loss to Reds
11:39 pm May 23, 2012, by David O'Brien
**FREDI GONZALEZ
On whether that walk-off homer would’ve been a lazy flyout at Turner Field
“I don’t know about lazy, but it’s a flyball to deep right field [at Turner Field]. But the fences are there, they don’t move them back when we come to hit. It’s just one of those things. Hopefully we come out tomorrow and Delgado will give us a good outing and our bats will get going.”
On Hanson
“I thought he did great. Gave us six innings, Pastornicky leads off the seventh with a double, and we’ve got to try and take a shot [to win it] there with Chipper. Arredondo walked Chipper and it’s first and second with Bourney, who’s been swinging the bat well, and we get nothing there.
“But [Hanson] pitched great. Minimized the damage. It was a long inning, but we were going to run him back out there if he didn’t come up to hit. But once you get a man in scoring position, I think you’ve got to take a shot at it.”
On condition of Venters’ leg
“Jonny’s OK… Well, we’ll find out tomorrow. He got smoked pretty good. I say he’s OK, but we’ll find out tomorrow. It’s between the knee and the calf. We’ll see. Hopefully nothing is major and he’ll be ready to go.”
On O’Flaherty
“I thought O’Flaherty did a helluva job getting a groundball double play there with runners on first and third.”
Did you bring in O’Flaherty because Venters took that liner off his leg?
“It was one of those situations where I felt like putting Jonny out there to face Bruce after getting smoked in the leg would’ve been tough to do. We had O [O’Flaherty] ready to go, and that’s the reason I did it.”
Had C. Martinez do something he did with mixed results few times last year, last inning of a tie game
“Well, it’s a situation with the closer-on-the-road issue and stuff, and I just think it’s one of those things. I thought that where their lineup was, we could go through that inning, and it just didn’t materialize.”
**TOMMY HANSON
On the game and his performance
“Tough loss. But there’s only so much you can do. We’re out there battling and it just didn’t work out. It kind of sucks to see that ball go in the first row and have that be the way the game is determined. But that’s the ballpark we’re playing in and you’ve got to deal with it. I felt like our offense was aggressive, and you’ve got to make quality pitches from the get-go. I felt like I did that for the most part. I’m pleased with how I did.”
On the roll you were on until the sixth
“I had all my pitches going again and I was locating. When I do that, I feel like I’m going to have a good game. In the sixth that first-pitch curveball was up a little bit, and the second guy punched that ball in between first and second. I’m not going to beat myself up over that. The 0-2 count to Phillips, then I walked him – I’ve got to do a better job with that. And then I did my best to get out of it and kept making quality pitches.
“I still felt good to go out in the seventh, but we needed to get Chipper in there and try to get Tyler in.”
Nearly got inning-ending double-play ball on Bruce grounder that drove in tying run
“I just tried to get over there [for the throw]. I didn’t even touch the bag; I don’t know how close I was. I just tried to go over there. That’s a tough play. If we could have got that it would have been huge, but that’s a tough play.”
On his road success (two runs or fewer in every road start)
“I’m definitely doing better on the road, but I don’t know what the cause of it is. I do the same thing every start, come up with a gameplan and try to execute it. I’ve just been doing a little bit better on the road than I have at home.”
On allowing just one run in the small ballpark
“Yeah, it’s good. Especially seeing the balls they hit off Beachy yesterday and the one that won it [tonight]. It’s a tough place to pitch. I feel like I definitely kept our team in the game, and that’s my job. So I’m definitely happy with that.”
**DAVID ROSS
On Hanson’s performance
“He put us on his back tonight, and we didn’t help him out. He threw great. That’s as good as I’ve seen him pitch in a while. He was getting all his breaking stuff over, moving the ball in and out really well. He did a good job. It was exactly what we needed from him today, was to come out and pitch like that.
“We didn’t score any runs. We’re just catching a team that’s doing a pretty good job right now. They’re playing good baseball. They’ve got a lot of confidence and kind of on a roll, and we’re at the back end of this road trip and just kind of can’t finish this thing off. So hopefully we’ll come back tomorrow and play well, and get out of this road trip.”
Way you played for six weeks, might’ve have scored 12 runs a game in this ballpark
“Yeah, I know. And we played really good teams. I think it’s a mixture of this team is playing really good baseball right now, getting timely hits. We’ve kept Votto and Bruce, for the most part, at bay. Which, coming in, that’s kind of one of your goals. Brandon Phillips had a nice night last night, but for the most part we’ve kept their big bats at bay and the guys that are hurting us are their other guys. But that’s what good teams do, they pick each other up.
“They’ve got a lot of confidence, they’re playing well right now, and we’re just in a little bit of a lull. We’re too good a team not to stay in here and our pitching’s really good, so we’ll be fine. But it’s a real frustrating loss when a guy goes out and pitches like that. Beachy actually pitched a really good game yesterday, better than the results showed. Hopefully Randall comes out and gives us a good outing tomorrow and hopefully we score some runs for him.
“We’ve got some guys banged up. Guys are dropping like flies around here. We’ve just got to keep our heads up, and the B squad’s got to pick up the A squad. We’ve got a long way to go.”
** MICHAEL BOURN
On the game and the Reds winning again
“They’re a good team, man. They fight to the end. They’ve got good pitching, good offense, good defense. They’re playing us tough.
“We haven’t been hitting like we normally have, but our pitchers have been holding us [in games], so some kind of way we’ve got to find a way to scrap some runs across.”
On losing on a homer to the first row of small park
“That’s tough. But I seen when he hit it that he got some backspin on it instead of topspin. I seen that backspin and I said, uhh, it’s going to get out.”
On team’s hitting slump
“Through a whole season, this time is going to come. I don’t care what team it is. You can go look at the greatest team that ever played this game, at some point in the season they’re going to go through a rut. Actually Walk [hitting coach Greg Walker] told us about that at spring training. I remember him saying it at a meeting we had.
“But you’ve just got to find a way out of it. That’s how it is. Our pitchers have been pitching great. As far as hitting, we’ve just been in a rut. Some balls we hit, we’re hitting right at ‘em. They’re making diving plays, the ball finds them. It happens. But we’ll be back tomorrow, I can promise you that.”
**CHIPPER JONES
On his pinch-hit at-bat, looking for anything close to hit?
“Well, I don’t want to make an out in that situation. I’ve got to wait for a pitch. He threw me five splits and I’m sure they told him with the base open to be careful. I got five splits. He threw me one good one and four bad ones. I mean, if he leaves one up enough over the outside corner, I’ve got a great hole to hit through, which is kind of what I was thinking, between short and third, with them playing me up the middle. And I just didn’t get anything.”
On the 0-3 start to series
“The Reds have caught us at a good time – a bad time for us. I’m out of the lineup, Mac’s sick, Freddie’s having trouble with his eyes. You know, we just can’t put anything together offensively right now.”
On Hanson
“Tommy threw great. He kept the ballpark, which is something we haven’t done in this very cozy place. But you hate to waste efforts like that. You’ve got to put more together early in the game to give yourself a cushion. No lead’s safe here. But Tommy threw a great game.”
(This post was last modified: 05-24-2012 09:32 PM by ctipton.)
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