April 4, 2010
Opening Comment
“I told the players after the game, I said we’re exactly at the halfway point and we’ve won 22 games and seven in the league. You have to be happy with where you are at this point and there’s a long way to go. It’s going to be a lot tougher down the backstretch but we’ve played hard and we’ve had some things go not exactly how we drew them up. We’ve been able to overcome them and that’s why I told the players, `I give the credit to you, you made it happen.’ We’ve had a lot of reasons to complain and get frustrated that we didn’t have all the players in there that we though were going to have but they have figured out how to continue to win and I’ve commended them for that. I told them to enjoy it for about 10 seconds and let’s get ready to go.”
On the upcoming second half of the season
“It’s important that we got our wins because we played two of our three series at home. You better defend the home turf. It’s going to get more difficult in the second half you got 21 league games and we have a lot of tough non-conference games too. It’s important that you defend your turf and we had two of those series at home.”
On the bounce back from Saturday’s loss
“It was nice to see them bounce back, we had the third inning when we had a bunch of runs and we only got the (Adrian) Morales hit in there. But we took some walks, you have to be able to take the free passes when you get them and you have to capitalize on the runs when you can get them, which we did not do yesterday. But we bounced back and as I told them before the game I said, `Hey guys, we made that a game yesterday and we didn’t win it. Sometimes when you lose in a close game it’s a little but harder to go get the next one. ` And we made it close yesterday then lost. But they did a nice job today. I though Jay Brown gave us a quality start. He scuffled a little bit missing some spots and that why I lifted him early. He got out of giving up any big innings but we had (Matt) Price, (Ethan) Carter and (Michael) Roth available and I wasn’t going to leave them in the bullpen today. Price did a tremendous job for us.”
On winning the series
“No question about it I think Coach Holbrook said it the best last year. He kept challenging our guys. No matter what happens in the series you have to win on Sunday. Sunday is a pivotal game as far as the way your whole season unfolds. And if you can win a lot of Sunday games, you’re probably going to be in a good position.”
On Ebert’s home run
“I probably felt as good as he did, and I didn’t hit it. But I called him in before the game today and I said, `Nick. I know you’re frustrated. I’m frustrated but you’re hitting clean up and I just can’t turn the page yet. You’re one of those guys that put up some numbers for us. You’re not going to put up the numbers this year that you put up last year but that doesn’t mean you can’t contribute. And we’ve got to somehow get you going a little bit and I’m putting you in there.’ He had a pretty good day. He hit a couple balls hard one to the warning tracks, got a walk so he had a pretty good day.”
