Brewers 9, Diamondbacks 4: Ron Roenicke's Postgame Comments

As seen on FS Wisconsin:

On Zack Greinke:

I thought Zack threw the ball well. I thought he made a bad pitch to (Justin) Upton, for the homer. The other two homers not that bad of pitches. They did a nice job of hitting there. He threw the ball well overall, I know he gave up four runs but I was happy with the way he threw.

Asked if Greinke tired early due to short rest:

I don't know if he was getting tired or not. We weren't going to push him much more than that anyway. If he had been cruising through and he got through five innings with 70 pitches and I thought he was throwing the ball well we probably would've let him go back out another inning. It certainly wasn't his best game but I still thought he threw well, I thought he battled real well and they did a nice job of hitting. 

On the decision to play Jerry Hairston Jr at third again today:

Another real good game for him. Defensively he's very aggressive, he comes to get balls when they're chopped. Offensively, nice at bats. He sees pitches, he's not just up there swinging at everything, but he gives you a nice quality at bat. And when it's on the line, I feel really good with him up there.

Is it a coincidence that Jonathan Lucroy keeps coming up and being asked to bunt in key situations?

Great execution again. He gets in those spots and it's always a tough call for me because I still like him offensively swinging the bat, but he's doing such a nice job at the squeeze and he's in the right spot to do it. Sometimes you look at your lineup and you've got the pitcher after him. If there's not a place to put Luc on, it's a nice play for him.

Offense picked the team up tonight:

Yeah, great to see. Hawk (LaTroy Hawkins) comes in in the sixth and gets in a little trouble with the two walks, really makes a nice play knocking down that line drive to be able to get out of that inning, then we turn around right after that and explode offensively. Some really good at bats. Corey, Nyjer, after the bunt by Luc. So they did a real nice job out there.

(I think he might have been a bit confused there. Hawkins actually pitched the seventh, while Takashi Saito pitched the sixth.)

On Ryan Braun not letting up:

No he doesn't stop. That's a good pitcher they have out there and he really puts quality at bats together to get those hits. And then Prince comes up, gets the base hit up the middle to drive in the run. We did some really good things offensively today. That's the type game where you feel like offensively you're going to keep scoring runs and hopefully because of it it builds confidence in the whole lineup because they all came through today.

On hitting the Diamondbacks bullpen while not giving up runs in relief:

That's what we've been doing. I thought our relievers were a little off today, especially walking people but they're still able to make pitches when they need to make pitches. Hawk walked a couple of guys but then made pitches to get out of it, makes a nice play to get out of it. And Frankie (Francisco Rodriguez) always does that. Frankie, if you walk somebody or get somebody on base Frankie always has a knack for making a nice pitch when he needs to make it. And he's done that through his career.

Did the Diamondbacks intentionally walking Mark Kotsay in the sixth motivate Corey Hart?

Well I think it certainly can happen. That's more of a, you've got that base there and if you get a ground ball you've got a chance to get a double play. You've got a sidearmer in (Brad) Ziegler up there...that's the right move, to walk him there. We had a decision where we were thinking maybe to walk (Gerardo) Parra and we didn't know if they were going to pinch hit for (Daniel) Hudson or leave him in the game. We ended up pitching to Parra and got him out, but it was a situation where I definitely could have walked him there. 

How big was striking out Parra to end the sixth?

Big strikeout. He made some real nice pitches there when he needed to and, like I said, he went ball and if he goes ball 2 we were going to walk him and make them make a decision whether to keep Hudson in and let him hit or get a pinch hitter in there. It worked out well for us.