It's hard to explain, I mean our starting pitchers for you know last week or maybe a little more than that - we've had trouble early. Sometimes that where you've got to get starters - I know all the good pitchers, everyone says you got to get them early, you can't let them get locked in. Right now we're getting behind early with most of our starters.
Considering what's going on with the team, how discouraging was it for Wolf to do that when you need a pick me up instead he takes you right out of the game.
You know, I know that's the way it appears, but I'm not putting this on "Wolfie." I mean, my gosh why can't we come out and score three, four runs in the first inning? I mean our offense should be as good as what we're playing, we've got a good offense. You know, we need to take it to somebody else you now just as much as they take it to us.
Follow the jump for thoughts on Zach Duke, what's going right and free-swinging.
With that being said, are you happy with the play - I know guys are hitting home runs, but its like, are they taking enough pitches to set up that monster inning?
Well the taking pitches is always a question when you have a team - especially a power-hitting team. Most of the time, they don't walk a lot. That's just the way it is. They're out there to bash and a lot of times they come out swinging early. This team we're playing used to be that way. Now I'm seeing better at-bats from them. They're tough outs. Ideally, that's what you'd want your guys to do. You want them to have at-bats - you know "Braunie" and Prince do it, they take pitches, they get deep in counts, they give that pitcher a chance to make a mistake and those are good at-bats. Not everybody can do that. Some guys they do that, they get behind in the count and then they're struggling to put balls in play.
Duke was pretty sensational
The way he pitched today? I know I looked at numbers coming in and sometimes that gets a little discouraging, when you look at numbers and your offense doesn't swing the bat well. And that's what I'm saying about, you know, other teams have been getting us early, we need to come out sometimes and get them early. And we have a couple of games, I mean yesterday and the day before we did. But consistently we need to do that. Duke - I thought he kept the ball down real well, I thought his changeup was really good, he throws a nice little slider, but basically he kept the ball down well. It's tough when you've got a nice little run to your ball and you're staying on that low outside corner. He pitched a nice ballgame.
What's going right for the team right now?
Well I still think we're battling. I thought, actually, we played a pretty good game today. We got behind early. We did hit some balls hard at people, we made it interesting there late in the game so we were battling offensively. And I think we always do that, I think we're still, I don't see us giving up, I don't see us quitting - even when we're behind in games. I still see an offense that is still working hard to try to get back in a ball game.
How tough has it been for the team to keep its composure during this stretch?
It's been a battle. I mean, there's a lot of guys that are frustrated. There's a lot of staff members that are frustrated with what's going on and we need to stop it. We need to turn this thing back around again. You know, coming home, we play so well at home I thought we'd do it and these first couple of games got away from us. And we need to get that back . We need to play well these - we've got five games left, we need to play well these five games.
You mentioned its a power-hitting team, can you become a tough-out team? Outside of Braun and Fielder - throughout the season can you become that tough-out team?
Very difficult to do. I haven't seen a team that - if you've got a bunch of swingers on your team, I've never seen a team overhaul it and all of the sudden become patient hitters. That just doesn't happen.