As seen on FS Wisconsin:
On Yuniesky Betancourt and the failed suicide squeeze:
Yeah, I've been talking to Yuni about it quite a bit in different situations and I've been thinking about doing it to make sure he's going to be ready for it, he always tells me he is, and last night when they came at him I was thinking about it last night, they came right at him and I thought they'd come at him again and it'd be a good time to do it. Like you said, they wouldn't be expecting it.
On playing the same kind of game every night:
It does make it nice. We're finding different ways to win, which is really nice. It would be good if we came out and had a little breather there. But you know, the guys are coming through when it's on the line, we're getting guys on base we need to get on, and we're making some things happen. Certainly, you play a lot of one run games and lately we've been doing really with with them. But it's not relaxing, I'll tell you that.
Was this team struggling offensively, or having a great game pitched against them?
I asked a couple of guys about it and they said (Chad) Billingsley was throwing the ball real well. He's got really good stuff. His slider, cutter, whatever you want to call it was really good tonight, his curveball is always really good, and then he changes things with his fastball: he sinks it and then he'll throw a four-seamer. And then on our side Yovani was outstanding. That was some kind of ball game he threw.
Was he worried about Gallardo wearing down in the eighth?
Yeah. we're looking at it to see how far we want to go, whether he's got Ethier and then Kemp, we're trying to see how far we're going with him. But when he's throwing the ball like the way he was, I feel like he's going to get anybody out when he makes pitches like he does.
Is this team hot, or playing up to potential?
I see both of it. We are very hot, we're getting some breaks that are going our way, but a lot of times you create those breaks when you play really well and I think that's what we are doing. I think offensively, we talked about the good pitching that we've been facing but we're getting some big hits. When it's out there we seem to be coming through and getting those hits, especially at the end of the game. And the pitching, it's just been fantastic. So we're hot, but this is a good club. This is a club that when it's close, right now we feel like we're going to win a ball game.
On contributions from the bench:
You don't really...you know what you need on the bench, you know what those spots are and how they help fill in for the starters, but you don't really think of the bench as coming in and winning that many games. Kotsay, I tell you what, Kotsay has been unbelievable for us this year. Early in the season he's swinging the bat great and hitting into a lot of bad luck, he went into a spell for a week or two where he wasn't swinging the bat, and then when the game's on the line it's an incredible at bat, and he seems to do that every time I put him up there. That is not easy to do. And everybody's contributing. Wilson last night with the double play up the middle, flipping the ball over to Yuni. Counsell's been playing great defense, and comes through with the sac fly to win a game. Everybody seems to be adding on to what we're doing and they're involved in it. Sometimes when you're on the bench and a lot of guys aren't getting in games and being involved and now you're asked to do something it's hard to do it. We're trying to, anyway, we're trying to play enough guys where when they go in there they already feel comfortable with what they're doing.
When asked about saving the bullpen:
Yeah, it sure helped scoring there. But yeah, we've got (LaTroy Hawkins) there, but I told (John Axford) he was down for the day. Yeah, Hawk and see how the inning goes and if it's long enough we'll go two with him. That's why I put Hawk in after Saito because I know "Sammy's" just going to go one. Hawk, if he has a fairly easy inning I know he can go back in there and give us two.
When asked if it helps to win a game without Axford and Rodriguez:
It does, and we talked about it before: We needed a big game from Yo and we got it.