RYAN DOUMIT
On a cool way to get 100th home run:
“Yeah it’s a pretty cool milestone. It’s pretty cool to get there. 99 has been on my mind for a little bit so now it’s cool to get there and tomorrow it’s back to business.”
On offense putting up crooked numbers past couple of days:
“It’s nice to finally show everybody what we’re capable of. We have too much firepower in this lineup to be quiet the last week or so. I think we’re seeing signs of guys breaking out. Today was a pretty telling sign, guys using the whole field. I think there’s more of that to come.”
On making pinch hitting look easy:
“It’s not. You just go up there and you just try to throw together a good at-bat. When you don’t start, you just try to contribute in a positive way and go up there and try to throw a good at-bat together.”
On taking momentum from Sunday’s win:
“Absolutely, this is a great team, a great offense. We’ve been in hibernation mode maybe a little bit the last week. But guys are starting to come alive and it could be a good month.”
On letting Overbay pop him up:
“Kid’s got nasty stuff. The kid, he’s got a bright future ahead of him. I’m going to keep my eye on him.”
On being teammates with Overbay in Pittsburgh, if any jawing:
“He was throwing a couple sliders or something in warm-ups and he was kind of fish-eyeing me a little bit and I’m like what was that? And then he threw me a slider. I almost swung at. Any time you face a position player you just don’t want to strike out especially against a guy that’s another Washington boy and former teammate. I was just trying to put the bat on the ball.”
On not ever hearing the end of it:
“No I won’t. It’s all right. He knew better than to throw me fastballs. He was throwing me changeups. I think they were changeups. They might have been his fastball.”
JUSTIN UPTON
On working counts vs Peralta:
“Besides Freddie’s homer, we worked good counts, we got runners on, we gave ourselves opportunities to drive in runs. We came up with a couple hits. You got to play that game if you’re going to win, and it was good that we showed that tonight.”
On if some carryover from yesterday’s win:
“Yesterday was a huge win for us, momentum-wise, mentally for us. Being able to fight and come back and get a win any kind of way we could. That was huge for us yesterday.”
On if Peralta is usually effectively wild:
“His ball moves a ton. You really have to zone in and I think we did a great job of that. He throws hard. His ball runs in on righties and away from lefties. He’s got pretty good curveball and changeup. So we really had to zone him in and I think we did a great job of that.”
On nice to have this kind of output two days in a row for psyche:
“We know what we’re capable of as an offense. The key for us is when we get good pitches to hit, and we wait it out. when we don’t get too anxious I think we’ve proven that that’s when we hit our best. Obviously early on in the season it’s tough to have the patience with ourselves and with the pitchers to put ourselves in a position to get hits but I think if we can settle in and have good at-bats, we’re capable of putting up runs every single night.”
MIKE MINOR
On if able to command pitches in and out:
“Until the third, fourth inning, there were a lot of balls I didn’t throw first pitch strikes, I was falling behind a lot. That’s what got my pitch count up.”
On his progression since coming off DL:
“I feel good. I felt good the first game. the rehab starts were a little shaky, I kept building stamina and then now ever since my debut I felt fine. I’ve had one bad game against the Cardinals and I think that was mostly making bad pitches over the middle of the plate and throwing a lot of fastballs. But the last couple I’ve felt like I mixed it up pretty well and me and Gattis are getting on the right page.”
On getting a hit and scoring a run:
“It wasn’t exactly where I wanted to hit the ball but it was a hit. It was off the end of the bat. I think I was looking at left field, the ball was in right but either way I scored, helped out the team.”
On benefitting from early lead:
“Definitely, it’s easier to pitch. I think that’s what happened with the Davis home run. You know that it’s a 3-0 game and the most he could do is hit a two-run shot, so we attacked him and I threw one over the middle of the plate, and that’s what he does.”
On if team could breathe a sigh of relief with offensive output:
“I don’t think anybody was really panicking. We’ve got a great team so for some of these guys to skid a little bit, we were still in first place or right there and everybody was talking about how bad we were playing. It was good to have that cushion at the beginning (of April), win a lot of games, but we have too good of players to be worried about it.”
FREDI GONZALEZ
On getting to Peralta early:
“I thought we had a great approach early and we got Peralta deep into some counts and drew some walks. He battled though. He stayed in the game, left the game only 3-2. We hadn’t put up any crooked numbers. It was just 1, 1, 1, and then they come back and bounce two off Mikey in the fifth. Mikey did a nice job also, gave us all the way to the seventh inning and gave us a nice outing. We started swinging the bats really really well, not only the home runs but there were some singles, and two-out singles, there were bases on balls, there were a lot of baserunners on there. It was nice to see.”
On seeing the line moving in the eighth inning:
“It doesn’t go in the boxscore again, but if we don’t add on there, we’ve got to use Kimbrel three days in a row. So now we add on and Varvaro picks up the ninth inning and Craig doesn’t have to go three days in a row and he’s very, very good for tomorrow. That’s what add-on runs will do for you. It not only saves the manager ulcers but it saves the bullpen.”
On Doumit making pinch hitting look easy:
“That’s what we signed him up for and he can turn around a fastball from the left side and gives you great at-bats from both sides. Today the guy made a pretty good pitch, he got out in front a little bit but somehow he put the backspin on it and the ball left the ballpark. His 100th home run, so that’s a great accomplishment.”
On Lyle Overbay’s appearance as a pitcher:
“I’ve been there, I’ve done that. It’s no fun. The players love it obviously because I don’t know how many times Lyle’s been out there (this was first). But when a manager or coach does that, it’s no fun, because all of a sudden somebody can get hurt but you’ve got to do it. If you don’t, the kid Wang is going to throw 50 something pitches. I think it’s fun for the participants but not the coaches who put in those players.”
On been saying with this struggling offense, somewhere along the line somebody is going to pay:
“We’ve had some pretty good at-bats. We’re a team that we can do that. We go 1 through 8 in the lineup that can grind out some at-bats. I thought yesterday’s game might be of those turn-you-over because sometimes you think a win is a win, but yesterday the way we won that game, it might be the biggest win we’ve had all year. We’ll see. Hopefully it’ll carry us over for a long time.”
On Minor working both sides of the plate:
“His fastball was good. I thought Gattis did a nice job working both sides of the plate with his fastball, threw some breaking balls in on right-handers. He was really good.”
On what he’s said to the team:
“I just mentioned to them a little bit today about how good of a win it was yesterday afternoon. It was one of those grind out wins and I was proud of them, the way they won the game, and see how far that can carry us.”
From the Brewers clubhouse….
LYLE OVERBAY
On his first career pitching appearance:
“I’m just glad I was able to throw strikes really. I mean you never know what you’re going to get up there, but threw it just soft enough for Doumit to pop up.”
On Doumit saying he had a bright future on the bump:
“He’s a good guy. It’s tough for a position player to hit off that but it’s all fun and games in that situation. Obviously not the right situation we want to be in but to save a bullpen arm for a day, whatever we can do.”
