Compiled by David O’Brien and Carroll Rogers
GERALD LAIRD
On team win, his four-hit game
“Nice to get some good momentum going into the postseason. It was a good offensive day. Our offense has been kind of struggling here the last couple of weeks. It’s nice to come out and get some good at-bats, guys get in rhythm, and here we go.”
On going in as No. 2 seed, facing Dodgers
“You’ve got to win games on the road anyway. Lot of people say you don’t want to play the Dodgers.”
On Teheran:
“He threw the ball well. He just made one mistake with the slider and he kind of got out in front of it and clipped it. Other than that, he threw the ball fine. Just one of those things where you want to come out and get some work and use all his pitches. He’s going to be pitching some big games for us in the next couple of weeks. I thought he threw the ball well, and I’m looking forward to seeing our staff go after these guys.”
On how far Teheran has come since beginning of spring training:
“Totally different pitcher. Night and day. The confidence he has out there. Things don’t tend to get out of whack for him. If he gives up a couple of runs, he knows how to settle himself down and continue to pitch deep in ballgames. So I’m looking forward to seeing him go out there in the postseason and give us a chance to win.”
On his role in playoffs:
“I know Mac’s going to be back and I’ll be ready to go off the bench if they need me. I just want to come out and kind of find my stroke. I kind of struggled the last couple of weeks, and it felt good yesterday with a couple of hits. Gave me the opportunity to play a couple of days in a row. You don’t get that very often as a backup guy. Just felt good at the plate today and put some good swings up.”
EVAN GATTIS
On his season:
“I feel like I’ve got a whole bunch I can do better. I’m happy, but not that happy, if it makes any sense.”
On how he wants to handle the postseason individually:
“I want to play solid defense and I want to hit for better average and I want to put up good at-bats every time. I don’t want to be an easy out or an easy double play or anything like that. I want to hit the ball hard every at-bat.”
On hitting stride at a good time:
“Yeah I hope so. You never know what’s going to happen in the future, but yeah I hope so.”
JULIO TEHERAN
On his game:
“I felt good today. All my pitches were working. Just one mistake that cost four runs that inning. It was a slider. I was trying to get inside and it was a mistake. I hung it.”
On his season:
“I’m happy with what I did this year. It was good experience.”
On leaving gave for pinch-hitter after five innings:
“I didn’t expect to leave the game that soon. I respect the manager’s decision. He thought I needed to (leave) for a pinch-hitter. I’m not going to get mad at that.”
On getting ready for his first postseason start:
“I don’t even think of it as postseason, I just think of it like regular season, just trying to do what I’ve been doing. I know it’s different, but just getting my mind ready for that.”
ELLIOT JOHNSON
On how Braves finished:
“I think there’s a lot being made about home-field advantage, but we’re going to count our blessing. We still won 96 games. That’s a lot of games to win. We’re going to the playoffs. We’ve got to face the Dodgers at some point, I would assume, anyway. Let’s take Game 1 and move from there.”
On how his season turned, from slump in Kansas City to this:
“You’ve got to be happy with where you’re at. You’ve got to be grateful for the opportunity, and Fredi’s been giving me the opportunity to play. I’m just trying to make the most of every opportunity that’s given to me….Moving to playoff time now, everything is over with. I remember watching B.J. in 2008, I don’t remember what he did in the regular season, but I remember him hitting all those home runs in the postseason. So you get to create a whole new identity in the postseason. Hopefully it goes our way and we can put some runs up, score more than they do.”
On fall into the dugout chasing foul ball, you OK?
“Yeah, but you may want to check the AC unit, though, and see if it’s functioning properly. It may need a new fan or something, I banged it to it pretty hard. The wind kept driving that ball. It wasn’t a graceful fall at all. I’ll work on it for next season.”
On his role in postseason
“I’m sure it’ll probably be similar to how I’ve been used, an occasional start here or there. I realize it may be only three games, but if you’re not starting then you’ve got to make sure you’re ready to pinch-hit or whatever in the fourth, fifth, sixth innings, depending on how the flow of the game is. And if not, then a potential pinch-run here or there. Whatever it is, I’ll be ready. It’s not like I haven’t been through this before. I was in a similar type role with the Rays in 2011. It doesn’t matter who’s in the dugout, where you’re playing, you’ve got to win. It’s the playoffs.”
JUSTIN UPTON
On playoffs:
“It’s going to be a wild ride. You’ve got to go out and win ballgames on the biggest stage. It should be a lot of fun.”
On facing the Dodgers instead of a wild-card team:
“At the end of the day, you’ve got to win ballgames. That’s what the playoffs are all about. Everybody is 0-0. They have to win as many ballgames as you do. It’s just the way it is. No matter who we play, we have to beat the team that’s in front of us….It’ll be interesting. They have a lot of new faces over there (Dodgers different since he played for Arizona). I played these guys quite a bit. It’s going to be good atmosphere here and in L.A.”
FREDI GONZALEZ
On good way to end the season:
“We won the series, three out of four and had a good chance today. We were scoreboard watching. Our guys stepped up, got on the board early and we were able to add on. Proud of a good season. Thirty games over .500. 96 wins. It’s a hell of an accomplishment for our ball club. The fun begins now really. We’ve just been grinding out all the way from Feb. 14 or whatever it was to today, Sept. 29 and now the fun begins. I think we’re going to be OK.”
On the schedule this week:
“We’ll give them tomorrow off. I want to give you a little Pop. Give them tomorrow off, get them here Tuesday, take some bp, ground balls, send them home, do the same thing Wednesday and then be ready Thursday. That’s the basketball coach, I’ve learned a little bit from him, Gregg Popovich. That’s how we get them ready.”
On going into off days with good feeling from the offense:
“When you get a win, it always feels good and we did that today. We got some guys swinging the bats. Kimbrel got in the game, Carpenter got in the game, and it was good. Well-deserved off day tomorrow and then back to work the next couple days.”
On one bad pitch for Teheran:
“Yeah it was a hanging curveball, just got out over the plate a little bit. But other than that I thought he pitched a nice game.”
On depth from bench like Laird, Johnson:
“Gerald has done it multiple times in the playoffs and that was a nice pickup, Elliot, a month and a half ago, get him here and he adds a little dynamic on the basepaths, he swings the bat well, and getting Reed Johnson back and getting him swinging the bat is a nice addition that we didn’t know if we were going to have a couple weeks ago with his Achilles heel. It’s going to boil down to pitching. You’re going to scratch out a run against a tough pitcher here or there and our pitching is got to hold them and play good defense.”
On if would have liked to get Teheran more work:
“Yeah but at that time we were playing to try to win the game and we didn’t know what the final score of the Cardinals and Cubbies was going to be. You try to win the game and in a perfect world, we’d have liked to get him another inning, a couple more pitches on his pitch count but from now on, there’s no perfect world. You’ve got to try and win today’s game and you don’t have to worry about the next day.”
On if this influence’s rotation or stick with the plan:
“No, you stick with the plan. We try to win the game. We felt like we needed to add a couple runs and Constanza gave us a two-run single there.”
On the Dodgers:
“We’ll have the advance team come in on Tuesday morning and we’ll go through them and scout them and get ready for him.”
On good starting pitching:
“They’ve got Kershaw, Greinke and Ryu, that’s pretty good and we’ve been pretty good pitching ourselves, so should be an interesting series.”
On what’s left to decide on postseason roster:
“I think we’ll meet again on Tuesday and think about it the next couple days and meet again as a staff on Tuesday morning.”
