Braves quotes from Craig Kimbrel, Aaron Harang, Chris Johnson and manager Fredi Gonzalez after Thursday’s loss to the Marlins.
CRAIG KIMBREL
On first wild pitch
“I was trying to throw a strikeout pitch. It kind of got away from me a little bit. It’s unfortunate that the ball skipped a little too far away and he got on first.”
On wild pitch throwing off rhythm
“It’s part of baseball. Not everything goes perfectly every time you go out there. You just have to find a way to get through it. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do it tonight.”
On how he felt up until that point
“I felt pretty good until I hung a curve ball and it’s in centerfield. Other than that, my arm felt good. Ready to go tomorrow night.”
On whether the loss will be tough to let go
“Any game that you lose is tough but it’s not going to affect us tomorrow. We are going to come out, play hard and try to win.”
On mentality coming into a tie game (non-save situation)
“My mentality is to get into the dugout with a tie ball game in that situation. That’s my job. I didn’t do that tonight.”
AARON HARANG
On his performance
“I felt good. I just had the one inning that they were able to draw a walk and (Jarrod) Saltalamacchia hit that double in the gap. Other than that I felt good. I felt like I controlled the strike zone and was able to get ahead early and keep their hitters off balance.”
On recent success
“I’m working hard in between starts and preparing myself for each start. It’s the warmer part of the year so I want to make sure I’m well-conditioned and ready each time I go out there.”
On four straight innings that leadoff man reached
“You are going to give up your hits but that is where you have to work around it and get a guy to hit a weak fly ball or get something on the ground that hopefully you get a double play. We weren’t able to pull off that one double play that would have gotten me out of the inning. But you have a fast runner like (Christian) Yelich, you’ve got to make sure the ball wasn’t hit extremely hard and it gave him a little bit more of an advantage to beat it out. Other than that I felt good and made pitches when I needed to. Same with the seventh. Had a leadoff double and was able to get two groundouts and a strikeout.”
On Marlins taking three of four games
“You know what? They are a good young team. They are only going to get better with experience. They are pesky. They have their big power guys but they have good young hitters who really have a good idea of the strike zone. They are going to battle you every time they go out there.”
On level of concern with 3-4 start to homestand and losing ground to Nationals
“We are not worried about it. We still have nine games left with the Nationals too. It’s still early. There is no reason to panic. We’ve lost a few games. We still have a few games to play against Washington and some of the other teams. I think we can make those games up.”
CHRIS JOHNSON
On home run
“I got him early. He got pretty nasty as the game went on. It was an 0-0 pitch and I jumped on him and kind of shocked him a little bit. After that you saw what he was able to do. He is an All-Star for a reason. He is good. You tip your caps. They came in here and whipped our butts three out of four.”
On Alvarez
“He is usually on when he faces us. He’s on against a lot of people. He is tough. You have to try to play small ball and take advantage of situations that he gives you. Tonight, he didn’t give us too many. Tip our cap to him tonight and try to get back at them the next time we play them.”
How do you take a loss like that when an All-Star like Kimbrel throws two wild pitches?
“Same as any game. It’s a loss. He is one of the best pitchers in baseball. I won’t even think about this tomorrow for him if he comes in the game. Tomorrow, if we have a lead, I’m going to assume the game is over because most of the time it is. He gave up a couple hits. It happens. He is going to give up hits. He’s human. Just like any other loss.”
On level of concern with 3-4 start to homestand and losing ground to Nationals
“It’s the second half. We have to win ball games. They are a good team. They are going to keep playing good ball. We have to turn around and start winning some ball games and starting winning some series. If not, it will be a long second half.”
FREDI GONZALEZ
On close losses this series, what makes the difference?
Not hitting the baseball. Today we had a two-run homer by CJ (Chris Johnson), Justin (Upton) got three hits. We didn’t get the line moving and that’s basically what happened. It was a tough way to lose a game tonight. (Aaron) Harang had a great performance. We pitched remarkably. We had that freak ball that gets off of (Evan) Gattis’ shin guard and goes away, and then you’ve got the wild pitch and they booped one in there and you lose a game with the best closer in the game on the mound. All three losses were close, one was extra innings. We didn’t keep the line moving those losses, yesterday we won the game and we scored a bunch of runs but we kept the line moving.”
Do you think those wild pitches threw Kimbrel off his rhythm?
“No, I don’t think so. I think we got people in scoring position. You got a guy that ball doesn’t get away, he’s not even on base and then all of a sudden the ball gets a wild pitch and he gets in scoring position, now anything could happen. And they put the ball in play and they found a hole.”
Was that about as good as you guys have seen Henderson Alvarez this season?
“We’ve been talking about him, and we talked about him during the course of the game. He’s gotten better and better and I see a maturity on the mound that maybe last year you didn’t see or the beginning of this year you didn’t see. But he’s getting better and I think now he’s up to about 35-40 career starts in the big leagues, maybe a little bit more and you always talk about there’s a certain number that you reach as a starter that you become a major league starter and I think you’re seeing it with him. He was really good, he had all his pitches working. I think the only ball that he made a mistake on was maybe CJ’s and other that that he was pretty dominant.”
On Harang’s pitching
“He deserved better. Gave us seven innings and just gave up two runs and just keep running him out there and he maneuvers himself through the lineup really well, he’s a veteran guy. We just didn’t give him any run support tonight.”
On his level of concern with the losses and being a little behind the Nationals
“We’ll we’ve got four more going and then we go 7-4 and we’ll be OK. We’ve got the San Diego Padres coming in and we got to start hitting the ball. We’ve got to start scoring runs and we’ll be fine.”
How much of the runs goes back to Freddie Freeman’s slump?
“He’s that piston in the middle and yesterday he got a big two run homer and he had some good at bats today, he really did have some good at-bats and hit some balls hard at people. I hope he doesn’t get frustrated because I think he’s right there. But we’ve got eight guys out there swinging the bats so it’s just not the one person. We’ve got to get Gattis back into the rhythm a little, he hasn’t seen major league pitching…he’s been back 3-4 games. So, I saw a couple of good at-bats out of him. Hopefully get those two guys going.”
