Braves quotes from B.J. Upton, Alex Wood and manager Fredi Gonzalez after Saturday’s series-clinching win against the Nationals.

**FREDI GONZALEZ

On game not being as close as Friday but not easy

“It’s never easy when you’re playing a good club like that. I think today we just persevered really. Woody wasn’t as sharp as he has been. What, 110 pitches (103) in five innings? But we swung the bats early, (in the) first inning gave him a nice cushion and we were able to add on some runs. Freeman keeps swinging.

“That was a nice three-run lead in the ninth inning. You respect that club. You’re a base on ball or a couple base on balls and they’ll put one into the seats and instead of sitting here having a good time we’re on the losing end of it.”

On Wood working out of jams in four straight innings

“LaRoche was his last hitter (he was going to face; final out of the third inning) because you start thinking about health. You start thinking about trying to win the game. It was a lot of pitches. They made some mistakes on the basepaths that helped. If not, the game might have been a little different. But at the end of the day, we won the game. You see some guys getting some big hits. Danny getting a couple hits with RBIs. BJ had four good at-bats. Justin keeps swinging the bat. It was good offensive production and it was nice to see those guys get hot.”

On keeping the line moving (his offensive mantra)

“And we did. we had some situations that again Danny came up big with a couple RBIs. It was good to see offensively. You start seeing some of the guys putting good at-bats together.”

On how much the good start – four runs in first inning — relaxes your pitcher

“Some guys can pitch with a lead and some guys can’t. But it’s always nice. I’ll take my chance with a big number your first turn to hit and let’s worry about the other stuff later. It was good. We went through our bullpen pretty good. We’ll see tomorrow what we got. It’s nice to have two (wins) under your belt, and have a chance tomorrow to get greedy and see what we can do.”

On how often they work on pickoff play with Simmons comes from behind

“We work on it in spring training. It doesn’t happen very often. But when you’ve got a guy at shortstop who’s not afraid to put it on….And that was a key situation. That’s second and third with LaRoche at the plate and one out, and all of a sudden we get the second out at second and he was able to get LaRoche out and get out of the inning and also get a W out of it” by lasting five innings.

On seeing play with ball under fence again, second time in a week, and same hitter

“It was the same guy (Ian Desmond). It’s funny because (groundskeeper) Eddie Mangan and I were out there during early (batting practice) and we were looking at our boards, our padding. And they’re brand new. It’s never happened here before, and the reason is those are brand new pads, from foul pole to foul pole. They’re a little bit longer than they should be. I think he told me they should be six inches from the bottom of the pad to the warning track and they’re not six inches. You can tell the ball got stuck in there. So they’ll get it fixed by the time we come back from our road trip.”

**B.J. UPTON

Nice to see some of your recent work pay off with some results?

“Yeah, definitely. It’s been feeling better and better every day. Obviously started off kind of rough, but it’s still early. But each day I’ve been feeling a little more comfortable at the plate.”

On squaring up balls two or three times a game the past few days, has to feel good after recent struggles?

“Yeah, it does. But just got to keep going, and hopefully it’ll get better and some balls will start to fall a little bit more. But like I said, I’m starting to feel better and better every day.”

Was that home-run ball as good as you’ve hit one in a while?

“Yeah, definitely. Just finally got something elevated. I don’t know, man, just trying to go up there and keep it simple. Just trying to keep things as simple as possible.”

On multiple guys in lineup seeming to feed off each other tonight, hitting contagious, etc.

“Yeah, any time we can get us all clicking at the same time, it can be pretty fun to watch.”

Safe to say your brother is pretty locked in right now?

“Yeah, little bit (laughs). When he gets like that, he’s tough to get out. I guess you could say he’s seeing the ball pretty well right now.”

On Alex Wood getting out of trouble in four consecutive innings

“Hey, that’s what it’s about. He never hit the panic button. Executed his pitches and made pitches when he needed to.”

Nice to see a young pitcher come through like that under pressure?

“Definitely. And hat’s off to Roger (McDowell), too. I think that’s something that Roger teaches guys – don’t put any added pressure on them.”

**ALEX WOOD

That was an unusual game, huh?

“Definitely. To say the least, it was a pretty weird game from a lot of aspects. Somehow I managed to get through five, don’t ask me how. I don’t know if I could get through that way again, but we made it through.”

How big was that pickoff play in fifth inning?

“Oh, huge. I think I was coming out of the game after LaRoche. So it worked for me. I was able to get through five because of it, and I’m definitely glad it happened.’

Threw a lot of pitches in five innings; how ya feeling?

“I feel alright. Honestly tonight is probably the best my body has felt all spring, or in a while. So from that aspect I’m really happy about it. Not necessarily the 105 pitches in five innings, but you know it’s not going to happen sometimes, and you just go from there.”

How can you be comfortable working out of jams like that inning after inning?

“I don’t think you do get comfortable. If anything it just keeps you on your toes all the time and makes you strain a little more than you’d like to. You’d like to at least have one or two quick ones. It definitely got a little old tonight, having to go out there and pitch with guys on first and second every single innings. But it was one of those things where somehow we made it through and made some pitches when we needed to. The bats were there tonight, so that definitely didn’t hurt.”

On it helping when your guys score four in the first inning

“Oh, no doubt. Especially when I gave up a second leadoff home run of the year. So it’s nice when they go out and put up a three-spot or whatever they did (four) in the first inning. That definitely helps the confidence a lot.”

On why he ran up such a high pitch count

“I thought I made some good pitches and was around the zone the whole night. It’s one of those things where sometimes you can get calls that go either way, and tonight some of them didn’t go my way. That’s just baseball. That’s how it goes sometimes.”